13 Ways to Improve Self Esteem

Many people go through life with low self esteem. This is a sad, but true, fact that is made sadder by the fact that it doesn't have to be that way. Every person on the planet is a special, unique person and deserves all good that comes along. Everyone deserves to feel good about themselves. Many of the littlest things in life can do so much to improve self esteem.

To improve self esteem you can:

• Smile at the people who come across your path today.
• Find something funny to laugh about.
• Turn negative thoughts into positive ones and see what happens.
• See what you can learn from what happens in your life.
• List all your positive attributes.
• Ask your close friends and family what they love about you - and let it in.
• Do something for someone that they don't expect and let them express gratitude.
• Do something wonderful and kind for someone that they know nothing about.
• Compliment the grocery checkout person.
• Make a "To Do" list and check off each thing as you accomplish it.
• Do something that scares you a little.
• Learn something new.
• Forgive someone.

These things are so simple to do that you will be amazed at what happens when, for example, you do something nice for someone for no reason, do something that scares you a little, learn something new and you feel better about yourself. What have you accomplished besides spreading some joy? You have worked to improve self esteem.

There are endless possibilities to love others and yourself. And remember to accept what you can't change. Give it a shot for a day or two and see how much better you feel about yourself.

Self esteem is not a static thing. If you pay close attention and focus on each day instead of making broad statements about yourself and to yourself, you may begin to see that some days you feel not so bad about yourself. Those would be good days to improve self esteem so that on your low self esteem days, you can begin to look back and see that you are doing something to change it. Even acknowledging to yourself that you are working towards feeling differently about yourself, will help you improve your self esteem. It is not very much fun to walk around feeling badly about yourself. It tends to be a self perpetuating situation where feeling badly about yourself supports you to do things that make you feel badly about yourself. Work done to improve self esteem will change your world and you are worth it.

You University Emotion-Based Coaching

How To Deal With Long-Term Depression

by Gina Bendel

For most of my life I suffered from depression.  I tried to understand it, tried to soothe it, tried to sweep it under the rug and ignore it.  I even tried to cover it up with laughter and a well-thought up façade – my mask to the world!  I tried counselors, tried medication – the list goes on and on!!  Nothing seemed to work for very long and I was REALLY sick and tired of feeling so miserable all the time.

Because of an amazing life coach whose program, YOU University, I credit to saving me from myself and because I was truly ready to overcome the feelings of deep depression I had lived with since I can remember, I learned that I needed to delve deeper to the roots - the core beliefs and experiences from the time I was born and up until my current life – all of which brought me to where I was (and where I was would be considered desperate – hanging on a cliff by only my fingernails)!  I needed to face all I had learned by my experiences, analyze it and learn new habits and thought patterns that would give me back my authentic self – the real genuine Gina that was hidden beneath all the crap.

To overcome long-term depression takes dedication and real work.  I learned the things that did not work for me long term (or for any of the people I know suffering from long-term depression).  Some of these are:

• Anti-depressants (this only numbs the depression for short periods of time and doesn’t deal with the core issues)


• Covering it up with what you think the world wants to see


• Pretending it doesn’t really exist & refusing to discuss your feelings


• Self medicating by numbing the painful feelings with alcohol or drugs


• Being unwilling to work on uncovering and resolving the issues


• Holding emotions inside and not resolving them


• Carrying resentment, anger, shame, guilt and/or not being able to forgive someone who has hurt you deeply in some way


• Running away from the problems

Here are a few things I have learned DO work:

1. Get to the root of the depression – be willing to look in depth at how you came to be depressed in the first place.


2. Learn tools to replace the negative self-talk and self-loathing or “victim mentality” that often accompanies depression with positive self-talk and love for yourself.  Be willing and open to creating new life-time habits.


3. Imagine what it feels like to be happy – paint a picture in your mind of this new, happy you.  What do you look like?  Where are you living?  Who are you with?  See it, smell it, taste it and create a visual piece that you can look at every day.  What you envision, you can attract!


4. Write about it.  Journaling has enormous benefits in helping you to get your emotions out in a constructive, healthy way.   Simply pick up a piece of paper and start writing whatever is on your mind or in your heart.  It truly is remarkable how much better it can make you feel by releasing your emotions in this way!


5. Start a gratitude list. Every time you think of it or notice yourself feeling badly or talking about what’s wrong, go write on your list.I know how debilitating long-term depression can be.   Nobody should have to continue that downward spiral.  If anything in this article resonates with you and you would like some guidance, please check out the following site where you can read about the journey I took through YOU University.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Addictions To Work?

Workaholic Who Loves Her Work?

Do "good" workaholics figure out how to love their work so they can still work a lot?

I think society defines a workaholic as someone who uses work as an addiction. And addictions are supposed to be about running away from feelings or dealing with feelings in an unhealthy manner.

So what I am asking is - am I still a workaholic even though now I love my work?

Many years ago I was a financial planner/financial salesperson. I worked at that job addictively. I think the feeling I was running away from with that job was guilt for not working enough and making enough money.  What a lose/lose proposition that my ego set up: if I overwork, I don't feel guilty for not working but in order to not feel guilty for not working, I had to work 70-80 hours a week. No matter I hated the job. No matter I had young kids and left them a lot. No matter that although I did make very good money, I didn't have the positive feelings of self worth or consciousness to be able to feel comfortable with it and so it magically disappeared all the time.  It was an addiction.

Today, I totally love what I do for a living. I coach people to move from one place in their life to another place they'd rather be. Usually I'm working with them closely as they grow as a person in all areas of their lives from relationships to work to writing or creating other ways and many other aspects of their lives they begin to look at through their new glasses or more self worth and a higher level of self acceptance. Since watching people grow is my favorite activity, I love every minute of it.

Also, my work allows me to teach. I get  to watch my own process to see how I have grown or how I wish to grow. I watch my husband, my kids, my friends. I keep learning and teaching. And I get to write about all of this growth and my observations about it.

And yesterday I noticed something about myself. I have a little trouble just doing nothing. I'm fine if I have an activity scheduled over the weekend but just plain do-nothing time, feels uncomfortable.

Could a symptom of workaholism be feeling guilty if I'm not working - even on the weekend and even if I love my work?

Another question I have is - are negative aspects catchable from our partners? My husband usually appears to feel a little guilty when he isn't working enough. I think I caught it guilt-for-not-working from him.

Or maybe it was the fact that my mother made a very big deal to my sister and I about how hard and how many hours my father worked to take care of us. This, I believe, was her attempt to control us and keep us from asking for too many material things so she wouldn't feel guilty saying no. Additionally, to give it a double whammy, she bitched at my father without cease about his working all the time - how it was his way of running away from his family.

Looking back with adult, non-victimy eyes and from many years distance, I think that my mother's impact is the source of my incipient workaholism. Also, as a kid I think I absorbed the righteousness of working a lot. In a certain way it sounded martyrish and even attractive to "sacrifice for your family". I think I thought if I worked and sacrificed, I'd be admired and appreciated.

Oh, what an awful muddle  the past's effects are on us!

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Is Life Coaching a Good Second Career?

Is Being a Life Coach for You?

As people live longer, their life vision tends to be larger. Some people want to go back to school and then have a second or third career. My husband, at age 70, began his 5th career - this time as a high school Physics teacher.

As a life coach you not only have the ability to help people change their lives, you also get to share your expertise and knowledge and pass it onto others. So, if, for example, you worked many years in a corporate environment, you might quite naturally begin to coach people who are currently in a corporate environment themselves on issues they run across. You have been there and done that.

Many people have lead fast track careers that have taken them up the corporate ladder and around the world. Others have built successful businesses from the ground up. Still other have transformed lives that began in highly dysfunctional families. They then transformed the lives of their families and their own into something magnificent based on the learning and healing those early lives led to. These experiences and others can create a basis for a rewarding second career of life coaching. To get more information, contact me at 310-264-5625 Pacific time 9am to 2pm or email me at maiaberens@youuniversityonline.com.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

How a Coach Can Help You to Build a Sense of Trust

Trust Builds One Little Notch at a Time

Each time you tell a person how you feel and they don't reject your for it, trust builds. Not only that - you will have a relationship based on who you authentically are. No mask to come off later and disappoint the other person because they thought you were someone else - the one with the mask.

Anyone who is attracted to reading something called  How a coach can help you to build a sense of trust most likely has some trust issues. Those issues impact us in many ways. Following are some examples:

Personal relationships - "What if I'm myself and you leave me?" That is often the basic reason people get into poor relationships in the first place. They ignore their own inner knowledge of themselves by acting how they think the other wants them to act.

Work relationships - "Can I really allow myself to trust anyone who I don't know well or in a job situation?"  They don't trust people to be supportive and authentic.

Making decisions - "I'm really not sure what to do." They have a hard time because they don't trust themselves.

How can a life coach help you with these difficult situations?

When you talk to someone weekly who always supports your agenda, tells you the way they see things in your life quite openly and who has an attitude that your answers are in you, you begin to trust that person.

When that life coach also keeps pointing out the ways your attitudes and emotional responses are right, you begin to trust that person more. And you begin to trust yourself more.

As you experience success after success in support of yourself, you eventually become a trusting person because you know you have the information inside you that will steer you where you want to go in your life. You will know if a person is trustworthy in your personal and work relationships and you will trust yourself to make decisions.

That is one of the things an experience of life coaching can provide you.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Law of Attraction - Goethe Knew the Secret

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Commitment

Begin It Now!

I've been dabbling around in personal and spiritual growth for around 35 years - a long time. I've learned a lot and seen trends and think, sometimes, that something was gimmicky or flat and then, all of a sudden I awake! It really isn't just a saying. It's the truth. Below is a quote from Goethe which I had learned when I started working for a "New Age" sales manager in 1986. At the time I was just attracted to the novelty of  spiritual realization and had not really made a commitment to my spiritual growth.  The quote:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

All of a sudden the other day part of the quote popped into my head, "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." In a nutshell, that is the Law of Attraction. If you can see it or dream it, you will attract it - the power and the magic. The only caveat is you REALLY have to believe it. And for me and most others, it is a gradual process - not an overnight event. The step you must take is to commit. It is the difference between thinking of something and doing.  It could take time but the main step is commitment.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Is it SEX or is it INTIMACY? The View from Mars

by Maia's Martian

Yesterday evening Maia and I were talking  and she brought up the topic about how having sex too soon (whatever that means) in a new relationship sometimes seems to confuse things for women and not always in a good way.

Because I am wired and socialized as a Martian my first impulse was to think “the more sex the better and the sooner the better, what’s wrong with that?”

As I thought about my own experience however, I realized that there is more to it than that and so here is  the view from an older Martian after 30 years in a successful relationship:

The word intimacy usually is a more polite way to say “sex”.  Here is a more inclusive meaning of intimacy - INTO-ME-SEE -  which maybe means “through sex we are able to know each other.”

And that is the gift of an intimate long term committed relationship. You develop  a mirror to each other’s Soul. In simple terms you get to see the Real You and the Real Her reflected  through each other’s eyes on a daily basis. How incredible is that? Maybe women already know this but I know from being a man for almost 80 years that most men don’t know that is even possible.

Think of sex as a door that opens into a room where you will find this gift of discovering each other's Soul.

The difficulty is that Martian DNA  is only about opening as many doors as possible. However, if doors are too easy for a man to open then they will never venture into the room and discover the gift.

Opening the door is easy, finding who you and she is (the Real You) takes a long term committed relationship.

So, in answer to the question of how soon to have sex in a new relationship, it is and always was totally up to the individuals involved and hopefully after reading this you are able to make a decision that comes from a higher consciousness.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching