Step 1: Make a decision that you want to increase your self-esteem. In making this decision, make a commitment to yourself that you will work on your self esteem and do whatever it takes to overcome low self-esteem.

Step 2: Ask yourself why you have low self-esteem. What is it about your self-esteem is lacking. What do you dislike about yourself and what are you ashamed about. Try to understand your low-self esteem and where it is based.

Step 3: Is your low self esteem based on your looks or on your lack of achievements. Were you told that you were not pretty, or that you were stupid or clumsy? It is important to know where your low self esteem came from, and how it developed. This can sometimes be painful; however, it can also give you a sense of relief when you know the origin of your low-self esteem.

Step 4: Take this list and spend 5 minutes every day reading this list. It does not matter what time of day, however, get this list out and recite these things on a daily basis. Your positive traits that your have reminded yourself about will start to take centre stage over these negative traits. This is a must when you are trying how to begin overcoming low self-esteem.

Step 5: Act “as if” you feel good about yourself. In learning how to being overcoming low-self esteem, you can act as though you already have a high level of self-esteem. Do not confuse this as being a phoney. This is far from this. You are just presenting yourself to the world in a way that you may not necessarily feel inside. This is okay, because you are not lying or hurting anyone. You are “acting as if” you feel good about yourself and this is okay.

Step 6: Understand that if you act “as if” you feel good about yourself that you will eventually start to authentically feel good about yourself. The above exercise is very powerful. Since you started to focus on on all of your positive attributes and are now behaving in a way that aligns you with that belief, you will learn how to overcome low-self esteem in no time.

Tips & Warnings: Be patient, as you learn how to overcome low-self esteem. Your self-esteem did not become low overnight, and it will take some time to improve.

If low-self esteem does not start to improve with these techniques or any other self-help methods to increase self-esteem, it is really okay to get professional counselling

I would literally look in the mirror trying to find the strong assertive person the outside world was seeing. All I could see was someone who was putting up a big front to appear cool. I was confused by my personal success when I was young because I had nothing nurturing or positive in my life to which I could relate the personal growth.

At the time, I wasn’t sure why I was getting all this money and acclaim. I didn’t think I was worthy of it, and believed that I didn’t deserve success or happiness. I achieved the level of business success because I was highly skilled, but my low self-esteem drove me to throw it all away.

The consequences of my low self-esteem and self-sabotage were many. If I can, I’d like to save you from the same fate by parting the curtain.

First, my personal life: I felt unworthy of my first husband, but you wouldn’t have known it by the way I treated him. My self-sabotaging brain decided the way to keep him was to tear him down to my level so he would feel lucky to have anyone, even me. Then he wouldn’t leave me.

I still get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about how I hurt myself, my personal development and other people with my low self-esteem. Don’t ever kid yourself into thinking your level of self-esteem isn’t influencing the quality of life for people around you.

In my business life, the self-sabotage was straightforward. I would achieve a great deal of business success until it got too uncomfortable for my self-image to handle, and then I would destroy my achievement and my work/life balance.

I’d make my job undesirable by having a conflict or a philosophical difference where I would have to leave to maintain my higher ground. Some of these were pretty elaborate, so I could feel superior when I left.

Similar circumstances happen more often than you’d think. I see them played out by friends and co-workers over and over throughout the years. They’re easy to spot for someone like me, a former self-saboteur.

Self-sabotage is a self-fulfilling prophecy that puts people back in their comfort zone of. I knew it would all go away sooner or later. Nothing good ever lasts?

See, I grew up in the land of “Who do you think you are?”.

This is still a common message kids receive today. It can be difficult reconciling personal success with that message. Without a strong positive self-image, all success is temporary.

On the positive side, another self-fulfilling prophecy is that if you act as if you are self-assured, knowledgeable and have work/life balance, you will become exactly that.

You’ve heard the saying, Fake it until you make it. This is not being phoney. To become more positive, you have to start somewhere, and this is the first step towards personal growth.

The key to building self-esteem is to know that your opinion is the only one that counts. Others just influence your opinions. You can accept or reject what they say about your personal development.

High self-esteem is a gift you can only give to yourself. It’s a very valuable gift.

People who build self-esteem are in charge of their world, have work/life balance, and refrain from blaming past or present outside circumstances. They know it is up to them to take what happens in life and give it as much or little meaning as they choose.

Raise your self-esteem by becoming a master of a particular area of your life. Master one aspect of your job or a hobby. For example, start small by taking one aspect of your job that could use improvement, or develop a skill that would get you a raise or recognition.

Just making the commitment to master something will raise your self-confidence in that area. How do you feel about yourself when you do something really well?

The more things you can learn to do well, the higher your self-esteem. Take this key to success and start to build your self-esteem now.

Challenge them or try to draw them into a debate and watch out! You will be quickly labelled as inflexible and unwilling to accept “what is best”.

In Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great” he found through surveys that humble leadership (opposite of arrogance) was one of the many leadership traits that contributed to the long-term success of organizations. Humble leaders get involved, are willing to listen to opposing viewpoints, and have high self-esteem. They have high moral values, which causes them to be centred on doing things right for the right reasons. They energize others, and believe their talents are a gift to be kept in perspective both in the work place and in their personal lives.

Note: This doesn’t always apply, but you would be surprised. Look at what the arrogant leader and the humble leader drive to work. That can tell you a lot about who they are and the image they are trying to portray.

One of the things we know is that leaders can’t effectively lead if they don’t know what is going on. A telltale sign of the arrogant leader is they don’t care about the details. That is because details are beneath them. They also believe that execution is beneath them. They are the grand strategist and don’t have time to get involved in the details. They are interested in headlines, not deadlines. Serving the greater good takes a back seat to serving their own self interests.

Another trait you might see is that arrogant leaders are threatened by the “good” leaders. They fear the good leader’s success and often view them as weak and ineffective (envy is a four letter word). In fact, many arrogant leaders see humility and attentiveness in others as a character flaw. We know by observation that the arrogant leaders are the ones with the weak character, the ones with the poor communication skills, and are the ones with the low self esteem. The arrogant leader’s weaknesses are easy to spot. They don’t fool anybody but themselves. Remember the CEOs of Enron, MCI/WorldCom? At one time they were arrogant, now they are in prison.

Emotional Outburst #1 – Arrogant leaders are organizational pariahs, and are terrible project managers.

A leader that motivates and inspires has to be visible, informed, and respected. Like any good engineer knows, you sometimes have to get your hands dirty to solve problems and gain the respect of the people doing the work.

An arrogant leader is the opposite of a servant leader. Whether they wear a skirt or a suit they are inhibitors to organizational excellence and their thirst for power destroys team synergy and employee morale.

We can sum up this type of behaviour in one word…Arrogance -

As taken from the Inner Frontier

“ARROGANCE - Those to whom much has been given sometimes suffer from arrogance; or rather the people around them suffer. Arrogance is doubly a pity, because the talents of the arrogant serve primarily themselves. The arrogant assumes his views and opinions are The Truth. In arrogance, natural confidence goes sadly awry. Rather than the self-assurance born of knowing his own strengths and limitations, arrogance admits no limits. The arrogant brooks no weakness in himself and may even secretly rejoice to find flaws in others. But imperfections are inherent in being human, so the arrogant, like everyone else, always has feet of clay, however well hidden they may be. Fearing exposure, haughtiness forms a hard shell masking inner emptiness.”

It’s Like This:

You might think you can get away with being naughty not nice — but your soul will always know when you misbehave. Your soul will always know the truth about what you are doing — or not doing — even if nobody else knows. It’s as if your soul is a constant candid camera recording the reality of your life wherever you go. If you’re naughty too often — you will become an unhappy person with low self-esteem — and thereby you will on a subconscious level feel as if you are NOT worthy of a high level true love!

Listen up! Aristotle said it well when he said:

“Dignity consists not in possessing honours, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.”

Meaning? There is no way to dupe your soul! Hence it’s highly worthwhile to consistently choose morally right actions your soul can be proud of!

Aristotle’s #1 secret for happiness both in life and in love: Be goddamn virtuous!

Unfortunately, here in America this big secret for overall happiness seems to be remaining a big secret. Too many people have sold their souls — winding up with what I jokingly refer to as “soulds”!

With these “soulds” of theirs, people pursue instantaneous indulgence gratification in the form of lying, hurting others, drugging, overeating, cheating in business, cheating in love, winning at any/all costs at the costs of others. BUT — the cost these people with “soulds” are paying is a high one: unfulfilling love lives, low self-esteem and rampant depression!

Aristotle was a big believer that every time you behaved immorally — performing actions your soul was not proud of — you tarnished your “sould.”

Aristotle went on to say that the worst shape your soul became in — the worst shape your mood and self esteem.

Basically, you cannot be a happy, confident person if you don’t nurture your soul with actions your soul can be proud of!

The larger and more frequent your unsoulful acts (i.e., being unkind, ungenerous, inconsiderate, immoral) the more tarnished your “sould” — and the deeper your sadness and lesser your self assurance.

Although you might think you can get away with being unkind, ungenerous, inconsiderate and immoral — you can never lie to your soul.

In my opinion, this bad “sould” versus good soul theory of happiness is why Prozak and Zoloft don’t truly work long-term on many people — that is people without true chemical imbalances.

It’s Like This:

If you take these happiness pills, and don’t change your life for the soul-nurturing better, you’re simply making superficial changes in your brain chemistry. Prozak and Zoloft might be able to temporarily fool your brain chemistry into believing you are a happy person.

Unfortunately, Prozak and Zoloft do not work on your soul!

Unless you start to create major soul-nurturing life changes while on these happiness pills, you will remain an unhappy person.

SO IN SUMMARY TO MY PREVIOUS SUMMARY…

Emotions are messages – they are there to guide us to keep doing more actions we are proud of — so as to keep on feeling as happy as possible on the inside. Yes – positive emotions are our reward for consciously choosing to do actions we are proud of us – and grow into our highest potential selves. And according to Aristotle, we feel our most happiness when we are in what he called “a relationship of shared virtue” – a relationship where each partner inspires the other to grow into their highest potential self — a relationship in which you will feel worthy of pursuing — and excited to pursue – if you already value becoming your highest potential self!

Capiche?

At a workshop I attended sometime back, the majority of the participants cited procrastination as the main cause of not beginning a task, a dream or a desire. They knew exactly what to do, but the problem came in the actual doing. I must admit to having this particular syndrome many times in my life. It became so detrimental to my life that I had to discover what was going on. Then came the awareness. I looked at the things I did quite easily without delay. What was the difference?

It wasn’t passion. I am passionate about writing, yet for a long time I would put off writing these blog posts.

I looked at the reasons why I had to do the thing that I procrastinated on. Was it something that I had to or should do, or something that I wanted to do? I did not have to write these blog posts; but I definitely wanted to. It took a shift in mindset, then the means to blog daily came so easily and effortlessly.

If procrastination is plaguing you, look at the reasons why you are doing the thing you keep putting off. Is it because you want to or because you think you should do it? Remember, stop “shoulding” over yourself. And if it is a task that you must do to move to another level, then reframe why you are doing it. Say to yourself, “I get to do _____, which will move me closer to ______!”

It’s all about awareness and making conscious choices. This is your life and you only get one; but if you work it right, one is all you need!

“Procrastination is not the cause of our problems with accomplishing tasks; it is an attempt to resolve a variety of underlying issues, includ¬ing low self-esteem, perfec¬tionism, fear of failure and of success, indecisiveness, an imbalance between work and play, ineffective goal-setting, and negative concepts about work and yourself.” ~ Dr. Neil Fiore, The NOW Habit

Dr. Wendy Walsh stated that discussion recently erupted on her Facebook blog about our current child-centred parenting culture. One woman, who works in admissions at the University of Southern California, described spoiled, entitled applicants with hovering parents and wondered if we are creating a generation of narcissists.

Another woman posted evidence of this “trend” in the explosion of reality television and the influx of regular people vying for the spotlight. I beg to differ, and offer this explanation: Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a bona fide diagnosis with clear criteria, and it is estimated to be evident in about 1% of the general population – hardly a cultural trend. Its name comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who died while gazing at his own reflection in a pool of water.

To be a true narcissist, one must exhibit at least five of the following symptoms:

-Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

-Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

-Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

-Requires excessive admiration.

-Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

-Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.

-Lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

-Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

-Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.

No one is really sure what causes this disorder, but certain theories make sense. Like all psychological disorders, a biological predisposition must be in place. As far as what environmental stimuli (like parenting) activate the biology, there are suspicions that too much flattery or too little flattery can play a role. Every child knows the truth.

When parents’ perceptions of their behaviours are inaccurate, feelings of shame can develop — shame over their true feelings that don’t match a yearning to believe their lifeline, i.e., a parent. Severe emotional abuse can also trigger a narcissistic disorder, as the child grows up to create a grandiose version of themselves to protect their inner, damaged child. This self is the antithesis of the weakened self with low self-esteem that hides in a constant state of shame.

As hard as it is to imagine, narcissists need a hug. They need you to believe their bragging in order for them to trust you and let you in. Their large ego is protecting a very shameful inner core. Certain industries and jobs attract narcissists because the traits that may harm personal relationships often help them climb the ladder of success. The entertainment industry is one world that rewards narcissism. The ability to shirk off criticism and shameless lack of boundaries can be viewed as deeply “creative” by those who package and market entertainment. Narcissists are usually in front of a crowd with a microphone in their hands. Look for the disorder in the ranks of religion, politics, and Wall Street.

Parenting may contribute to narcissism. Narcissistic parents often beget narcissistic children because they are used by damaged parents to regulate their own self-esteem. But child-centred parenting most often creates selfish people with questionable morals who are somewhat hard to live with. And, these individuals are a far cry from true narcissists. Anyone who has had a relationship with one who truly lacks empathy knows they are beyond selfish.