I’ve been thinking about self esteem lately. When we have problems, such as financial struggles, health challenges, or we experience natural disasters such as hurricane Sandy, it is hard to keep our spirits up. It is hard to feel good about ourselves.
Instead of passing out some advice or a list of suggestions, I think you might benefit from a deeper understanding of self esteem. I turned to two pioneers in the field of counseling to help us out.
Are emotions from the past preventing you from enjoying your holiday season? Normally you are a competent adult. Yet, when you go home for the holidays you feel 12 years old again.
Almost everyone has had the experience of age regression. Age regression happens when your emotions get reset to an earlier point in your life, usually childhood.
What causes age regression and what can you do about it?
You’ve started on the path of forgiveness. This is not an easy path, but there are many positive benefits. If you haven’t started on the path yet, see my post “How Can I Forgive When It Seems Too Hard” to learn more.
The path of forgiveness often opens your eyes to wrongs you have done and how these wrongs have affected others.
Sometimes forgiving yourself is more difficult than forgiving others.
Is a lack of forgiveness holding you back from the life you dream about? When you can’t forgive someone you are holding onto anger, resentments, and hurts from the past.
Sometimes you are holding onto recent grudges. Your boss criticized you in front of everyone. Your romantic partner forgot your birthday. Other times you are holding onto hurts from childhood. A teacher embarrassed you. Your mother slapped you.
A lack of forgiveness is always about the past. Letting go of the past is the key to the life you dream about.
Your problem childhood holds the key to the life you want. Many of the emotions that are holding you back are not from the present moment. You are still feeling limiting emotions from childhood.
As a child you may have felt hurt, rejected, afraid, embarrassed, shamed, ignored or unloved. These emotions are still with you because there was no resolution – no opportunity for release. You did not get the love, the attention, or the respect you needed. These emotions act like messengers from the past telling you what you need now to create the life you want.
Everybody experiences times when our brain simply locks up. Usually this happens at the most crucial times. You are set to give that important presentation and all of a sudden you can’t remember any of your points. During a job interview you fumble the easiest questions. Instead of making a good impression with a possible date, you mumble something stupid. You’ve studied for the exam and your mind goes blank when you read the first question.
Normally you solve problems by engaging your thinking. But what can you do when your best problem solving tool is not working?
People often ask me if they can change their emotions. Many people believe that emotions are mysterious and difficult to work with. You just have to live with them.
Changing emotions is difficult when you treat them like thoughts. Emotions are not thoughts. When you honor and respect your emotions you can discover your true emotions. You can change your emotions.
Instead of changing an emotion, I prefer to release false emotions and replace them with true emotions. False emotions are those that you learned in childhood or inherited from your family. As a young child you may have learned that you are not good enough or you are not lovable or you are not valuable. Other false emotions include unhealthy guilt, shame, fear, anger or hopelessness.
You may not even remember when you learned these false emotions. Even if you can’t remember the past, you have an emotional memory.
Do you have too many negative people in your life? Do people in your life hold you back or bring you down? It seems like negative people are everywhere.
Last week a client sent me a thank-you e-mail and I want to quote part of it. “In my view, I am a cleaner, lighter being in my core as a result of your work. Because of this new lightness my world has become cleaner with less negative people and more of the positive ones. Being a better person starts way deep inside…”
Is guilt running your life? There are so many things that create guilt. You forgot an appointment. You said something that might be unkind. You took time for yourself. You said no. Some people seem to feel guilty about every little thing. Some people feel guilty for being. Is guilt helping you live the life you dream about?
According to Wikipedia guilt is “…the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. It is also a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes – accurately or not – that he or she has violated a moral standard, and bears significant responsibility for that violation.” An old friend of mine used to say that guilt is an either or proposition – either you’re guilty or you’re not. The true purpose of guilt is to help us live better lives. Guilt can be a great emotion to have. If you do something that harms another or violates a moral standard then guilt helps you modify your behavior. If your child tells a lie, then guilt helps her learn better behaviors.
Recently Dr. Oz devoted an entire show to emotional baggage (September 14, 2012). He tells us that emotional baggage can make you “fat, tired and sick.” Are emotions holding you back from your great health? Are emotions holding you back from living a great life?
If emotions from your past are affecting your life and holding you back in any way, you have emotional baggage. Emotional baggage created in adulthood can come from divorce, job loss, death of a loved one, dysfunctional relationships, illness, and so on. These issues are usually easy to identify.
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