"How to Raise Self Esteem: Part One"

Have you ever felt bad about yourself? Most people have at some point in their life, including the most exceptional of characters. It's part of the human experience.

A person that regularly experiences negative feelings such as, self-hate, guilt, shame and embarrassment is commonly referred to as having low self esteem. One of the main problems with breaking out of these emotional habit patterns is that a person with low self esteem tends to 'beat themselves up' with overly critical self-talk such as, "I shouldn't be feeling like this" or "Why am I feeling like this", and
unfortunately this creates a looping effect which re-enforces the crappy feelings!

So just how do you snap out of that kind of low energy level wretchedness and raise self esteem? Well, one of the master keys to using your brain is to keep in mind the fact that it goes in directions. Your thought patterns are 'directionalised.'

Allow me to explain. If you kept having thoughts along the lines of, "I am a useless person", then that would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you'd set that up as the direction for your brain to go in you would keep finding 'evidence' that proved it was 'true!' There's a great quote from philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson; "What ever the thinker thinks, the prover proves."

Basically you need to adopt a new thinking pattern that heads in an empowering direction. A really quick way to do this is to use a technique known as disassociation.

Think of situation where you would like to raise your self esteem feelings and notice what you can see in this experience. Now imagine stepping outside of yourself and pushing that picture off into the distance over there onto a movie screen. So you can see yourself, in that situation, on the movie screen.

That's great! Notice how your feelings have already changed. It's as if you're having feelings about the feelings and this frees up your inner resources so you can gain new self - esteeming perspectives and insights.

Looking at that movie with you in it ask yourself, "If I were to learn something useful about this situation what would it be?" And you can also ask the very powerful question, "If I act as if or pretend there is a positive intention behind my behaviour/feelings what would that be?" Don't struggle with it. Just guess if it helps you get an answer. The main point is does it get your mind going in a more positive direction: Does it feel better?

Why not run through some other scenarios with the procedure above and become aware of just how much more you really can raise self esteem with a little bit of effort.

In part two of this Article I will introduce you to a very powerful technique from the field of NLP that is one of the fastest and most effective methods of creating change.

"The Half-Second Rule"

The mind learns fast. A very powerful way to view life is to experience everything as a learning experience. I think it was Dr. Richard Bandler (co-creator of NLP) who first made me realise that Phobias are in fact a learned response. The mind of the Phobic has learned to associate a stimulus (eg a Wasp) to a response (eg Panic!)

The more you ponder this idea the more profound you will realise the implications. And here's the deal. Does a person develop a phobia of wasps over time? You know, do they see a wasp one day and then the next week they see another and decide they don't like them and get more and more afraid of them?

No. Phobias are 'learned' very, very fast. Out of consciousness, in less than half a second!

They have an intense emotional response which becomes associated/anchored to the stimulus in such a way that that state is AUTOMATICALLY triggered whenever they see/hear/feel/smell/taste the stimulus again!

This is incredible! The persons mind will from then on automatically go into a very altered state, within half a second of experiencing the stimulus.

Now I think you'd agree, phobias aren't exactly useful, right?

But, what if you could use that same Stimulus/Response mechanism to create automatic states of Joy, Ecstasy, Fun and Bliss.

Would that be useful to you in any area of you life? ;)

Now for sure they are many other ways of creating effective change. Some methods use different concepts and are slower to implement. With this article I wanted to introduce you to the half-second rule concepts because they are less well known than other "change-technologies" and they lend themselves well to generating more fun because they are playful by design.

The following technique is a really fascinating NLP tool because it makes great use of your unconscious resources. I only discovered it recently and was surprised to learn that many 'NLP veterans' didn't know about it either!

Merging Metaphors

(Adapted from a technique called 'Spinning Icons' developed by Joe Munshaw and Nelson Zink.).

• Select a problem state.
• As you think about your problem state what visual image comes to mind? Notice where it is located in space.
• Break your current state: eg) Remember you phone number backwards or look up and notice the patterns on the ceiling. Now think about the desired resource state (or outcome, or goal) you would like instead. Notice how you represent this as a visual image. Pay attention to where it is located in space.
• Now allow your mind to turn the first picture (problem state) into a metaphorical symbol or icon. Keep it in the same location in space. (This visual metaphor could be quite
  complex or it may be as simple as a colour. Just trust your unconscious.)
  TOP TIP: It can be useful to ask yourself, "What is this problem state like?" This often allows a metaphorical representation to arise.
• Do the same thing with the desired resource state you selected in step 3, making sure to place the new metaphor symbol in the same location in space as the original image.
• Now see the two metaphor symbols at the same time noticing their locations in space. Next slowly rotate them around each other. Keep rotating them around each other and
  do so faster and faster. Do this spinning for about 10 seconds allowing the rotation to be so fast that you can no longer track the images and you may even feel a little confused.
• Now allow the images to merge together, that's right. And push this merged image out in front of you where you can view it easily. Describe the new image briefly, quickly
  moving to step 8.
• Immediately begin telling WHATEVER story comes to mind. Just allow yourself to start telling a story. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a real memory, a story or just simply made up ramblings. The point being is that this process taps into your vast unconscious resources.
• Now ask yourself, "How is this story relevant to my problem/challenge?" or "How can this story help resolve my problem?" (This step can help to give you conscious insight into how the previous steps have made some useful changes.)

Isn't that a great technique! You know it's got that magical spirit of curious wonder to it hasn't it? So I wonder how else could you use a tool like that to add more magical sparkles to your life?

"Destination Freedom"

I don't know about you but these days I often hear people using the word 'enlightenment' as if it's a common experience. According to Buddhism enlightenment is the complete cessation of all sufferings and a permanent state of peace and happiness.

Not many people there yet then!

Everyone wants more freedom. And as you know real freedom comes from within. Our sense of the external reality around us is strongly influenced by our internal 'maps' of reality. From time to time we have certain thoughts that restrict our sense of freedom. These thoughts are sometimes beliefs that were formed earlier in our life and are now out of date! Other times our thoughts are clouded by impaired perception.

One of the amazing facts about the time we find ourselves in now is that there is an absolute abundance of methods, techniques and tools available to us for re-modeling our realities in a way that enables us to experience much more freedom!

So as we find ourselves on this journey, this journey on the road to freedom what changes start to arise in your minds eye? Because even just a small change can generate new feelings of freedom.

Have you ever seen one of those optical illusion drawings? You know the ones where there is a picture and at first glance you can just see one face. But as you continue
looking and change your focus ever so slightly you get a surprise when another image in the picture appears!

You can relate this to your perspectives on things in your life. New perspectives can be very powerful and you don't necessarily need to view things from a radically different viewpoint. Just a small shift in perspective can bring about profound changes.

If you were to recall a recent situation where you would have preferred to act in a more resourceful manner, could you imagine reviewing the situation from a different
perspective? How about looking at it as if it were a movie. And what new information would arise if you viewed it from the perspective of a giant eagle? Or a field mouse? Or what about from the viewpoint of a fly with it's one hundred eye vision.

Give it a go because this kind of visualisation exercise can free-up you creative mind and allow you to make new realisations as your unconscious reveals previously hidden information!

As you continue to use your mind more you build faith in your own ability. And when that faith builds you find yourself able to make the changes you desire more easily. Your self-esteem begins to build and you will inspire others with your new sense of freedom.

"How to Change Your Perception-Direction to Rapidly Increase Your Success"

We've all heard the phrase, "You get more of what you focus on." In the Hawaiian shamanism system, known as Huna, they teach the principle of blessing. For instance if you want to become a more creative individual every time you come across something that represents 'creativity' you would bless it. Let's say you were walking down the street and you saw an artist painting. You could verbally compliment him or you could simply mentally bless his creativity with your intention which could be something like, "This is creativity, I bless him for it."

By doing this regularly you condition your mind to go in a certain direction: "Look for examples of creativity in the world that I can bless." An interesting effect of this practice is that the more you focus on finding positive qualities to bless, the more you discover!

In therapeutic settings clients often come along complaining of behaviours they don't like and want to get rid of. Now if the therapist were to have the focus of believing that the clients behaviour was indeed unnecessary he may focus on this aspect and have the client discover where this behaviour started. Discovering why he has chosen to adopt this behaviour and so on.

But what if the therapist had the focus of, "Every behaviour has a positive intention behind it." Just with this shift in direction could result in a much more pleasant and useful change in the client. By discovering the positive intention behind behaviours, adding in new behaviours, choices and flexibility would more likely create a generative, positively focused direction for the clients mind to go in.

This kind of generative change-work tends to create a more pervasive shift in the clients model of the world because they have made a change that has added more choice and flexibility and so they think, "ahhh if I can add choices to this area of my life, why not get more flexible in other areas?!"

Another interesting point about directions is that it's more powerful to setup a direction that is flowing, a process, rather than a static change. Think about the following and notice which statement is more powerful, "I am confident", or "I am becoming more confident."

Because one of the minds natural functions is to go in a direction, change-work becomes more powerful if you set up a process as the direction. "I am confident" is static, whereas, "I am becoming more confident" is a process that re-enforces itself.

Knowing this 'master key' can make your use of change technologies, such as the tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) work all the more effectively.

So as you begin to think about the directions you want your mind to go in, doesn't it just make sense to use tools that re-program your mind to *automatically* go in the direction you want to go in?