Self-esteem, self-love and self-hatred are closely linked and not easily separated, generally speaking. One person may seem to think very highly of themselves by the way they talk about themselves. The ego is often involved in the confusion and identified as Self. There is much more to the Self than we have realized.
The ego tends to ignore and cut off or deny what it doesn’t like about the personality. It starts out early when we are babies and we try to figure out what we have done wrong and try to remake ourselves, in fear of loss of love, food or safety.
Even the parents with the best of intentions have done or said something that triggers pain in the child.
Unconscious harm and purposeful harm exponentially cause the child to shift to please the family to avoid loss of love. This has created patterns for centuries in humans.
Recognizing the self patterns and later the patterns of the family allows us to stop the repetition and the reinforcing of the patterns. You can recognize this in yourself when you decide to do something different than your own parents did that you did not like as a child.
You can also recognize this when you realize that something that has worked for one child doesn’t necessarily work for another.
While reading this, remember that this isn’t about who causes the harm. There are many levels of understanding behind “why things happen,” including that sometimes things just happen. Other times, there is a reason, but the level of each Being involved is difficult to see with only a cursory look and with old, conventional thinking. On what level is each person involved? It’s not up to us to say. We are multi-faceted Beings and not easily understood with cookie cutter eyes and theories and from looking from the outside at another.
I’m asking you to consider other possibilities because new thinking and ways of doing things are absolutely necessary for evolution, and evolution is needed now. What we have been doing isn’t working. Look at the world. Look at the destruction and hatred of people all over the planet. It is a direct reflection of what is going on inside us. The macrocosm reflects the microcosm.
When you look at someone and feel hatred, know that it is not the person you hate, but a part of yourself they are reflecting back to you. You hate the part of yourself that person is reflecting back to you. When you dislike or find yourself annoyed by another person or a kind of person, know that you dislike and are annoyed by a part of yourself. I could go much further with this, but I think you get the idea.
Back to the original question about improving self-esteem and feeling bad: You may truly love parts of yourself, and some of you may even love the bigger part of yourselves. The problem is that there is a lot that you do not love, the warts, the pimples, the “weakness,” “neediness,” when we are “over-weight,” “lazy,”” unmotivated,” “selfish” or “shy,” etc. You can write a list of what you like or don’t like about yourself or anyone, including the state of the planet. (Our part in the state of the planet is another discussion altogether.) I am using quotation marks because these are all judgments.
The secret to more self-esteem and self-love is not only to practice and love the parts that you have not loved for so long. The secret is to release the thoughts, the judgments and beliefs that keep you from being able to accept the love coming into you from all around you! If you are not feeling loved in your life, you can then find out how to take yourself out of un-loving situations, and find ones that are right for you, when you are loved and appreciated just as you are. You never have to stay where you are not loved. It can be difficult to see the way out when you believe what un-loving words and doubt have to say.
But it becomes increasingly easy to ignore those words when you can feel and accept the love the world and people around you have to offer. It is much easier to love yourself when judgments (denial) are released. Loving the self is the source of self-esteem and self-worth. This is also how you learn to release the “bad” feelings mentioned in the question we started with. (See above.)
If you would like help improving your self-esteem and self love, talk to a Process Coach and we can help you along the way until you are ready to continue on your own.
http://www.processcoaching.com
For my personal page http://www.processcoaching.com/cathy
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