# On Self-esteem



## elder999 (Apr 10, 2006)

I was recently reminded of a story about Gandhi. A woman once brought her small son to see the Mahatma. She had walked many, many miles to have a few words with him. She said, &#8220;Gandhiji, please tell my little boy to stop eating sugar, because it&#8217;s bad for him. He respects you, so he&#8217;ll heed your advice.&#8221; Gandhi replied, &#8220;Come back in two weeks.&#8221; She left, and returned two weeks later. She repeated her request, &#8220;Gandhiji, please tell my son to stop eating sugar, because it&#8217;s bad for him.&#8221; Gandhi looked at the little boy and said, &#8220;Stop eating sugar. It&#8217;s bad for your health.&#8221; The mother then said to him, &#8220;Thank you Gandhiji. But, why couldn&#8217;t you have told him to stop eating sugar two weeks ago, instead of having me make a long trip home, and a long journey back here?&#8221; Mahatma Gandhi then told her, &#8220;Two weeks ago, I was eating sugar.&#8221; The great teacher was not about to talk something that he wasn&#8217;t willing to walk. If only we had a few more people like him today. Well, maybe we do, but they have to stay behind the parapet, right now. 

People have congratulated me, on several occasions, about my sense of self-esteem, and questioned how exactly it developed. It caused me to begin examining my sense of self-esteem. I also began examining where my beliefs about who I am came from. I&#8217;ve done such things before on my spiritual path. In fact, at one time I thought that we worked on something, released it, and then it was gone forever. It has since become apparent to me that we continue working on ourselves from different perspectives. As we change and grow, our appreciation of our path enables us to go ever deeper into the issues most relevant to us at the moment. In other words, we don&#8217;t do self-esteem work, get that settled, and then never have to revisit the topic again. We do need to revisit issues, for as we grow, our ability to understand is enhanced and our vision is broadened. So, I began once more looking at my own self-esteem. I discovered that I have, for the most part, healthy self-esteem. However, there are still some self-esteem issues I need to work on. There are some things from my past with which I haven&#8217;t made peace. There are still some issues in the present that I really wish didn&#8217;t cause me so much distress. Yet, they still do. I don&#8217;t mind letting people or my students know that I have weaknesses and blind spots. I certainly do. In fact, I&#8217;d rather be a fellow traveler on the path alongside you, than be seen as some sort of leader, though that is the role that my work life often sticks me with, for better or worse.

Affirmations are the bedrock of healthy self-esteem. In the past, I&#8217;ve often taught about affirmations. Affirmations are anything we say, believe or do. The question is never whether affirmations work or not. The only question is: What shall I affirm? Therefore, , there are certain ones that I call &#8216;core affirmations&#8217;. Amongst these core affirmations are: I love myself; I accept myself the way I am right this moment, even as I open myself to growth and change; I approve of myself. If you can&#8217;t love yourself right now, or if you can&#8217;t accept and approve of yourself this very moment, then you&#8217;ll never be able to. Many people think that they&#8217;ll be loveable one day when they have the right job, or have the perfect body, or the current hair style. They defer their happiness, thus they are never happy. I&#8217;ve done that, myself. I&#8217;ve also written of what I call &#8216;ego selves&#8217;. Each individual is a walking family of ego selves. There is the infant ego self, the insecure adolescent ego self, the addicted ego self, the young adult ego self, and the competent adult ego self. When we&#8217;re hearing negative or abusive language in our heads, we need to examine what part of ourselves it&#8217;s coming from. Many people live their lives being terrorized by the tantrums of a screaming inner brat, or intimidated by an insecure adolescent ego self. What we want to do is make sure that our life decisions are being evaluated and made by the competent adult ego self. This doesn&#8217;t mean that those other parts of us are bad, but rather that they are limited. They aren&#8217;t qualified to make life decisions. They help us brush our teeth, dress properly, show up where we need to be or comb our hair, but to decide on self worth or a career path, they have limited ability, and therefore need to have limited advice. 

I still work on self-esteem. For example, when I first had some writing published I was very excited; I was also very young. Then, I made the mistake of challenging some abusive behavior from the publisher, and suddenly there was no more promotion of my writing. At first, I blamed myself, and internalized the abuse. It quickly crystallized into shame. It was a difficult, painful process to rid myself of that. I became insecure about my talent as a writer and teacher. For several years, I couldn&#8217;t even think about any of my writing being public, as I was afraid of being rejected and hurt again. . I&#8217;m still somewhat guarded about my artwork, my knife making and my song writing-I&#8217;m still somewhat afraid-or at least apprehensive-of criticism, but in time, somehow, I&#8217;ve transformed that pain and shame into special gifts. From that experience, I&#8217;ve come to see that I surrendered my power to others, and allowed praise or blame to define who I was. I don&#8217;t do that any longer. I&#8217;ve learned that if you&#8217;re going to do work that is public in any way, you&#8217;d better have a good, healthy idea of who you are.You can&#8217;t allow praise to elate you, or blame to depress you. That&#8217;s all external. For example, I love posting on forums, but I cannot allow my self-esteem to be threatened by those who don&#8217;t like what I write. I put my heart and soul into it, because I&#8217;m proud of the work I do. After all, my posts have my name on them, and reflect what is important to me. Still, I&#8217;m quite realistic in admitting that mine are not the &#8216;star posts&#8217; of the Internet. I&#8217;m not the first class poster on any forum; I&#8217;m the economy class poster, but hey, I&#8217;m happy to have the opportunity, because there are lots of folks who *do* enjoy what I have to say. So, I&#8217;m proud of my association You might take my example to heart as you try to decide whether you&#8217;re over qualified or under employed, but , in fairness to the PhD&#8217;s driving taxis, perhaps that subject could be more fully explored elsewhere, or in the future. 

In conclusion, I would say that if there&#8217;s any secret to self-esteem, it would be this: Don&#8217;t give up. Keep on being introspective. Examine your beliefs about who you are. Discover where these beliefs came from. Do they fit today? Do they support who you are as a man or woman of spiritual power, and as a servant of the Light? If not, what will you replace them with? What will you believe, instead? Today, I urge you to believe in yourself. Honor the power within you. Manifest your divinity, which is the soul&#8217;s true identity. No one can take that from you. You can surrender it, but no one can take it.


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## MA-Caver (Apr 11, 2006)

Eleanor Roosevelt said: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." She of course was talking about self-esteem and more importantly... about Self-Love. Not narcissism but the *other* self-love. Both of which comes from within. I believe that self-esteem cannot be possible or hold it's own without self-love for long. 
What the mind tells itself over and over lays the foundation for the self-esteem and self love. Ignoring everything external that is given, except that which is true positive input, even criticism which can be helpful if done the right way. 
You are the only one who can determine how much self-esteem you have. You are the only one who will allow someone else's negativity tear you down or someone's optimistic appraisal of you bring you up. Your core belief system also is one of the foundations. The belief system that you got when you were a child. If it's bad then you are the only one who can make that final decision to ignore all those lies and find the inner truth which is yourself. Sounds easy but it's not, yet with hard work and bearing through the pains one can achieve inner balance/peace and feel good about themselves and love themselves to acceptance of who/what they are. 
A loving friend or spouse can be very instrumental in providing (exterior) positive feedback/reinforcement but only the internal (you) will be able to accept what you hear about yourself and change the beliefs that are bad for you to beliefs that are good for you. 
A great test is to go to your mirror and look yourself right in the eyes, really look in there. Pause... look at yourself and be blank as a new sheet of paper. Then tell yourself with all the sincerity and truth you can muster ... I love you _without_ breaking eye-contact and *really mean it*.  See what happens.


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