If your car types are stuck in the mud of low self-esteem, then I think many of the techniques out there won’t help a lot.
Why you can’t overcome low self-esteem (unless you use the right technique)?
- because one-off actions won’t prevent a recurring cycle to come back. Scaring away a fox won’t stop him coming back for the chickens.
- because deep feelings with resurface even if you ignore them for a while. Try sinking a buoy in the sea.
- because doing healthy steps won’t reach deeply enough to improve self-esteem. Painting over rusted iron isn’t the same as doing the job properly and removing the rust.
- because if some patterns of behaviour are flexible and resilient enough to resist most efforts. If you have rules for yourself to keep low self-esteem in place, then simple methods won’t work. Try and catch a chicken. It’s fast and it reacts to your efforts.
- you may be in a bind you can’t easily get out of, where to help yourself means you spend too little time with someone whom you want to help a lot and needs your help.
You won’t overcome low self-esteem if you don’t use a technique that’s sophisticated enough to deal with your issues. One of my recurring messages is to pick the right technique for the job. Like the car stuck in mud, sometimes the accelorator will get you out and sometimes you need planks of wood, people pushing or even a truck to get you out.
If telling yourself in a mirror “I’m great” works, then I don’t really think you had low self-esteem. Self-esteem is having a sense of personal worth and being worthy of happiness. It can be affected by whether you live your life with integrity, how your parents treated you and whether you take care of yourself. It may feel like a widespread and deep sense of yourself. A method that distracts you will only do that.
Lists of your strengths and remembering nice things people said is a nice start. Does it stop bad feelings from the past making you feel bad about yourself. If it does, it’s a distraction or part of a bigger solution, but not an end in itself. Just because it make you feel better for an hour doesn’t mean it worked.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy goes further and looks at the context and background in your life. It’s reasonably thorough at thinking through the low self-esteem process. There is a lot of evidence that it works. For me, I’ve found it poor at addressing feelings, especially those I find hard to express clearly in thoughts.
Mother Theresa is quoted as saying “It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy”. Exercise, good sleep and nutrition are great things for a healthy lifestyle. Oiling a car isn’t the only form of maintenance though.
So how have you found this so far? Am I depressing you (and don’t get me started on the missing steps implied in this statement)? I’m challenging you to see what’s happening for you. If some of the simple steps do all you need, good luck to you. Don’t pretend that a warm fluffy book will solve things forever if some part of you knows that you’ll always be hurt or terrorised by what happened to you in the last job, when you went to that place or when you were at school.
What kind of low self-esteem do you have? Does it resist solutions? Does is recur frequently? Is it elusive, chaotic or persistent?
With my Clean Language method, I basically have two steps. Notice what’s happening and make the right choices. Choose whatever level of self-esteem you want and then find a method to improve it. Don’t ignore it because it’s scary or you don’t understand it. I can work with you on your emotions, thoughts, beliefs and notice how everything works together and then how to improve it.
Do you think you can and want to improve your self-esteem?
Can you do it on your own?
I’m confident that I can vastly improve most self-esteem issues in a relatively small number of coaching sessions. Contact me to find out more.
Tags:Clean Language,feelings,Understanding OLSE,WNI
