How do I improve my self-esteem? I thought I liked myself OK but why do I feel so bad?

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

Projection, Perception and Communication

Communication has been a tricky business because perception can be misunderstood as reality.

Now consider that there are as many realities as there are people. We have agreements to share larger realities such as the collective, global or cultural reality. We also have personal realities that overlap and can become quite confusing.

In Process Coaching we use the metaphor of the Movie to explain how this works.
http://processcoaching.com/movies.html

The story of the blind men and the elephant also illustrates this phenomenon quite well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant. There are a few versions of the story. What it comes down to is the fact that we often don’t see the whole picture, and our perception of reality is very personal, and often completely different from another’s.

Communication is the bridge and the challenge of relating to another’s reality. When we communicate we tend to forget that our version of the story is only part of the story (except to ourselves). As we navigate through our overlapping realities together, and we humans love to be around each other regardless of the complications, we get so caught up in our own version. We start to believe that our reality is all there is.

It is partly true.  For the individual it is true, but we live together and agree to reflect and play roles for each other so that we can experience more of who we are beyond our egos. To know ourselves completely, we hire people to mirror what we love and don’t love about ourselves. For what reason? To know ourselves completely and see what we cannot see. We continue to hire people until we realize who we are–that which we love and deny in ourselves which is reflected in others.

So communication is not only the means and the opportunity to bridge the different realities so that we can be with each other and know ourselves but also to share, relate and learn with each other. It can be trying at times, and at other times quite pleasurable. Even the most heated discussions or fights can be fun and enlightening if we remember that we each have our own version.

Communication is a skill that takes a lifetime of trial and error at different rates for all of us. Some people are more comfortable with the emotional and body aspect of communication. Others are more comfortable with the words and mind in communication. We have our habits and our patterns, our beliefs and our experiences to grapple with as well.

So how do we manage at all? The best we can. First, listen. Hear each other out, one at a time. Agree to disagree, but express what it feels like instead of blaming each other. No one is at fault, even in the worse cases. We really are doing the best we can with the tools we have. Find more tools and help if needed. If you walk away, give it time. And keep the bridges open for as long as possible to let in the possibility for love, the light of understanding and ultimately compassion, to come through.