The Confidence Doc

Demystifying Self Esteem: It’s Just Not That Complicated

Self-esteem, or having a healthy sense of your own value, gets a lot of bad press and there is a lot of controversy around the topic.  This seems on the surface baffling to me, as what is the problem with, well, liking yourself? 

Where did all of this confusion come from?  There are many reasons that I have come across, far too many to mention in a short blog post, but the bottom line conclusion on a practical basis is this: who you think you are and your sense of self-worth affects every single area of your life. 

If you feel good about yourself and think that you are worthy of the goodness of life you are right.  If you feel bad about yourself and think that you are unworthy of the goodness of life – you are also right.  The saying “be is unto to your according to your faith” is a principle of life – period. 

Faith is another discussion for another time, but for this blog post, the main thing to remember is that faith and belief come from the heart.  It is not just some thought that you glibly recite to impress those around you.  When you believe something, you FEEL it. 

Getting back to self-esteem I would say that simply self-acceptance is the goal.  When you accept yourself, you can have compassion for yourself instead of judging and beating yourself up all day long, and you can have a more open and compassionate heart for others. 

Now, acceptance DOES NOT mean condoning or complacency. 

However, in order to have quantum leap change and empowerment in your life, you will elevate your energy right out the gate if you can look at where you are in your life and become open to changing it without spending your energy (notice the word “spending”) ruminating over what you don’t like currently. 

Empowerment: Limiting and Empowering Beliefs

Confidence and Empowerment begins with beliefs.  Beliefs are not written in stone by any means.  Beliefs are formed from how you perceive the thoughts and feelings that you have from your experiences and from what you were told about how life works. 

Now it does not mean that the belief has to be the Truth of the Universe.  It does not matter.  If the belief is emotionalized, a heart-felt way of seeing reality, then the outcome of the belief will be what impacts your life. 

I used to think that what I believed was the way life was – end of conversation.  Little did I know that my ego was running the show and the way I was looking at life was limiting my experience in every area of my life.  It really is “be it unto you as you believe”. 

Our faith determines how we see.  Most of us have heard the saying “seeing is believing”.  The truth is, “believing is seeing”.  You can take ten people and they can give you ten versions of “how life is”.  Some of them may also get highly defensive and angry if your version differs from their own.  

Most of us over-identify with our beliefs as if they are WHO we are and not simply WHAT we think!  YOU are not your thoughts! 

Here is the bottom line:

Memory Can Be Re-Membered As Empowering

Empowerment is a key to developing the confidence to live a life that is fulfilling and happy.  The way that we assemble our memory is based on our perception. 

Our memories are our stories stored in our bodies at a cellular level.  There was a story online in Live Science, June 26, 2009, by Clara Moskowitz, (Photo courtesy this site) entitled “First Image of Memory Being Made” (Click Here Live Science)

In this article is a photo of the imaging of the chemical reaction of memories being made at the cellular level in the body. 

The way you remember something is based on how you viewed yourself in relating to the facts of the event at the time.  Based on these emotions, a given set of feeling “chemicals” are made and stored in your body’s cells. 

Now remember, thoughts and feelings are ultimately electromagnetic energy.  Here’s the take home to begin to empower yourself – YOU, the real essence of you, your spirit – is not the story, the memory that you recall and “Re-Member” every time you put that old story together again (Get it?  Re-member; to put together again). 

I used to ruminate over all of the “you done me wrong” stories that I wired into my brain which created a sense of victim consciousness in me.  I used to create guilt stories, shame stories, angry stories, and occasionally happy stories – all stories however. 

The point is, once I began to realize that these memories where ways of looking at my situation at a given point in time and that they were not really ME, I could begin to separate my sense of identity from the stories and reframe the story! I can "Re-Member" them differently, with a new meaning, as a life lesson that empowers me to grow!

Empowerment: Re-Writing Our Stories

“All the worlds a stage and all the men and women merely players; they have their entrances and exists and one man plays many parts in his time” ~ William Shakespeare

This is one of my all time favorite quotes as it represents how I have come to see life as “human being”.  Actually, it is literal in many ways.  Science is helping substantiate many areas that only a few short years ago were looked upon with fear and suspicion by many as “woo-woo” or “new age” – both of which were vague and “out there” sort of terms.

Many of the processes that I first started becoming aware of ten years ago I tried based on faith and my inner Guidance.  I did not have the kind of inner peace that I knew was possible, even though outwardly, my life appeared successful by most standards.  I am actually a very grounded practical person in many ways.  I am also very much the visionary risk taker as well.

As I tried new modalities, I began to change.  It was scary at first, but now I am certain that once you can learn to trust yourself, expand your sense of connection to the Divine and let go of the need to control everything and everybody, your life can expand and grow beyond what you could have even imagined possible!

Confidence is a Side Effect of Empowerment

Confidence is not a “goal” for me at this point in my life.  I’ve discovered that it is a natural side effect of empowerment.  Empowerment of course is “power within”. 

I say within, versus with out – “out there” or outside of myself.  I changed my tagline recently because what my blog is really about is empowerment, taking back your sense of self from the external world. I am also in the process of changing my website.

Instead of “Building Confidence from the inside out”, I know to be true that when you discover more about who you really are and live from this space, confidence is indeed a natural outcome. 

The world is constantly changing and is completely relative.  This is one reason why it is so disempowering to allow others, media included, to tell you what you are worth, how you should look and what you should want.  When I was driven by seeking love, happiness and peace outside of myself, I was never satisfied. 

I was “looking for love in all the wrong places”. 

Confidence and Empowerment: Getting Beyond Survival Mentality

Confidence is not about acting a certain way; it is about being authentic.   It is the confidence to be self-actualized and to stop trying to be another copycat of some media image that you've been manipulated into seeking. 

This attempt to conform is really related to a deep-seated, unconscious belief in "survival of the fitness".  This is rooted in insecurity around safety and the need to be loved.  While is it human to want to feel love and security, it is a distortion to seek it first outside of yourself. 

You will not really ever transcend the search for security and love as long as you give your focus of power to people, places and things outside of yourself.  You must first love yourself in order to "find" the security and love that you need. 

I've learned this first hand.  I grew up, real or not, perceiving that I did not quite "fit in" into my environment on many levels.  While there was some factual examples of rejection going on in my world, being a child, the rejection felt almost life threatening.  The issue for me and all of us is that many of our decisions about "how life is" are based on the intellectual understanding and memory of a three-year-old! 

Self-Mastery: I Am Just Glad to Be Here

Confidence and self-mastery are certainly linked.  I mean by self-mastery, the ability to manage the ego sense of self, recognizing that it is not the real deal, the real me. 

I can go through life asleep and unconscious of my ability to co-create and thus suffer, or I can choose the empowered approach to creating my reality.  I can buy into those voices that say “thank God it’s Friday”, or I can say, “Thank God, I’m still here and life is good, no matter what is passing by right now”. 

At this moment, I’m just glad to be here. 

This and every moment is what I ultimately choose to make of it.  The role of the ego is varied, but you can for now, just think of it as the storyteller, that portion of the left, linear, logic brain, that is the mental construction of your identity.  It is a changeable character on the stage of life.  What role are you currently playing? 

It is fine to play these various roles as long as we are doing so consciously.  What do I mean by this? I can play doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, even “afraid”, as long as I am aware that these are merely experiences, they are not my true essence. 

My essence, that which abides at my core, is unchangeable, boundless, un-nameable and unlimited.  It is Spirit.  I am spirit, a part of Spirit, Life, all that is.  Now, since at the root of how I relate to life is “practical”, (meaning, if it is of no earthly use, I really have no real use for it), I want to make the point here that just talking about “spirit” and showing no fruit in my life doesn’t serve much purpose. 

The Confidence to Let Your Light, and Life, Shine!

My confidence has grown and expanded over time.  Many times in life, and often at an early age, we experience situations and circumstances that seem to cause us to feel less than we are.  I say seem to cause because ultimately, it is not what happens to us but how we label what happens. 

We are all "storytellers".  What I mean is, when I was a young child, in my attempt to fit in, and this would include, family, friends and at school, I sometimes played smaller than I really wanted to.  I formed beliefs that made me feel "safe". 

For example, I use to go out of my way to keep my grades hidden from my friends in general because I did not want to appear to be an "egg head".  There are many examples of this, everything from how much money we make, where we live, what we drive etc etc. 

One of the problems with this is that it always overlaps into the subconscious.  From time to time, I still uncover habits that are linked to fear that encourages hiding my light.  This stems from old stories that was have told ourselves somewhere along life's journey. 

While this is not nearly as much of an issue now as it once was for me, one way that you can tell that you are still holding back is if you do not have the health, wealth, relationships, personal power or career that you really desire.  The Universe is not playing favorites. 

Core Confidence: True Creativity Requires Authenticity!

Confidence and empowerment is about acting from your center, the courage to be YOU.  In order to be truly creative, you have to walk off of the beaten path.  Otherwise your life is just a copycat of the next person. 

You are a unique expression of Divine Love.   There is no one like you and this is a great thing.  I am a gardener and I can imagine how boring my garden would look if it only contained one type of flower. 

Gone would be the explosive, colorful array of violets, reds, yellows and various shades of pink.  It would look all the same!  Again, how boring is that? 

Then why is it us humans, want to look and act like the next person.  It seems that most people want to be everyone but himself or herself!  Why is this? 

I say it is purely due to conditioning and the fact that our nervous systems are wired to survive and we have as a whole bought into the belief that conformity is synonymous with safety.  Granted, at one time in our evolution there was truth to this. 

Confidence and Inner Peace

Core Confidence is a doorway to inner peace.  When you are able to stay centered despite what is going on around you, you will be able to hold a sense of calm in the storms of life.  These storms can be small sprinkles or turbulent thunderstorms. 

They can arrive in your spiritual, social or financial life.  It is not if the storms will come, but when.  As I have expanded and grown internally, in my consciousness, I notice that yes, there is less apparent drama and chaos. 

Since our perception determines our reality and what we focus on expands, elevating your consciousness does help you to transcend many situations and circumstances that may tend to pull you down. 

However, as long as you are on planet Earth, challenges will arise, even if trivial.  And it is interesting to see how these challenges even arise in the lives of our pets.  In my life for example, yesterday began with my becoming aware that there was a problem with my website.  I’ll spare the details, but essentially I used 2-3 hours getting to a point of having it handled and it still has to be fixed hopefully today.