Improve Your Self Confidence
Posted on December 24, 2007
Filed Under Self confidence tips, Self confidence tools | Leave a Comment
Knowing yourself is the foundation of self-esteem, self confidence and personal development. Man has been seeking himself since the days of the Oracle of Delphi. “Know yourself” said the Oracle, but she spoke in riddles and the men who had come a long way to get a simple answer from her wise lips went away even more confused.
Yes, it isn’t easy to really understand a human being. And, to understand others, we need first of all to understand ourselves and to gain self-esteem and confidence.
How can we do this? There are ways to work on this and we can do it in the comfort of our home if we don’t want to attend evening courses in self confidence and self-esteem and meet others in similar situations.
Some tips: * Write down your positive achievements, all that you can remember; educations, jobs, loves and relationships (even if they ended, you still achieved them), friendships, children, driving licence… Look at what you already have and realize you have done rather well.
* Write down good things that others have said about you. Read through old documents from former employers or teachers that state all your strong sides. Maybe you forgot you had them?
* Make plans. Ask yourself what can be done. What can you change to make things better? Write down precise goals and write a step-by-step plan on how you intend to achieve your goals.
*Decision. Make a decision that tomorrow you will start dealing with the first step of your plan.
When you read what you have written you will realize that you have grown and developed over the years. That also means that you can grow and develop further.
Fear of Rejection
Posted on December 3, 2007
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Getting the nerve up to ask someone to go out with you can be very difficult. There are a lot more reasons to be afraid than there are for being brave. Many of us have self-esteem issues firmly rooted in our childhood stories that hold us frozen and afraid to really reach out to others. Our parents, siblings, or neighborhood friends taught us that we were less than beautiful, that we aren’t clever enough, wealthy enough, or likable enough. A string of broken hearts and failed relationships can only add to the fear that perhaps those people were right and we really aren’t all that lovable. But oh how our souls long for someone to love who will love us back, forever.
One of the greatest crimes to mankind is that our childhoods are often so messed up. Few parents really know how to teach their children about how to earn self-esteem through hard work, tenacity, and successfully accomplishing our goals. We aren’t taught how to self-manage, self-monitor, self-discipline, and create a sense of self-respect that holds strong regardless of what naysayers may think of us. Most of us did not have parents who sat down with us on a regular basis to show us examples of everyday average looking people finding other everyday average looking people to fall in love with. We were left to define love, romance, sexuality, and ourselves according to our peers, television, movies, and fashion magazines. Is it any wonder that very few young adults start out with a healthy positive self-esteem?
It only takes a handful of unexplained or lame rejections before an average guy assumes there must be something very unappealing about him. Why else would all of these girls be turning him down? It only takes a handful of men playing the field pretending to be interested in more than just sex, before a woman thinks that all men are creeps or that she isn’t worthy of anything more than a one-night-stand in the eyes of men. Nobody wants that kind of pain and rejection. Most of us have just enough self-respect to say, ‘I’m not going to do that again’ and then we shut down, no longer asking anyone out and not accepting anyone’s invitations to begin dating. Studies show that we are moving towards a nation full of single adults all living alone. More and more children are being raised in single parent households with no role model of what a marriage of any kind would even look like on a daily basis. Our isolation and fear of rejection is being taught to our children. Protect yourself at all costs, don’t let anyone get close enough to hurt you. It’s just not worth the effort to even try anymore.
Mankind is a social animal. We were never designed to be hermits in a big city. We become depressed and physically ill as we become more and more lonely, isolated, and disconnected. Even a deep connection to a source of spirituality higher than ourselves isn’t going to heal our broken hearts. If anything, it just makes us long for heaven where angels and gods must love us. Mankind must learn to connect with each other on a deeper heart to heart level. Shallow superficial marriages are never going to be acceptable again. That may have been okay for generations past, but we don’t have to get married to have sex any more. We don’t have to get married to have a man provide food and shelter for us anymore. We don’t have to get married to have children anymore. We can argue all day long as to whether or not it was better back when those taboos existed, but the simple fact is they don’t exist anymore and we aren’t going to embrace them ever again. We want our relationships to be about something far more important than society says we are naughty if we aren’t married.
So now what? How do we begin to date again, to build real unions of the heart, how do we make ‘happily ever after’ into a part of our reality? We are all so broken and flawed, or so we think. Remember this, most people are far more insecure than they let on. There’s a reason that the search engines show phrases like ‘improving self-esteem’ and ‘building self-confidence’ are such popular topics. We need to learn more about who we really are, what we really need as opposed to what we simply want, and what gifts do we have to offer a companion. Really get to know yourself as a beautiful mix of characteristics, traits, flaws, and gifts. Set some goals that are just beyond your reach and work hard to accomplish them. Then do it again with a little bit tougher goal. Find real self-esteem, real self-respect, and your real inner beauty as a soul of substance inside that body of yours. Learn how to take care of your body. It’s a gift you want to share with your future partner, isn’t it? Become the kind of person that your ideal partner would want to be with for the rest of their life.
Once you are feeling strong and beautiful, then go out and begin looking for other people who have the glow of someone who feels strong and beautiful. Don’t just look for visually attractive people. Look for people with that glow and inner light that comes from inner beauty. Find it inside of them and ask those people if they want to date you. Say yes you will give it a try when those types of people ask you out. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Those are the people who will be kind and honest even if the two of you decide that it is not the perfect match. They won’t be hurtful and ugly about breaking up and neither will you. You will find that if you are at your best and you feel good about yourself, you will become a magnet to all kinds of people, especially those who are not feeling very good about themselves. This has nothing whatsoever to do with physical beauty, it’s about an inner light that shines for all the world to see. We as a species have always loved those people with that glowing energy of inner peace and inner beauty. Do it for yourself, role model it for the children, and do it for that special someone out there who is searching the globe for someone just like you. Do it because your soul longs for it.
Dealing with Criticism and Rejection
Posted on November 30, 2007
Filed Under Other Self Help articles, Self confidence tools | Leave a Comment
Whether it’s the other kids making fun of you at school, you just received a really harsh performance evaluation from your boss, you got turned down by the girl you asked out, or you didn’t get the job you interviewed for, rejection and criticism hurts. I won’t tell you not to take it personally, because it is personal. You are the one who was criticized. You are the one who was rejected. No matter how much self-confidence you have a part of you cringes every time someone rejects you or criticizes you. You are the one who has to get rid of that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach. What do you do to make yourself feel better?
You could be angry or revengeful, but that won’t actually make you feel wanted and admired. Quite often it can bite you in the rear end too. You may have been a really close #2 for that promotion at work. The girl who turned you down for the date might have been in the middle of breaking up with someone and was thinking that you would be a good companion later on down the road. Your boss may actually like you a lot and it may be his boss who told him that he was being too nice during the performance evaluations and that he needed to be tougher. You don’t always know for sure why you are being criticized or why you were rejected. If your gut response is to do something vengeful, there’s a good chance that you’re closing the door on any future acceptance by those same people. There’s no long-term benefit in alienating others who might have cared about you or admired your work at a later time.
You could just assume that the other person is stupid or wrong and completely ignore them and their opinions of you. The problem with this approach is that you may have been able to find nuggets of truth in their criticisms that you could have used for personal growth. Not all criticism is meant to be destructive and mean. Constructive criticism can be hard to take but extremely useful. My daughter had heard that a dear friend of hers was being made fun of at school because he had bad breath and the kids thought he was homosexual because of some clothing choices. She wrestled with the decision for a long time before she finally decided to come forward and tell him what was being said behind his back. He was mortified but he was also able to make some changes in his personal hygiene and his wardrobe choices. Ultimately he chose to take the course of self-improvement and succeeded in drastically changing his public image for the better. The same can be true if the criticisms are coming from a coworker, a best friend, a boss, a family member. The key here is to consider the person who is offering the criticism. How are they saying it? What is their real heartfelt intentions behind delivering a criticism. If you trust them and believe that they genuinely mean well, then consider what they are saying and whether or not they may have a valid point. A bit of constructive criticism can be horrible to swallow but ultimately the best thing that can happen to you.
You could obsess over what they’ve said. I have had readers write in to tell me that my articles stink. One in particular hated an article I wrote about picking and choosing a couple of good causes to donate your time to rather then trying to do it all. She obviously didn’t read the article because she thought that I was saying that I personally could single handedly save the world, healing it of all it’s problems. The whole point of the article was to find balance between our desire to do it all and the realities of what our talents, assets, and overall lifestyles would really allow us to fix. My gut response was to be very hurt and angry at the reader’s harsh words and her ugly assessment of me as a person and as a writer. The truth is, she obviously didn’t read the article. If she had she would see that I absolutely agreed with her that I can not fix all of the problems of the world all by myself. To obsess over her criticism of my article would have ruined my entire day and would have kept me from being able to get anything done. Her letter is a perfect example of the idea that sometimes you have to completely ignore the person who is rejecting you. Some times people have problems or issues of their own and what they are doing is venting at you and criticizing you without even considering what they are saying or who you really are. You have to ask yourself, “Is this particular person’s opinion of me accurate? Does their opinion of me really even matter?” Sometimes the answer is no. “No they don’t know what they are talking about and no I really don’t care what they think of me.” If this is one of those times, then there is really no reason for you to obsess over what they’ve just said to you.
For your own sake, I would recommend taking your emotional heart out of the situation. Do not allow your heart to make the evaluations as to whether or not the rejections or criticisms in your life are valid or not. From a logical position you can ask the person who turned you down why they made that choice. Was the other person more qualified for the job? Did the kids at school catch you picking your nose in public? Were they having a bad day? How can you improve yourself so as to safeguard yourself from future criticisms and rejections? Stand up straight, walk tall, and don’t let them see you sweat!
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