I’m exchanging emails with a journalist who is talking about low self-esteem and gave this example.  I’d like to use it to explain the Clean Language way of coaching.

“In my experience as a college student, I’m surrounded by girls who act irrationally, especially involving men. An example of this type of girl would be one that calls the guy she’s interested in 20 times, only to leave him another voicemail. It’s obvious he’s not interested in talking to her. However, she doesn’t have the sense of pride in herself to stop chasing and embarrassing herself. In my mind experiences like this go hand in hand with low self-esteem. Men tend to treat women with low self esteem worse than those confident in themselves because they know they can get away with more. They know that no matter how badly they treat this specific girl, she’ll be back at their side the moment they need them.”

Let’s say I was talking to the girl who did the phoning.  I’ll imagine the conversation and make annotations. Let’s call her Jo.

Jo: I’ve called this guy and he didn’t respond.

Coach: What would you like to have happen?  [This invites her to state her goal or desired outcome.  ]

Jo: How do I get him to call? [At least it's clear what she wants. Knowing some context, we strongly suspect it's not realistic, but it's Clean Language and we leave our assumptions and interpretations out of this coaching.  Sounds daft, bear with me.]

Coach:  I’m here to help you find out what to do.  [I won't give direct advice]

Is there anything else about him calling?

Jo: Maybe he’s away.  [Likely to be some sort of denial]

Coach: When he calls, what happens next? [I'm going with the story she gives me]

Jo: We’ll go out and everything will be fine.  Fun, a little romantic.  [She is in full flight of denial. Bear with me]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a little romantic.  Is there anything else about “when he calls”?

Jo: My friends don’t think he’ll call.  [At some point, the extra information she knows challenges her self-denial story ]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a little romantic.  And your friends don’t think he’ll call.  Is there anything else about “when he calls”? [I focus on an area for a while to see wht she knows.  I'm not using my own ideas and am using her words, so there is no incentive to emphasise her point as if I'm not listening; I clearly am.]

Jo: He will call.  [Rigid denial]

Coach: And you called and when he calls, things will be fun, a lttle romantic. And your friends don’t think he’ll call.
And what would he like to have happen? [I keep returning her undeniable words to her and make her increasingly aware of how solid the story is she is constructing.  She would now be very aware her friends dont' think he will call and she can't think why he wouldn't. ]

Jo: He won’t call. [Actually, she might carry on for longer, but she will see a purer truth of the situation, a recurring pattern or a habit of hers after a while]

Coach: And you’d like him  to call and he won’t call.  What would you like to have happen now?  [We've reached a dead end on what I can achieve.  Either she wants nothing, something else, or finds a way to have him call.]

Jo:  I want him to call.

Coach: And you’d like him to call and he won’t call.  What kind of “I” wants him to call when he won’t call?  [She's persistent and I'm wondering where the real goal is.]

Jo: I’m scared of failing my exams.

Coach: And you’re scared of failing your exams.  And what would you like to have happen?

Jo: I’d like to be proud of myself. [A much wider goal, but something we would work on.  In another case, it might not be self-esteem, but might be about the exams themselves and the task of studying.  At this point the exact nature of why she was chasing him is open to speculation, but I focus on her and her present goal.]

Coach: And is there anything else about being proud of yourself?

…

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For more about self-esteem, please contact me.

When twitter often put a hashtag code in their messages such as #ifyoureallyknewme, it allows us all to find messages with a common theme. This hashtag interests me because some of the people using it seem to feel to feel bad about themselves.

Look at a few anonymous messages

• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know I have very low self-esteem, and no confidence.
• #ifyoureallyknewme .. you’d know, i’m not always who i choose to show you. #reallove try get pass my strong persona.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know that i’m not really the person you see on the outside. I wish people could see past my waterline.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you would know tht I’m actually a really sensitive person..but ppl mistake tht for weakness..so I never show it
• #ifyoureallyknewme I care about everyone else before I care about myself.
• #ifyoureallyknewme You would know I sometimes feel like a loner and that noone cares about me.
• #ifyoureallyknewme you’d know that I wished I was better looking :/ I always think I’m not pretty enough -_-
• #ifyoureallyknewme youd know not to ask me whats wrong with me. Ill give you a list if youd like.

I sense low self-esteem, caring for others first, hiding who you are, not feeling you are enough and being overwhelmed.

What would it be like to

• be able to be comfortable with who you are;
• accept that this is what you’re feeling and thinking;
• to remember and be able to list things that make you like yourself and be proud;
• to find ways to be self-assertive, self-accepting and feel okay about what’s happening;
• be able to be honest and accepting of what’s going on;
• show more of yourself to others and be resilient against hurt;
• expect good things for yourself.

I’m a Self-Esteem Life Coach and I help people feel better about themselves and to feel able to cope well with life’s challenges.

If you’d like to hear more about what I do, please

1) sign up to my email list on the form on the top right on this website.  I won’t spam you or sell your email address.  I’ll offer blogs, videos and other messages to help you understand what’s going on and make whatever changes that you’d like.

2) Follow me on twitter and facebook.

J, from Liverpool asks:
Brian, I have low self worth and I don’t believe what counsellors tell me. How can I change all that?

Brian says:
I am a self-esteem life coach and I use simple questions and your words to ask about your story, like in the questions above. Sooner or later it creates insights and you can see your opportunities and choices. It’s easy to reject other people’s advice. Sometimes you may not trust yourself. But if you keep looking for what’s true, you’ll soon experience the best your life can offer.

- You have no self-worth, you don’t believe any of what you do with counsellors and you’d like to know how to change your low self-worth?
- What do you know about what needs to happen for things to change?
- You don’t seem to trust yourself or counsellors; what or whom do you trust?
- What kind of change do you want?
- When there is a change, what happens next?

Here are the Six Pillars of Self Esteem from the book by Nathaniel Branden, used in overcoming low self-esteem. The Six pillars are Personal Integrity, Living Consciously, Self-Responsibility, Self-Acceptance, Self-Assertiveness, Living Purposefully.

A brief expansion of these pillars for overcoming low self-esteem is:
Personal Integrity: Live according to your beliefs and values
Living Consciously: Be realistic, have an active mind rather than passive, be willing to see and correct mistakes.
Self-Responsibility: accept that “no one owes me fulfilment of my wishes” (page 107)
Self-Acceptance: When we fight a block it grows stronger. When we acknowledge, experience and accept it, it begins to melt. (page 99)
Self-Assertiveness: My life does not belong to others and I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations. (page 121)
Living Purposefully: When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgement of what is appropriate, we lose face in out own eyes. (page 144)

Watch several videos on Low self esteem on my YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Overlowselfesteem

I coach on self esteem and couldn’t resist commenting when someone on twitter wrote:

• Gunna just become a contained bottle and not show anyone how i feel it would be best that way (Author withheld for privacy)

Avoiding contact with people can be a sign of low self esteem.  Let me stress that from one comment, I can’t tell much about this author’s self-esteem and it may not be reflective on them or how they see themselves.   I’m just using it as a real life example.

Nathaniel Branden in 1969 briefly defined self-esteem as “…the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness”.  Other authors talk about it being linked to having unrealistic expectations of yourself and others; not trusting others and not opening up to others.

Several clients of mine have talked about difficulties about feeling adequate and worthy of the love or affection of others.  For people who don’t love themselves, it’s hard to believe that others like them and so interacting with others can be very painful.

I know my coaching approach works.  It was developed by psychotherapists and I’ve seen dramatic changes in one or a few sessions.  In a first session, one client told me things she said she had never told anyone, just after telling me she didn’t open up to people.

My coaching method uses very open questions to firmly keep the focus on what the client says.  On the quote above, I could ask:

• Is there anything else about “not show anyone how i feel”?
• What kind of “contained bottle”?
• What would you like to have happen?

Notice that I haven’t offered advice about what I guess the situation is.  I don’t believe I’ll know with any real certainty and depth.  The questions flexibly follow the client to keep discovering about their situation, their strengths and their opportunities.  Because of the right focus on the right things, gradually or suddenly, the client’s world becomes better, opportunities are clear and choices are possible.

It’s important that a coaching approach provides benefits that last.  Too many self-help or coaching ideas are quick fixes that turn out to be short-term highs.

I’m not sure there’s a quick way for me to convince you that help is available if you want it.  Telling you to “Trust me” can hardly be expected to when you’re not sure whether to even trust yourself.  So please think of what would help you choose a good next step.  What would help make sure you overcome your low self-esteem a little bit more each day?  If you’d like more ideas, my introductory video is a good place to start.

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Someone on twitter talked about parents supporting self-esteem in a way that means they ensure all the children get a trophy on sports day. I’ve even heard of a school cancelling its sports day because some children felt sad when they lost.

Overcoming-low-self-esteem.com

While it may be tempting, giving kids stuff just for turning up is different to ensuring their self esteem is high. I’m not against giving them something, just don’t lie to them. Yes, it’s a lie even when it’s well intentioned. I still have medals somewhere for coming second in a two boy swim and finishing a long distance run long after almost everyone else had changed out of their sports gear. They were on different days in case you think I did some kind of Junior Iron Man competition. It helped me feel part of the team, it acknowledged my effort and made me feel cared for. But I never seriously thought it was for sporting achievement and it was partly an embarrassment as it symbolised trying rather than winning.

I’m not convinced you’ll fool the child. You may even deliver the meta-messages that you don’t even think of them as a serious competitor and that you think childish and foolish. Most importantly, you may miss that while self-confidence is about believing you can achieve things, self-esteem is about how you feel about yourself. It’s the bit after they get the medal. If they know they are being shielded, not considered capable of winning and they have no evidence of actual learning or achieving, how are they going to get self-esteem?

Shielding children from most competitions and challenges does not help them develop the skills to deal with challenges when you’re not around. Rich children can be very insecure when they realise they have been shielded.

Reality happens; to you and to your child. Self-esteem comes from acknowledgement of reality, accepting your strengths and having realistic expectations.

Remember the Truman Show film?  Would Jim Carey thank the people who altered his reality and made him do all that work to make sense of what reality was?

Piaget:  “Every time we teach a child something, we prevent him from inventing it himself.”

Maybe I should have just said that.

These are often from Twitter

• If you can distinguish between good advice and bad advice, then you don’t need advice.–Van Roy’s Second Law
• Talk to yourself the way you would talk to other people you love. Thanks scotthay1972
• There´s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that´s your own self.  Thanks MER04129
• B4 you can love someone else, you must first love yourself. Do sth kind 4 yrself today,so you can open your heart to others. Thanks makelovenew
• Must have more self-confidence. I’m sick of looking back on life and regretting instances of inaction far more than mistakes.  Thanks Lemmata

Thanks for the quote on Twitter, @TheSCICoach.

Actually, we communicate with metaphor far more than we think.  Metaphors often link one idea or thing to something physical or something we can feel.

Metaphors are underlined in these messages from Twitter.

• Depression darkens ~ repels optimistic ones ~ no one wants blackness #haiku @Jannagae
• “Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.” – Viktor Frankl @FastSelfHelp
• A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool from a mountain top. #quote @SuuperG
• “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.”- Aristophanes (c. 448 – 385 BCE),Greece #Quote @AnnieSage
• The deepest craving in human beings is the need to be appreciated. #quote William James @skigerman
• To err from the right path is common to mankind. -Sophocles #quote @rahmalam
• Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action. – Ralph Waldo Emerson. #quote @EmersonRalphyW

I’ve underlined some of the metaphors.  Scientists and linguists are realising how fundamental metaphors are for us to speak.  Clean Language coaching uses questions that often explore the metaphors we use.  This is the coaching method I use to help people overcome low self esteem.  To build confidence.  To grow taller. Metaphors abound.  Images hidden in words.

Please comment or retweet if you liked this post.  I’d be interested in your comments about metaphors you notice too.