Self-esteem as a term can be ambiguous considering that it means many different things to different people. Considering how many people tend to avoid discussing themselves relative to the term, I suspect there is general discomfort around this topic.
I believe when there is a sense of shame, insecurity or embarrassment on the table, the topic usually gets pushed under the table. This is one reason why people cannot grow in their confidence; they do not want to deal with discomfort.
At Science Daily.com there is an article dated July 3, 2009, entitled “The Problem With Self-Help Books”. According to this article, a research study printed in “Psychological Science” demonstrated that if a person had good, healthy self-esteem, affirmations could be useful.
However, if someone with low self-esteem used such affirmations, for example “I am lovable” then it had the effect of aggravating their negative feelings. This is plausible to me and is one reason why I advocate learning how thoughts, emotions and feeling are embedded in the body and how to deal with them as the energy that they are.
If you really believe something, it becomes lodged in your body as cellular memory. For example, belief is actually a thought that has the perception of truth behind it. Once you perceive a thought about your self to be real, by definition it has the energy of feeling associated with it, otherwise it would have no effect on you.
For example, if you believe you are lovable, if someone rejects you, you will be much less likely to beat yourself up or put yourself down based on that person’s opinion. You will still FEEL good or lovable in the final analysis. It would just be their opinion.
Likewise, if you feel unlovable, trying to push a new thought that has no real emotion of belief behind it on top of what you already REALLY believe, can trigger push back, both energetically and in terms of negative self-talk.
Years ago, when I felt unlovable, when I tried to say “I am lovable”, I could hear the negative self –talk respond with “No you are not”. This is because my subconscious mind, my body, my energetic cellular memory was programmed with the negative belief over time and the energy of it was much stronger than the thought “I am lovable”. I
have since learned that it is much easier to use energy releasing tools and exercises first and use affirmations to re-wire your brain and install new beliefs as a last step in this process. Affirmations also work better when you meditate on them while in an alpha meditative mental state. This will allow the new thought to enter the subconscious easier.
Our brain, mind and nervous system are very programmable. An important step in deleting beliefs that are holding you back and creating low self-esteem is in learning ways to release the old feelings that are really energetic in nature, first.
This is a new approach in that you have to become conscious of the power of feelings and how they are held as blockages within your body’s energy system. Instead of only seeing yourself as physical, and thought as something that has no role in your experience of life, you will have to be open minded enough to look at what is even now scientific data that points to the fact that everything is energy.
You are not your thoughts, but to the degree that you believe feeling low self-esteem is “just the way you are”, you will not be able to consciously shift without struggle if at all.
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