The First Pillar of Self-Esteem: Living Consciously

Why is Living Consciously so important? Every day, we make choices to be responsible toward reality or evading it. Even if we are not aware of those choices, they do add up and create the reputation we have with ourselves. Sometimes there are some discomforting facts we are faced with, and we make a decision to ignore them. “I know that I’m not eating healthy, but I don’t have time to think about that right now.” “I know that there are issues in my relationship, but maybe they’ll work themselves out…” “I know that I am spending too little time with my children/loved ones/friends, but one day that’ll change…” By evading these facts and ignoring them, we are in essence betraying ourselves.

Living consciously is not just about seeing and knowing reality for what it is, but it also means acting on what we see and know. Staying “unconscious” can seem very inviting – we don’t have to deal with the problem, we don’t have to face uncomfortable feelings, we don’t have to make any changes – but at what cost? Deep inside we know that we are ignoring something important, and it is our self-esteem that suffers as a result.

Looking back on my life, there certainly have been periods when I found comfort in staying “unconscious.” I didn’t want to deal with my personal life, so I decided that I would lose myself in my work. Being a workaholic may have been socially acceptable because I was “focusing on my career”, but the truth is that it is not very different from escaping into any other form of addiction. The purpose is the same: To escape anxiety and pain.

How do we practice Living Consciously, so we don’t betray ourselves, but increase our self-esteem and personal effectiveness instead?  Dr. Nathaniel Branden, the author of “The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem”, suggests daily sentence completion exercises. First thing in the morning, simply  write one of the following sentence stems and then keep on adding different endings (at least 6), as rapidly as possible, with no pauses to “think.” Don’t worry whether a particular ending is true or significant – any ending is fine, just keep on going.

Here are some stems to work with:

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my activities today…

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my most important relationships…

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to (fill in a particular problem you are concerned about – for example, your relationship with someone, a barrier you’ve hit a work, your feelings of anxiety, etc.)…

Do this every day for a week and on the weekend, reread what you have written during the week and write a minimum of 6 endings for the following stem:

If any of what I wrote this week is true, it would be helpful if I…

Try it out and let me know what you discover! =)

For more information on the sentence completion exercises, check out:   

http://www.nathanielbranden.com/exercises/

Loving Yourself and Self-Esteem

The following question keeps on coming up from time to time, so I figured I’ll address it here: What is the relationship between Loving Yourself and Self-Esteem?

Self-Esteem is not only about being confident in our ability to cope with life's challenges. It is also about believing that we deserve to be successful and happy and asserting our needs and wants. And this second part has everything to do with loving ourselves.

I often talk about the 3 key components of Loving Yourself:
1. Self-Acceptance
2. Self-Compassion and
3. Self-Empowerment.

Dr. Nathaniel Branden, who is hailed as one of the foremost experts in his field, has identified 6 key components of Self-Esteem:
1. Living Consciously
2. Self-Acceptance
3. Self-Responsibility
4. Self-Assertiveness
5. Living Purposefully
6. Personal Integrity

It often takes a lifetime to reach and maintain a healthy level of Self-Esteem, and the same is true for Loving Yourself. Once you reach a healthy level, there s no guarantee that you will stay there. Different events will happen in your life that will affect it, which is why you must nurture it daily. It’s just like exercise – you can’t just go to the gym once and be done with it. Yet it is so important, because Self-Esteem and Loving Yourself are fundamental to your happiness, satisfaction, and living a fulfilling life.   

Sometimes it may be hard to talk about Self-Esteem, because we feel it’s something that we “should” have. And if we feel that we don’t have enough of it, we may think we need to hide that fact. But the truth is, it isn’t something that we “should” just naturally have. We all need to nurture it every day, so we can lead happier and more fulfilled lives.

I will cover more details about the different components for Self-Esteem in the coming weeks, so stay tuned… =)

How Do I Know If This Choice Will Make Me Happy?

A few days ago, I watched Marley & Me with my boyfriend. While there are many funny scenes with the boisterous dog Marley, that I can relate to as a puppy Mommy, one of the questions the movie raised for me was about Marley’s owner, John Grogan. In the movie, John wants to be a reporter, but what he keeps on getting offered is to be a columnist. He tries it out, is great at it, gets a big following, but the dream of being a reporter stays with him. When he finally gets the chance to be a reporter at a different newspaper, he gets his wife’s blessing to uproot his whole family and move so he can take on the new position. But as time goes on he finds out that he isn’t particularly suited to being a reporter and doesn’t enjoy it as much, so he asks if he can go back to being a columnist.

I kept on pondering this question: How many times do we think we want something, but we really just like the idea of it, or we don't actually know what it is truly like until we try it? And then when we get it, we want the other thing that we already had or want something else altogether? 

Sometimes we may not even fully understand why we want something. We may have a dream, like becoming a pop star, and we think it’s because we like singing and performing, but maybe it is really because we crave attention and validation. Or we think we want to be an entrepreneur because we want to be a visionary and build a company from the ground up, but it may also be because we like the idea of being in control and having the image of a risk-taker. But what happens when we feel better about ourselves and no longer have the need for validation or if having a certain image is no longer important to us?  

In addition, we are actually not very good at predicting what will make us happy, as Daniel Gilbert points out in his book “Stumbling on Happiness.” Our imagination plays tricks on us when we try to look forward. So we try our best to navigate our life toward what we believe to be a “successful” future, only to find that the future often doesn’t turn out as we expected.

Does that mean we should give up our dreams and just be happy with what we have in the first place? Or is trial and error a necessary process we have to go through in order to figure out what we really like and want?

Gilbert suggests that the best way to predict how we will feel is to ask others who are in the same circumstances today how they are feeling. Depending on what we are trying to predict, it may be difficult to find people to ask or to get some honest answers, but it's a good place to start.

In the end, I believe that life is a process and usually doesn’t turn out as expected. There is no way to predict all the curveballs life throws us or opportunities that arise. It’s often impossible to tell if we made the “right” or “wrong” choice, because we don’t know what would have happened otherwise. And even if a choice seems “wrong”, we may have needed this experience to teach us something or grow in some way. We learn more about ourselves as we go through life. Our motivations and priorities may change. We sometimes need to try new things to see if we like them and if they will make us happy.

The important thing to remember is that we are not “stuck” if we choose something we don’t like or if life deals us an unexpected hand. We can always choose: how we want to be (calm, angry, grateful, excited, hopeful, sad...etc.), how we want to see and interpret what is happening (it’s a challenge, an adventure, a disaster, a blessing, a surprise, a burden, a rollercoaster), how we want to handle our current circumstances and what we want to do next.

What choice will you make today?

Whether you think you are enough or whether you think you are not – you are right!

Our beliefs create our reality – it sounds like such a cliché, but it is true. The way we experience our life is very much shaped by our beliefs.

This often happens without us even realizing it. Most of us have a belief deep inside that is some form of “not being enough” – whether it’s not smart enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, successful enough, or interesting enough. We often go through life and interpret events based on this belief.

We don’t get the job we wanted, we don’t get invited to a party, we don’t hear back from a friend. It’s easy to immediately think that it’s because we are not good enough, not popular enough, not important enough. And because we like to be right, we continue to collect evidence that our belief is true.  

He didn’t call as he said he would. My friend wasn’t supportive when I talked to her about a problem. I didn’t get any comments or likes on my Facebook posting. So it must be true. I am really not good enough, not popular enough, not important enough.

I now also act a certain way based on my beliefs. Since I don’t believe I am good enough or important enough, I don’t tell people about my wants and needs. As a result, others don’t consider them. I don’t invite others over. So I don’t have friends coming to my place. I use this as further evidence that I am not important.

What would happen if I decided to believe something different? What if I decided that I was going to believe that I am good enough and important? I would start collecting evidence that this was true instead. A friend trusted me enough to confide in me, a colleague asked me out to lunch, my niece drew me a picture. So it must be true. I am really good enough and important.

And I start behaving a different way. I tell others about my needs and wants. I invite people over. I initiate conversations. So others consider what I need and want. My friends invite me in return. I have more meaningful interactions with people.

And I interpret events differently. I realize that not everything is because of me – people are busy, distracted, stressed, and are dealing with their own issues.

My experience of life is a completely different one, even with exactly the same life circumstances, based on this different belief.

We really do create our own reality. So select your belief carefully. Which one will you choose?

Ch-ch-ch-Changes Part II: Being in the moment

How much of your life are you living in the moment? I mean, really, really being in the present moment, enjoying it and taking it in whether good or bad, not wishing something was over or anticipating the next thing? 

 To truly love yourself you have to be in the moment, because it’s not about loving the person you used to be or the person you are hoping to be in the future. It is about loving yourself RIGHT NOW, in this moment, just the way you are.

But far too often, especially when we are going through a change or transition, we think of it as something to “get through” or “get over with” in order to arrive at whatever the next milestone is. I know I was really looking forward to finish moving. I just talked to a friend who can’t wait to be in a relationship again. And I know some people who are very eager to find their next career.

The same thing can also happen when we are engaged in something we really want to do. When we are performing in a show, we might anticipate the actual performance so much or be so busy preparing, that we are not fully enjoying all the moments leading up to it. When taking care of a loved one, we may be completely engrossed in the next thing we need to do rather than being fully there.   

How can we be more in the present moment and enjoy it more fully? By building a new habit and practicing it: We can remind ourselves throughout the day to just stop and breathe and really appreciate the moment, no matter what we are doing. Tell yourself: “I am going to take this moment to really enjoy being here.”

But what if you are going through something you really don’t enjoy (moving, doing your taxes, looking for a job, cleaning your place, etc.)? Simply make a decision that you are going to enjoy the process as much as you can. Even though I generally don’t like moving, I made a decision that I was going to enjoy the process, and as a result I felt much more content throughout my recent move. I focused on the good parts – spending time with my boyfriend while packing and carrying boxes and furniture – and I tried to use humor as much as possible.

How about if you are going through a hard time or are feeling really sad or angry? Just allow yourself to be in the moment and let yourself feel the sadness, anger or whatever emotion you are going through. All those feelings that are not happy are part of us and our lives, too. So we want to accept and honor them as well.

Take a moment now. Be really present. Breathe. Take in just being here, right now, being alive. In this moment, there is nothing you have to do, nobody you have to be. Just be…  

Ch-ch-ch-Changes: Every Transition begins with an Ending

We all go through changes in our lives. Many times it’s something external that happens – a job change, getting married, moving, losing someone close to us, returning to school, welcoming a new baby or having a son or daughter move out of the home – but sometimes it’s an internal change – discovering a  new dream, reaching new insights about yourself or deepening your awareness. 

The last few months have brought a number of changes for me: moving out of my old neighborhood, adopting a puppy with my boyfriend, and moving in together to a new place. The changes are ones that I wanted and they allow for so many new possibilities – yet no matter whether the change is desired or not, it is always a time of transition that requires adjustment.

Dealing with the outer change is one thing – we can make to-do lists, check off action items, get the packing done, the interviews, applications, read relevant books, etc.  But we often don’t think about the inner adjustments that also need to take place: letting go of who we used to be, changing the definition of who we are, and becoming our new self.

Sometimes we are sad about letting go of the old, and part of us may still hold on to it. It may make us wonder whether that is a sign that the change was a bad idea. When I turned in the keys to my old place, I felt a wave of sadness. This was the last time I would be walking in and out of this home. I looked around, just trying to take in everything. The sadness took me by surprise, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. This place was my home for the last few years and it was part of how I identified myself: This is where I live. It was now time to say good-bye and let go of that part of my identity.

Becoming a puppy Mommy was another big shift. It has certainly changed my day-to-day life, activities, and thoughts. With changes like these, where so many people are excited for you, it sometimes feels like there “shouldn’t” be any letting go or grieving of the past. But it is a significant change – your life is very different from before and there is a loss of some freedom and alone-time. Loving yourself means that it’s ok to be sad about that and grieve the loss of your old life. It’s all part of the process to make the transition to embracing my new life.

The same thing goes for moving in together – it’s exciting and wonderful, AND it is a big change as well. From agreeing on how to organize and decorate to the loss of personal space and time.  Mourning the loss of my old life doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy our new life. 

As much as we may want to rush past them – endings are the first part of any transition. This is the time to practice self-compassion and allow ourselves the time and space to grieve the loss of the way things were so you can let go of the old life. What events have brought change into your life in the past year? Have you allowed yourself to be sad and let go of your old life or old self before jumping into a new beginning?