Building Self Esteem

Building self esteem is something that, if done successfully, can change your life. Being able to accept yourself, to have confidence in yourself, and to know that you are good enough can take you a lot further in life compared to thinking that you're worthless and that no one likes you or accepts you. In this article, I will talk about where having low self-esteem comes from and what you can do to help build it back up. If you want to build self esteem, the first thing you need to understand is how it got so low in the first place. Understand that much of how you see yourself was formed from a very young age. For most people, having low self esteem has to do with their parents. To be more exact, it had to do with your misinterpretation of what you experienced or what you were told as a child. One of the most common beliefs that people with low self esteem have is the belief that they are not good enough. No matter how hard they try or how well they do, they will feel like it just wasn't enough. This is most likely caused by having parents who said things that made you believe you weren't good enough. They may have communicated this verbally or through their body language. Either way, the message you received was that you were not good enough. It doesn't stop in your childhood though. Because you developed this false belief, you went through life looking at the world with this false perception of yourself. It's like walking around with a pair shades with yellow lenses. Everything you see, hear, or experience is perceived through those yellow lenses. In other words, the reality that you have experienced has been tainted by the beliefs that were instilled in you at a young age. Someone can compliment you on a job well done but through your eyes, you're still not worthy and may even believe that person is being insincere even though they are not. Understand that reality and what you perceive to be reality can be two very different things. Building your self esteem will be a lot easier when you realize this. What you experienced as a child that led to you having self esteem issues, has been misinterpreted. What do I mean? Well, if your parents told you that you are not good enough, does that really mean that you are not good enough? Think back to when you were young and try to remember an incident where your parents or some other authority figure told you something negative like you'll never amount to anything. Notice how that feels. Now think back on that incident or incidents again but only this time, see it as a third person watching the event take place. If you could talk to that child version of you, what would you say? Is it possible that your parents just said those things because they thought it would motivate you to do more? Is it possible that their opinions about you as a child have nothing to do with you as an adult? Do you think your parents have special powers that enable them to predict a person's future? Do you believe that people can change? What do these questions have to do with building self esteem and confidence? If you can understand that it's possible that you may have misinterpreted what your parents said or at least decipher their true intentions incorrectly, then you will realize that you have been walking around with a false sense of low self esteem all of these years. When you don't think highly of yourself, when you believe that you aren't good enough or important enough, your mind will search for evidence to make it true. On the other hand, if you realized that your are good enough, that you misheard your parents or interpreted their intentions incorrectly, you can start to destroy your low sense of self esteem by using logic and questioning whether or not what you believed to be true all of these years is actually wrong. There are tons of ways to build self esteem but one of the most powerful ways is what I just described. It is to simply recognize the fact that you have been looking at the world through a lens that only focused on things that reinforced your false belief that you aren't good enough. After all, your mind doesn't want to make you a liar. If you believe you are worthless, your mind will prove that you are by warping reality to make you see things that will back that belief up. If you are unfamiliar with how beliefs and perception works, that's okay. The good news is that the reverse is true as well. If you believe that you are good enough, that you are a likeable person, that you are meant to do great things in life, your mind will create a new lens and focus on things that will back up that belief. There is no "reality". Reality is what your mind perceives it to be. So to summarize this topic of building self esteem, realize that the cause of your low self esteem started when you were a child, before you knew how to use logic to determine what was true and what was false. This is why there is a lot of building self esteem in children programs. That's where it all starts. Realize that all of the so called "evidence" that you have seen up until this point of your life that "proves" you aren't good enough or people don't like you or you're not important was a distortion of reality caused by your belief that you are worthless. Now that you know better, use your logic and common sense and go back into your childhood memories, to those times when you were told that you were a piece of crap, and challenge those statements. If parents can predict the future based on the past, they would all be filthy rich by investing in the stock market. You are much more than who you think you are. Besides, now that you know you have been wrong in thinking that you aren't good enough, you can begin to take charge of your life. Building self esteem comes down to understanding that you can control your beliefs. The belief in who you are and what you are capable of achieving in life is up to you to decide, not your parents. Now that you know this, make sure you say the right things to your kids if you have any. It will have a major affect on their life.

The Vision Board

A vision board is basically a platform where you put pictures of your goals and dreams on it. It can be an actual cardboard where you place pictures and cutouts all over it, a collage, or simply a picture on your desktop. The purpose of having these boards is to help you attract what you want into your life by making it clear to your subconscious exactly what it is you want. This article will give you some pointers on how best to use these types of boards and what is possible when you use one. The idea of having vision boards has been around for some time but they started to get a lot more popular due to the success of The Secret, a movie that talks about the law of attraction. The basic premise of how and why this works it that when you see in your mind what you want, things will start to happen to bring the images that you have created into reality. This may seem like a bunch of nonsense to many people, which isn't surprising. How can putting pictures of what you want on a board make them come true? Well, you have to understand that your goals won't just come true because you stick pictures of them on a vision board. They come true because when you make a vision board and put it where you see it every day, your mind will be focused on your goals a lot more often then normal. When you constantly think about your goals, you will tend to do more towards obtaining those goals. Not only that, your mind will start to notice things around you that will help you reach those goals that you may have not notice if your mind hadn't been focused on your goals. Creating a vision board can be a pretty fun project. What you put on the board is really up to you. The point is to find pictures that will help produce a positive feeling inside of you every time you look at it. It's like visualizing your goals only with a board; you will have physical pictures to look at. You can look through magazines for pictures or even print out pictures from the internet. You can search for the secret vision board examples if you want to have an idea what they look like. There's no wrong way to do this. As long as looking at the board will remind you of your goals and give you some sort of emotion, then it's good enough. I have my own vision board that I have made. Well, it's not really on a board though. I made it on my computer. I basically just found a bunch of pictures that represented the goals I have in different areas of my life such as physical, relationship, and financial. I have it on my desktop so everyday when I turn my computer on, I see it. You may be wondering if this actually works. Well, I can tell you from experience that it does. Will miracles happen? Probably not. However, if you constantly have your goals and dreams on your mind, you will have a far greater chance of making them a reality. I think this is why having a vision board is so effective. Whether creating one of these things will attract what you want into your life or not, they are quick and fun to make so why not give it a try? Who knows, it can change your life. I have several things on mine and one of them came true about 3 months after I created my vision board. Another came true 15 months after that. I'll have to wait and see if the other ones materialize. I'll keep you updated.

The 7 P's of Goal Setting

Guest Post by Charles Chua When you are inspired by the generosity of philanthropists, you aspire to be one of them. However, you have to be rich. In order to be rich you need to do something to bring you the wealth. What you need is a goal to turn your dream into reality. Here are the 7 P’s in goal setting: 1. Passionate: Are you fervently interested in what you intend to do. Not only that, are you able to do it easily and better than other people? Your goal is your inspiration and aspiration. 2. Positive mindset: A positive mental attitude is essential to realize your objectives. You will look at things on the bright side and work diligently towards your goals. 3. Practical: Is it achievable? Is it useful to yourself and others? Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. When you have many goals, set priority for each goal and work accordingly so that you are not overwhelmed. 4. Put in writing: Written goals are powerful tool. It is precise, clear and written in positive terms. It spells out in great details the tasks for each stage and the completion dates. You will be kept posted to do your daily tasks because you notice it every day. 5. Plan: You set yearly, monthly, weekly and daily tasks. Your plan is your road map. You follow accordingly to get what you want in life. 6. Pay the price: A goal is not a goal when you can get something easily. It involves time and tremendous effort. It takes blood, sweat and tears to reach your goal. 7. Perseverance: Do not be disheartened by setbacks along the way. Look at failures and problems as valuable lessons to learn. There is no overnight success. It can take many years to achieve your goals. Goals give you meaning in life. They provide direction and measure your success. You know what you are looking for and every day you strive to reach your objectives. About Author As a husband and a father of two I write about parenting, work, home life, happiness, relationships, success, healthy lifestyle, self development and personal finance at... All About Living With Life. I hope my articles can uplift your mood and motivate you to improve your life for the better. Charles Chua C K

Achieve Your Goals

Why should you do everything in your power to achieve your goals? Why should you go through the trouble of disciplining yourself to take consistent action each and every day towards your goals? Why should you have to deal with setbacks and challenges that will bring you to your knees? Why do go through any of these things just to accomplish your goals? One reason is because if you don't, you will feel regret. The second reason is because you will miss your chance to change other people's lives. When people get to the end of their lives, they will even feel fulfilled or full of regret. If there is something you have always wanted to do, do it. Even if there a possibility that you may fail, do it. Realize that most of the things we regret in life will come failing to take action, not taking action. In other words, we will have more regrets over the things that we didn't do than the things that we did do. So when you achieve your goals, how does that affect other people's lives? Well, if you think about it, we are all motivated by one of two things. The first is desperation. When we become desperate, when our backs are against the wall, when there is no other choice, we will spring into action. There are hundreds of stories of people who went from being sick of being broke and living in poverty to becoming successful. The second reason people are motivated is inspiration. When you see someone achieve massive success, you start to believe you can to. The problem is that many people see successful people as being lucky. Now if you achieve your goal, you will be able to inspire the people around you to believe in themselves because they won't see you as just being lucky. Whether you are trying to achieve your financial goals, fitness goals or any other kind of goal, just realize that your success or failure in achieving that goal doesn't just affect you, it affects everyone around you. Learning how to achieve your goals and more importantly, putting what you learn into action, will help inspire others to pursue their own goals with the same determination that you had in achieving your goals. No one said living your dreams was easy, it's not. That is why so many people end up quitting. There are far too many stories of failure and not enough stories of success. No matter how big or small your goal is, do everything you can to accomplish it. Your accomplishment can possibly inspire someone to become more than they thought they could become.

Life Motivation

A lack of life motivation can come down to not knowing what you want in life. It can also be that you don't really want anything out of life. However, this is rarely the real reason for not having motivation in life. It's hard to find out what you want for your life if you are currently in a wrong mindset. Let's say you're stressed out. Would it be a good time to ask you to put together a business plan? Probably not. So in order to find that motivation in your life to do things, you will first need to get yourself in the right state of mind. Keep in mind that if you have severe depression, then you will want to seek professional help. The first thing you will need to do is to understand why you feel the way you feel. There are basically three factors that will determine how you feel at any given moment. The first thing is your physiology. If you are walking around like you're depressed, you're going to feel depressed. Your body posture can have a huge effect in the way you feel. The next thing is your focus. If you focus on how life sucks, it'll be hard to find any motivation to do anything with your life. The third thing is your standards. If you have a standard that says, "It's okay to be mediocre in life", then that is what you will experience. So how does knowing these things have to do with finding motivation in life? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the reason why you have a lack of motivation in life is because you don’t know what it is that you want. The reason why you don't know what you want is probably because you are in the state of, "I don't care". In order to give your life some meaning and give yourself some life motivation, you will need to have a purpose. In order to do this, you will first need to get out of your lousy mentality. What you will want to do is to force yourself to get excited by changing your body movements. If you are currently moving slowly, have a slouched back, your head down, and are breathing shallow, change that by walking fasters, straightening you back, put your head up, and breath more fully. This will create a change in your physical chemistry and will start to instantly make you feel better. The next thing you will want to do is to focus on the positive things. You can do this by asking yourself the right questions. So instead of, "Why does my life suck", you will want to ask, "What is good in my life right now? What can I be excited about my life right now if I really wanted to?" By asking empowering questions, your mind will start to focus on empowering things. The last step to have more motivation for life is to change your standards. Up until now, you probably have pretty low standards for yourself. You don't really expect much out of your life and therefore have no motivation in life. The best way to get out of this rut is to start surrounding yourself with people who are full of life motivation. Since you become who you spend most of your time with, by hanging out with people who are alive, people who have a purpose and are going for their dreams and goals, you will start to pick up their way of thinking as well. All of these things can change your life. If you want more information on the above steps, you can read books on Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP for short. You will learn different skills to help you instantly change the way you feel. It will help give you more life motivation so you can make the best out of this life.