Deprecated: Function WP_Dependencies->add_data() was called with an argument that is deprecated since version 6.9.0! IE conditional comments are ignored by all supported browsers. in /home/selfhelp/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131
March 2012 - Page 10 of 13 - Self-Help, Spirituality & Self-Esteem

Month: March 2012

Fear Public Speaking, Tips On Public Speaking, Public Speaking Anxiety

admin Self-Esteem, Self-Help , , 0 Comment

Do You Fear Public Speaking?

If you fear public speaking, sure things may get better after you have done a number of speeches but if you want to actually transform yourself and your life so that the excessive nerves don’t come there are some tips on public speaking below.

It is the same in any area of life, there is nothing extra special about the feelings that come from thinking about standing in front of people speaking and that public speaking anxiety.

Yes it is true that if you know what you are speaking about and have practiced and prepared things will no doubt be easier but if you fear public speaking, take the issue you have and use it to transcend and transform who you are currently.

One way you could approach this is through self-hypnosis or affirmations.  This is a reprogramming of your ideas and beliefs about yourself and others; changing the instructions to yourself about how to feel when you speak in front of others.

This may work but it doesn’t change ‘you’. To me it is like papering over cracks in the wall. To fill in the cracks and smooth them over, so to speak, there needs to be a change in the way you think about yourself, others and life.

Firstly

Firstly on a physical level place your feeling attention just below your belly button and allow breathing to come from there.  Don’t breathe from there but just let breath happen while you feel fully conscious of that area of your body.  This is where the power is, this is where we are centred and grounded.  Martial artists know this and spend hours meditating and learning to ‘be’ from this spot.

Whenever you feel out of your depth and anxious, at any stage of life, immediately go back to ‘being’ there.  Don’t try and push the feelings away or ignore them, they will get bigger.  Instead just let them be there and acknowledge them.  Talk to them, I don’t care just be there with them without resistance.

The opposite to this is to be in your head and then the mind will run amok and you will feel all out of control. When you are in your body and conscious of your centre and of breath the mind disengages.

Secondly

Secondly, speak from this place. Let the breath push the words up your centre and out your mouth.  Enjoy feeling the words on your tongue and lips.  Speak slowly enough that you can feel them and notice how good the words feel on your tongue and lips. Again you will be conscious of your body and the mind disengages.  When you do this you will sound controlled, authoritative, calm and powerful.

Thirdly

Thirdly, stand with both feet firmly on the floor.  Don’t stand with all your weight on one foot or lean against anything.

Be in your body and let your body be deeply connected to the floor.

When you do these things, at at any time of your life, you are in your own reality. Your reality is yours so embrace it and cherish it.  Other people can’t get inside your reality, you let them in.

I don’t know if that makes sense but if you fear public speaking it can be overcome when you become more conscious of what is going on.

Fate vs Free Will

admin Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

Your Fate vs Free Will?

Since the first human beings became self-aware they probably questioned fate vs free will.

Who knows?  It could be argued either way with relative success.  One thing I am certain of however is which ever one you believe will be real for you.

How can they both be possible?  Maybe that is the point.  It is quite possible that we have a choice in the way we live our life.

1. Some people live as if they are in complete control of their lives and that will be their reality.  Their mind, or more accurately their idea of life and what is real will…

  • delete
  • ignore
  • deny and distort

anything which doesn’t fit into their internal idea of what is real.

2. Other people live as if they are being guided by a higher power through their life.  The things they are passionate about are considered to be preordained (meaning decided outside your conscious, rational mind as if they are given to you).

It is fascinating the wide variety of talents, skills and passion people have.  One can be passionate about designing and sewing clothes while another can be passionate about remote controlled trucks.  Why?  Obviously these two people have different aptitudes and values, but they didn’t choose these aptitudes and values consciously so from where do they arise?

The people that come into their lives are considered to be not just random but organized or attracted.  A meeting that benefits one or both of them, for just 5 minutes or maybe a whole lifetime.

Einstein said something similar to this fate vs free will conundrum when he said…

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

In my experience living the second way is more fulfilling, empowering and worthwhile.

The conscious mind and the ego are not designed to know what is best for you.  The ideas you have that come from your head are based on fear and lack.  You can pursue the perfect body and the perfect home or the status of a certain job but is that what your heart wants or your head?

If you follow your head and once you achieve what you thought you wanted the ego will then set your sights on the next thing.  This is not a bad thing so long as you don’t hold it that getting this thing will be fulfilling and provide happiness.

Maybe the real reason you are pursuing that high status job is to make your father proud of you or you think people will talk about you with respect and admiration.  So, you have free will to pursue the job but…

  • it won’t change the way you think of your father and
    your relationship
  • once the job goes so will the attention and your
    crutch to feeling semi-OK.

Enhancing Self Esteem, Overcoming Low Self Esteem, Raise Your Self Esteem, Boosting Self Esteem, Help Low Self Esteem

admin Self-Esteem , 0 Comment

Enhancing Self Esteem

What are some of the ways of enhancing self esteem?  As I mention elsewhere many times genuine self esteem comes from becoming directly conscious of your true nature.

Back view of Caucasian mid-adult woman standing on Maui, Hawaii coast with arms outstretched and head thrown back.

When you know the stillness within is actually a connection with the divine and you cultivate this connection, it is the only way of overcoming low self esteem.  Your self esteem transforms into something authentic, real, absolute.

So unless cultivating this knowing and connection is the base of your work to raise your self esteem anything else you do will be more of a cover up job than a permanent change.

However, the below points are things you can do as a way of enhancing self esteem.  Think of them as supplements rather than solutions.

  • Belong to a group

One of our fundamental needs as humans is to feel that we belong to a group.  We want to feel that we are the same as at least one other person in some way.  This is why it hurts so much if we are not invited or included in a group when we are children.  It is about safety, confirmation that we are not too defective, feeling we have some worth or value etc.

  • Volunteer

Helping others does feel good.  It is unusual for someone to help others purely because they can, usually there will be some selfish reason.  I don’t mean selfish in a critical way just as an observation that helping others feels good to the helper.

  • Dance

casual lovely girl dancing - hands frame

Music, movement and freedom seems to connect us internally or bring about something within us that we don’t normally experience.  It seems the body, mind and spirit all loves to feel movement and can leave you feeling grounded and connected, which is important for self esteem.

  • Sing

Singing when done correctly begins from deep down in the abdomen and also here is a strong sense of being.  Down in the navel below the belly button is your centre.  It is from here that breath, voice and energy seem to begin.  So singing allows you to access this place and provides a way to express your unique, authentic sound

  • Workout/fitness

Most people have experienced being at their physical best at some stage.  Not only does the brain and body make nice feeling chemicals when we exercise but there is something about taking active interest and care of your body which brings its own rewards for how you feel and treat yourself.

  • Teach

No matter how little you know about something you will know more than people who know nothing about it.  You can specialise in being the teacher to new beginners. Once they have learned from you what you can teach they will naturally move onto the next teacher.  That is normal, perfectly fine and is rewarding to know you make a difference to someone’s understanding.

  • Connect with someone

This can just be a 2 second connection in the store.  Have a think about whether you experience any moments of connection regularly.  This is not just an interaction but a connection.  Walk into a store with the purpose of making a 2 second connection with the person who asks you if they can help.  You don’t even need to say anything if that is not easy for you.  Just look at them in the eye for 2 or 3 seconds as you say ‘no thanks’.  There is a HUGE difference between looking at someone’s eyes and looking into their eyes.

For example look at the picture here and notice you can vaguely glance in the direction of her eye or you can take a couple of seconds to see the eye directly.

  • Receive bodywork

It feels good not only physically but in all ways to have someone’s attention on you.   When you have a massage or reflexology or Alexander Technique you are being touched by another human in a non-needy, gentle and caring way.  This is beneficial to your sense of well-being and your connectedness.

Enhancing self-esteem is still about spiritual principles of feeling grounded, centred, connected and with service to others.  Notice that enhancing self-esteem has nothing to do with buying stuff.

EFT Technique, Personal Peace Procedure

admin Self-Esteem, Self-Help , , , 0 Comment

Increase Your Inner Peace With

The EFT
Technique

What Is It?

The EFT technique is a simple routine anyone can do at home and is having results where nothing else has helped.  It stands for Emotional Freedom Technique.  It is also casually known as Tapping, due to the action of tapping on several acupressure points on your body.

Like all good things, it was discovered by accident that tapping on these acupressure points while mentally focusing on an issue, brought a resolution to that issue.

Why Does It Work?

As elsewhere I mention that the key to personal and spiritual growth is awareness and acceptance of everything that you are and everything that has happened.  It is no surprise then that the EFT technique involves speaking the statement ‘Even though I …. I deeply love and accept myself while you tap on these points primarily on your head’.

My personal use of EFT as been most effective completing what Gary Craig (the man who has taken EFT to the world) called the Personal Peace Procedure.  Here is a video explaining it all.  I highly recommend watching it and doing this procedure.

I agree with Gary Craig that if everyone would list out the major events in their life, especially those that still have some emotional charge and rawness to them and performed the procedure then inner peace, contentment, inspiration and self-esteem would be more prevalent.

I even have heard from a woman who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder who tapped every night on a memory or two and has never experienced BPD symptoms again.  What happens is all the similar memories that have trapped emotions with them are neutralized and as a result the internal turmoil and angst goes also.

If you find this difficult to do on your own then please search for an EFT practitioner in your area.  A beauty of EFT is that it doesn’t require you to relive traumatic events or go talk over them endlessly like you would in conventional therapy.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes, Spiritual Quotations, Encouragement Quotations

admin Spirituality , , 0 Comment

Wise Eckhart
Tolle Quotes

Below are the selected Eckhart Tolle quotes to provide words of spiritual encouragement.

The selected spiritual quotations are picked specifically for relevance to support the intention of this website to raise consciousness and therefore experience higher self esteem. These quotes have been taken from The Power of Now book, The Flowering of Human Consciousness DVD filmed in La Jolla, California 2001 and Practicing Presence DVD.

Whenever you watch the mind, you withdraw consciousness from mind forms, and then it becomes what we call the watcher or witness.

Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.

Do not fight against the body, for in doing so you are fighting against your own reality. Underneath it lies the invisible inner body, the doorway into Being.

If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the Now. Thoughts and emotions, fears and desires, may still be there to some extent, but they won’t take you over.

Ultimately what we perceive as evil arises out of the ignorance of who you are, which is ultimately the ignorance of not knowing God, and that is one and the same.

You are connected to something more deeper and more vibrant – with yourself ultimately. You are yourself. Instead of running to the future to find yourself, continuously dwell in that sense of being.

Accept this moment completely and very quickly the stillness and the peace emerge – no matter what this moment contains.

Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert

admin Self-Help, Spirituality , 0 Comment

Wise Reading Eat Pray Love

Something that Elizabeth Gilbert said in an interview after Eat Pray Love became such a hit sticks in my mind.  She said …

“I was useless to anyone until I got myself together. It’s a community service to get yourself together.
It’s the least selfish thing you can do.”

I mention quite a few times on this website about how people in general but more specifically women think that it is right and proper to neglect yourself and focus on others.

I know there is strong social conditioning which invisibly directs women to feel guilty if they spend energy and time on themselves, especially when they have a young family.

Eat Pray Love is a true story about Gilbert’s realization soon after turning 30 that she didn’t want the supposedly idealistic life she had conspired to create with her husband.  It follows her realization, subsequent divorce and decision to finally follow her heart.

Destiny and Fate

People talk about destiny and fate.  I believe certain aspects of our lives are destined but we have to have the courage to follow what our heart and intuition is telling us, no matter what the social pressures might be.

People will not understand why you leave a safe job to go traveling.   People will question why you want to go and travel to Peru or Tibet or live in a Ashram.  They will expect you to have logical, thought out answers but the reasons are not logical, they are coming from a different part of your being than rational mind.

It is enough for you to say, ‘it is just something I know I need to do’.  Feel the social pressure, which comes from people who are not in the same place as you and not on the same mission in life as you, but do it anyway.

I recommend reading this book if you have at least an inkling that there is something you want to do, something you are called to do, somewhere you feel guided to go by a gentle, loving, safe hand on the small of your back.

Either you know what it is but you haven’t faced up to it yet, or it is not quite your time and you need to be patient because you know it is coming, whatever it is.

Also, the movie has been released starring Julia Roberts, I haven’t seen it yet but I will do once I can see it in English.

Dr John Demartini, Demartini Method, Improving Your Self-Esteem

admin Self-Esteem, Self-Help, Shadow Work, Spirituality , , 0 Comment

Wisdom Learned From Dr
John Demartini

Dr John Demartini created and teaches the Demartini Method. A powerful way to resolve anxiety, trauma, sadness, grief, shame, guilt and any possible emotion that is holding you back from living an inspired, beautiful life.

In 2008 I first heard about Dr Demartini.  It was a year after my second reading of The
Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford, a book which made a huge change to my understanding of why people feel bad about themselves and have low self-esteem.

A friend gave me a DVD of Dr John Demartini talking about his tough early life.  He was from a loving family however he had learning and physical difficulties and drifted aimlessly once leaving school until he met an old man in a yoga class.  This old man, Paul Bragg, guided him and the rest of the class through a meditation and from that night Dr Demartini’s passion for learning and understanding began.

When I looked into his work further I was quite astounded to read and hear that he too had realized the importance of doing shadow-work and had done a similar exercise to me, but a lot more intense.

I know I felt a persistent unease within all my life until I started this internal work on myself.  I wanted to discover who I really was, what I am gifted at and what I can let go of worrying about.  Would you like to live like that also?

Listen to a great explanation below from Dr John DeMartini of why this kind of work is powerful at improving your your self-esteem.

Whereas I had gone through books, learning materials and reference material to catalogue around 1,000 personality traits, and test myself for any reaction or resistance to owning them, he had apparently gone through the entire dictionary!!!  I never thought of doing that!

He says there are about 4,600 traits he got from the dictionary and I assume he worked on each one.

His work was not only from the point of view of feeling better about himself but he also got copies of biographies of successful people and highlighted the traits that they displayed in achieving their greatness.

Dr John Demartini is passionate about all areas of human behaviour and achievement.  Part of his study was into quantum physics and the realization that there really is nothing missing from our lives.  It is our conscious mind that is unable to see everything and how it all relates and so knowing this he devised The DeMartini Method.

I lent a friend my copy of his book The Heart of Love and she said it made such a change to her life reading it and doing the exercises.  I hope it does for you too.

Elsewhere I have talked about personality traits that we do not accept and love about ourselves show up for us as an illusion in other people.  We really think they are that way, but in reality that person’s behaviour or personality provide us with a hook that shows us what we need to work on to love and accept about ourselves.

The more personality traits that you accept and love about yourself the more you will leave low self-esteem behind and you can get on with living a meaningful, inspired life.  This is one aspect of the many great teachings Dr John Demartini provides.

Dr. Douglas Graham | 80 10 10 Diet | Raw Foods | Raw Vegan

admin Health , , ,

Dr. Douglas Graham 80 10 10 Diet

Dr. Douglas Graham is a doctor of chiropractor who advocates a diet
(‘diet’ meaning quantity and type of food rather than ‘diet’ as in
weight loss) of mostly raw fruit, with much smaller amounts of protein
and fat, hence 80% carbohydrates from fruit, 10% protein and 10% fat.

I have never seen dramatic and consistent evidence from such a wide
range of people of the long term benefits of eating in this way.
I myself began eating more raw fruits and vegetables in July 2011 and
straight away noticed a change in how I felt.

Dr Douglas Graham below talks about the importance of eating
carbohydrates from fruit.  It is what our bodies and brains need
to operate on.

When we are hungry we seem to lose any ability to make wise
decisions.  It is probably a survival mechanism to ensure we eat
anything that we can find in order to get the calories we need to
continue operating biologically.

Many people are amazed at how they feel when they transition to more
raw food. You do not have to become a raw food eater the next day after
you decide to start.  It is not about starting.  Do not start
to become a raw food eater, just eat more fruit and veges raw in
amongst your current eating habits.  Your body and mind will lead
you to eating more and more fruit over time until one day you know that
you would rather eat this way than any other way.

I was not sick prior to this but as part of my evolvement over the last
few years I have naturally moved away from heavier foods that require
processing, to eating foods that make me feel good.

One word of warning so that you don’t make the mistake I did, is that
you have to eat much, much more fruit than you would ever guess, and
more fruit than you feel like you want to eat.  This is because
the fruit has less calories so in order to reach 2,000 or 3,000
calories you need to eat a large quantity of fruit.

Vegetables do not provide much in the way of calories.  The secret
I have found so far is to NEVER get hungry.  In fact no matter
what your eating habits are you need to break past the paradox which
our brains tell us the longer we go without food the better we are
doing.

A whole raft of emotional, physical and mental health issues would be
significantly lessened if a person ate whole, raw fruit and vegetables
so frequently that they never got hungry.

If you do not put enough into the body at regular
intervals – I find I aim for about 200 calories per hour when awake
which is 2 ripe bananas, or 3 oranges or 2/3 a pineapple approximately
– then your brain will start overriding the part of you that has will
power and discipline and you will find yourself grabing something from
the supermarket.

And I bet you won’t end up in the deli buying some carrot salad or a
piece of chicken, it will be high in carbohydrates like a chocolate
bar, potato chips, biscuits.  You can be in control by never
getting hungry.

People report getting back to this way of eating allows spiritual
development that would otherwise be unobtainable.  Dr Douglas
Graham has a book The 80 10 10 Diet.
It is a great starting point
for discovering how to get back to that amazing state we often only
experience as a child.

Developing Self-Awareness, Self-Awareness Exercises, Self-Development, Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence

admin Self-Esteem, Self-Help, Spirituality , , 0 Comment

The Secret To All Growth Is Developing Self-Awareness

Developing self-awareness is the key to changing your life experience and overcoming poor self-esteem.

Developing-Self-Awareness Rocks Stacked Beach

Any spiritual or personal growth book worth reading will probably only make only two points important…

  • developing self-awareness
  • radical acceptance

The secret to having a life of inner peace and contentment and building your self-esteem is to accept and simply experience what is there for you right now.  Once you have developed greater awareness you have more choices about how you will think about what you experience.

Why It Takes Some Courage

It takes some courage to surrender to what is really going on.  Once you stop denying your experience and finally realize that your experience has richness, self-love and meaning, then you do not need anything outside of you to be OK such as material possessions, a partner or recognition.

Until you can see what is happening you cannot choose to change it. To be able to see it you need to be constantly developing self-awareness.

If your foot was numb you would need to be aware your foot was numb and be aware of why before you could consciously do something to change that experience. You would see that you are sitting on it and so now you can change that condition. So too it is with emotions, although more complex.

Similarly you need to see and acknowledge the way you are thinking about yourself and the world before you can see that the end result of your thinking might be an experience of anxiety.

You need to be able to see you are attached to something not happening before you can see that your attachment makes you fearful.

Increasing Understanding

Awareness is not a skill and it is not something you develop as such, it just is as it is but it gets covered up a lot of the time.

This is the difference between having your attention on what might happen (imagination) or what has happened (memory) and instead having your attention on ‘you’.  Which part of ‘you’ is real and which
part is always changing or up for changing, and therefore not real?

There is always a part of you still and silent and observing. In times you are daydreaming or rehearsing a conversation in your head or replaying an incident the awareness of you disappears doesn’t it? Try it, play with different uses of your mind and see when ‘you’ disappear. Of course it doesn’t go anywhere but it just sort of gets forgotten.

Engage your peripheral vision for a few seconds while you stay aware that you are conscious. Now concentrate on an object or read a few words. Is one mode of vision easier for you than the other to remain conscious of you?

I was watching my nephew recently at eight months old waving his arms around when he had the sudden
realization that he was doing the waving through intention. He stopped and looked at his hand and moved the fingers and he was more intrigued than with any toy.

This is what I am talking about. Developing self-awareness that you are aware and conscious that you do things.

Meditation, Contemplation and Mindfulness

Developing Self Awareness Woman Yoga Meditation Ocean
And this leads us to meditation, contemplation and mindfulness.

As you go about your day in mindfulness; watching without judgment, anything you do which is destructive, painful or unnecessary for your well-being will have a greater chance of simply dropping away. Meditation helps bring this impartial awareness and watcher to the foreground and this is transformative all by itself. It really is all that there is to do fundamentally.  Become self
aware, then accept what you find.

Developing self-awareness and accepting everything you are aware of now is powerful and is a permanent way to increase poor self-esteem.

Demartini Method, Breakthrough Experience, Self-Esteem Worksheets

admin Self-Esteem, Self-Help, Shadow Work , 0 Comment

How The Demartini Method Helps You

Dr John Demartini created The Demartini Method. It is one of the most powerful ways to improve self-esteem that I know of.  Scroll down to watch a two-minute video from YouTube on The Breakthrough Experience, which uses the Method.

It is a holistic healing method to resolve all sorts of emotional issues and can help you find your life purpose.

The crux of The Demartini Method and The Breakthrough Experience is shadow-work as coined by Carl Jung the great psychologist.

It is one of the ways to improve self-esteem that leaves all the others
behind in my opinion.

In His Own Words

The Demartini Method is

– A systematic pre-determined series of mental questions directed toward the objective of assisting an individual to feel present, certainty and gratitude.

– A procedure that neutralizes an individual’s emotional charges, balances his or her mental and physical reactions, opens his or her heart and clears his or her mind.

– A continuous thinking process and writing action repeated over a course of time that results in a resolution of dis-equilibrated perceptions.

– A reproducible science enabling individuals to discover the underlying order governing their apparent daily chaos.

I discovered Dr John Demartini only after I had coincidentally done a lot of the work on myself that he teaches.  My path lead me down via other teachers and it wasn’t until I had discovered the power of shadow-work that I was told about Dr John Demartini.

I eagerly read some of his work and attended two of his talks and watched two DVDs and sure enough he was saying the same things that I KNEW were awesome at setting us free from out programming
and unresolved issues – even if we don’t know we have them.

Dr Demartini is considered by many to be one of the great minds and of course he could explain a lot more than me about why this was powerful.  After studying physics, philosophy, theology, metaphysics, psychology, astronomy, mathematics, neurology and physiology he created worksheets that you can work through on your own, or to get the most benefit attend his two-day seminar called The Breakthrough Experience.

The benefit of attending the live event is that you have Dr John Demartini himself and any number of people he has trained to help you work through the worksheets.  People have reported dramatic changes and a resolving of old issues and pain that they have carried for years and years, most often since childhood.  This leaves you to live the life you are destined to live.

The Breakthrough Experience is held many times a year throughout the world as Dr Demartini travels constantly.