3 Easy ways to build self-esteem

Everyone loves to have a great personality and fantastic self- esteem, but no one knows where to get ‘it’. There is no magic pill to a better self-image. Taking a few deliberate actions can help you build your self- esteem.
I have seen the effects of low self-esteem on people and it is not a pretty picture.
So how do you improve it?

Simple Answer: Recondition your mind to look at the good internal images and stay away from your ‘bad’ internal images. So every time you peek inside, you only see the bright and happy self.

It is that simple!

How to do I do that?  Here are a few tried and tested techniques to improve your self-esteem.

Visualise Success.

Visualise yourself brimming with confidence. Visualising the desired outcome is one of the most effective ways of building self-esteem. All top athletes visualise their success wel before they succeed in the real world.

Spend a few minutes daily visualising yourself as a successful man/woman. Get into the nitty-gritty details about what you are wearing, where you are and what you see around you. Do this once or twice daily.

Identify and Build on your Strengths

If you have a hobby or a sport you enjoy, relish the moments you spend in that sport. Sitting on your couch and watching TV is not a hobby. You need to do something physical. Relish and savour the moments you enjoy this activity. The more you enjoy yourself, the better. Notice how good you feel about yourself.  The more you notice, the better you feel.

Watch your self-talk.

Self-talk is the chatter happens inside your mind. Self-talk might start when you are deciding or when your brain is distracted. Some people engage in self-talk after taking a decision.

First, realize what you say to yourself. Unsurprisingly, most people beat themselves up in that chat.

If you are not nice to yourself why will anyone else be?

Notice how you speak to yourself and if it is negative, stop dead on your track and willfully change that thought. It will be hard in the beginning. It will take time and effort but yields the best results.

Instead of telling yourself “screwed up in last test,”,  change it to ” could have done better on test, and here is how….”

And here is the thing… it doesn’t matter what you put after the “here is how…”. Instead of ending the conversation on a negative note, you are redirecting your brain to search for ways to improve.

One last thing.

You don’t need a hundred techniques to get good at this. Learn a few and master them. Do not waste time in analysing. Get started today and keep using one technique every day and notice how much you change over time.

 

The Discontent of the disconnected

Picture this, four friends are sitting and talking, having a  good time when Rakesh gets ‘whatsapped’. He reads and replies to it while the others taunt him and then continue the conversation. Although Rakesh joins back in the chat, his mind is still in the message.

A few minutes later Rakesh gets another message, he excuses himself and replies to it. As silence sets in, Tony and Ajeya find a few forwards to read. Everyone wants to show they are busy and involved in other things. Within ten minutes, everyone is on the phone and except for an occasional laughter or a sneeze, a deathly silence sets on the group.

What happened here?

A fun group died in the real world while a disjointed set of digital conversations started. The quest to ‘be wanted’ in the digital world, has taken over the connections in real life.

Let me explain.

Today more people are talking digitally than in real life. Yes, it is convenient, easy and inexpensive. But, it is also impersonal, bland and disconnected.  I have over 600 hundred friends across the globe and I get to see what is happening in their life, I ‘feel’ connected to them. Your story may not be much different. And here lies the problem for you and me.

Human beings are emotional machines, they shift from one emotion to another, gradually. The phenomenon is called  ‘Analog behaviour’. They cannot switch emotions on and off. They are not digital.

But they are getting into this habit due to constant messaging. In the name of staying connected, they disconnect from their immediate surroundings and find solace in the company of someone far away. Slowly, they lose the sense of even being connected.

Today, your popularity is measured by the number of messages you get and the likes your picture received. But no value is placed on the deep sense of satisfaction you get when you connect with someone at a human level.

To avoid getting hurt in the real world, we often use the digital. Rejections are less painful when you do not have to face the person who rejected you. It is less painful when nobody pays attention to your messages in a WhatsApp group chat than in a real-life conversation.

People yearn for a human connection, but do nothing to get started. It is hard to fight the inertia and the lethargy that has set in. Nobody wants to stand out in the crowd.

What should we do?

Break the lethargy and inertia.

 

How to feel Good?

I’ve got a question for you,
where are you feeling the greatest amount of pleasure, right now? Where in your body do you feel it?

Whenever I ask this question, I get a blank stare.

But when I ask where do you feel pain? the answer is almost instantaneous.
For a long time, our body has been conditioned to recognise pain more than pleasure.

Right from our childhood, we are trained by marking our mistakes in red while the good things go unnoticed on our exam papers. Our parents scolded or even beat us when we did something wrong. Bad behaviour was noticed and reprimanded faster than good behaviour was acknowledged. This conditioning spreads into other areas of our lives. We get trained to “Not make mistakes”.

How does this impact us?

When I ask what would you like to work on, clients usually say “I don’t want to do ….”.
Avoiding pain is a good thing. But you cannot do much in life if you focus only on ‘not making mistakes’ or ‘avoiding pain’. The focus needs to shift towards “I want to do xx” or ” I want to accomplish yyy by so and so date”
I want to help you to not only walk away from pain but, I want to shift your focus to walking towards pleasure.
So the next time I ask you ‘where in your body do you feel the greatest pleasure right now’, you will have an answer.

To learn how to tune your body and mind towards pleasure, Book your NLP/ Hypnosis session today.