control

I wanted to take a moment to talk about self-esteem because I have virtually none and I really need to reinforce this lesson, for myself. And if it helps you, too, that would be terrific!

“Do not fall into the trap of believing that you are back to square one, most people have bad days – it’s called being human.”

Go ahead and think that one over. I know I have to, several times. In essence, it simply means that the bad days will come and maybe you even become temporarily derailed from your track of progress. But you shouldn’t lose track of your personal growth goal when they do come – and they WILL come (you’ve heard me say this many times – it’s difficult for me to swallow at times). Just remember don’t beat yourself up over it. And when you can calm yourself and get your thoughts together to make a rational decision, pick up where you left off…even take a step backwards and look at how you can move forward from that point, if you have to. It can be done! I promise you.

Also remember this: “When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen”. Your story is your own, you can begin a new chapter for yourself any time you so choose to do so. Just make sure that you are the one making the decisions and directing your life path. Don’t let anyone else have so much control over you and your life that they are essentially writing your story. No! This is YOUR story…YOU make it happen. Hold that pen tightly and don’t let go of it.

If someone is a constant source of negativity, no matter how much you love them or care for them, let them go. It’s something you have to decide to do. But, what are they contributing to you from the relationship other than sadness, self-doubt, hurt feelings and possibly a lower self-image. I’ve been there, mostly in my past. If they are only memories that hold you back, choose to forgive or forget. Make the choice to not let that memory control who you want to be today. It’s a toughy. But if you’re ready, you’ll know that it’s an easy choice to make.

Here are a few tips for building Self-Esteem:

Do not set yourself up for relapse.
Do not put too much on your plate, too soon. That’s pretty much a set up.
Put yourself into situations where the probability of success is higher.

They sound easy enough, right? I believe that you and I can achieve them easily once our minds are clearly made up with the conscious decision to think and feel better in our own skin.

Some strategies for Building Self-Esteem

Crises of self-esteem are a part of the “human experience”. When you feel troubled by low self-esteem, review the suggestions below and choose those that are relevant to YOUR personal situation and work on them. Be patient with yourself, okay? Change takes time and hard, consistent work.

Free yourself from “should haves”. Live your life on the basis of what is possible for you and what feels right to you instead of what you or others think/feel you “SHOULD DO”. “Should haves” distract us from identifying and fulfilling our own needs, abilities, interests, and personal goals. This leaves us with unmet needs. And no one wants to deal with those. Find out what you want and what you are good at. Value those and take actions designed to fulfill your positive potential.
Respect your own needs. Recognize and take care of your own needs and wants first! Identify what really fulfills you –not just immediate gratifications. Respecting your deeper needs will increase your sense of worth and well-being.
Set achievable goals. Establish goals on the basis of what you can realistically achieve, then work step-by-step to develop your potential. To strive always for perfectionism in your goals invites stress and failure. That is the opposite of what we want. An example of this is when you’re in school and you tell yourself that “anything but an A in school is always unacceptable.” Don’t do this to yourself. You’re better than that and we both know it.
Talk to yourself POSITIVELY. Stop listening to your anxiety or your “cruel inner critic”. When you notice that you are doubting or judging yourself, replace such thoughts with self-accepting thoughts, balanced self-assessment and self-supportive directions.
This is the hardest one for me to do, honestly. My anxiety typically gets the best of me. But, after I step through the doorway of my fear, I find that things aren’t nearly as bad as I expected them to be. I listened to the devil on my shoulder, rather than my self-loving angel. Big mistake. I encourage you, don’t fall for what your anxiety is telling you. It will only bring you pain. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid here.
Test your reality. Separate your emotional reactions, such as fear and bad feelings, from the reality of your current situation. For example, you may feel stupid, anxious, or hopeless about a project or event. But if you think about it clearly, you may still have the ability and opportunity to accomplish something in it.
Experience success. Seek out and put yourself into situations in which the probability of success is high. Look for projects which stretch, but do not overwhelm, your abilities. Imagine yourself succeeding. Whatever you may accomplish, let yourself acknowledge and experience your success and good feelings about it. Bask in your progress and keep at it!
Take chances. New experiences are learning experiences which can build self-confidence. Expect to make mistakes as part of the process; don’t be disappointed if you don’t do it perfectly. Feel good about trying something new, making progress and increasing your competence. When you practice this one, remember “Practice Makes Perfect”. If you fall off of your bike, get right back on that baby and pedal away. Before long, you’ll be able to ride that bike with no hands! ha-ha.
Solve problems. Do not avoid problems, and do not moil about them. Face them, head on! Identify ways to solve them or to cope with them. If you run away from problems that you can and should solve, you threaten your self-confidence.
Make decisions. Practice making and implementing positive decisions flexibly, but firmly. Trust yourself to deal with the consequences. When you assert yourself, you enhance your sense of yourself, learn more, and increase your self-confidence. Just remember that YOU need to be in control of the decision making and that it should positively affect you in some way. These decisions can start out small and grow larger as you practice the skill. Remember the quote about holding the pen to the story of your life. That will come in useful here.
Develop your skills. Know what you can and can not do. Assess the skills you need; learn and practice those. For example, if you want to start painting pictures or taking photographs. You will need to identify the steps in doing either of those. Then you pick up the brush and/or the camera and you start practicing. Maybe you ask someone to model for you to begin your portfolio. Maybe your first painting is something that you needed to copy in your own style. Either way…..the steps are there and you know your own limits.
Emphasize your strengths. Focus on what you can do rather than what you can not. Accept current limitations and live comfortably within them. Even as you consider what your actual strengths are, what you might want or need to develop next. There are only limits that you set on yourself that are in your way. You can learn to push the boundaries, without overdoing it. Just focus on what you’re good at and what you know you’re capable of and the rest will fall into place.
Rely on your own opinion of yourself. Entertain feedback from others, but do not rely on their opinions. Remember that opinions are NOT facts; therefore, they may be made up or fictional. When you rely on someone’s opinion, it may actually be self-defeating. So, don’t do that! Instead, depend on your own values in making decisions and deciding how you feel about yourself and what is right for you to do. This is your life — do what you want and be happy with it. Be prepared to face the consequences either way. Because following your heart, values and own decisions leaves only you accountable. So, make them count!

Always remember to debate and replace your negative thoughts. You can not let people steal your joy. If it’s something that you want to work with and move forward with, don’t give others the power to take that away from you.

I say that, but I am one of the most guilty when it comes to letting others opinions, along with listening to my own thoughts and what my own fears and anxiety tell me. I let those things hurt me, drag me down and just make myself so much more fearful than anyone should be. That’s why I’m sharing these things with you now. We’re stronger than we know. And it’s time to let go of all of the negativity. If we can make decisions that we feel good about and that make us happy–then our own consequences are the only things we have left to worry about. If someone else doesn’t like it. They don’t have to. As long as what we’re doing makes us happy, screw them. Their opinions are not factual and mean nothing in our lives unless we give them the power to. Shut that power down.

It’s been a great day full of positivity in Group. I felt good about the lessons we were learning. And it’s funny to me that I’m just now learning these lessons. But, hey they’re important. We even went for a walk around campus today to enhance our senses and build on calming techniques that we’ll probably talk about in a different post.

Let’s start today off with the quote I have written in my journal:
“If Plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has twenty five more letters”.

I hope that made you smile, as it did me. And I hope that you can find meaning and hope in that, as I did.

Don’t Be Afraid to Lose Control

I giggled at this lesson, as we began to learn to let go of control, or the idea of control. But, in reality – there are so, so many things out of our hands and that we have absolutely no control over whatsoever.

You could define control as the power to influence and/or direct peoples’ behaviors or the course of events. That would be a technical definition of the word. But, isn’t it more than that?

Control is something that you can have OVER people and/or events. It gives you a sense of entitlement and empowerment. It’s something that a lot of us have trouble either gaining or letting go of. My guess is that most of us have more trouble letting go of it.

I can give you the example of house cleaning. You may prefer to do things as I do, clean the room from top to bottom and do the floors last. In my head that’s where all of the dust and dirt lands as I’m cleaning above, so logically I would do it in that order. However, if John cleans the room, he may vacuum and then pick up the area and/or dust. It may not make sense to us. But, just because he did it differently, that doesn’t mean he is wrong. That doesn’t mean that MY way is the ONLY way to do something. And man, it will eat at me, but you know what? I’m going to keep my mouth shut because I am grateful for the help and because I don’t want to end up having to do it myself.

So, now let’s move on to something that I am all too familiar with. They call it “catastrophizing”. In essence, it’s an irrational thought that a lot of us will have where we actually believe something is much worse than it is in reality. I catch myself doing this often. Blowing things out of proportion is like second nature to me, when it comes to negative events or comments in relation to myself. For instance, I will say “Oh my God, the house is such a disaster.” When in reality it’s just a few things that need to be picked up and placed where they belong. But, all I could see was the negative blown way out of proportion. And yes…I’m laughing at myself right this instant. Because this is so me. Catastrophizing though only adds fuel to the fire, which just adds to the anxiety that we already have in our lives. So, this is something I have to work on. This is something that I can improve on and will. Because my sanity depends on it.

You may not know this. I didn’t know this. But, the Serenity Prayer is often used to help people who catastrophize things. And if this is you, and you have that kind of Faith – maybe it would help you, too! Even if you don’t have that kind of Faith, the words make perfect sense and you may still find comfort in them.

That only leaves me with fear. Fear is nothing but an anxious feeling caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience. And get this – the event or experience will most likely NOT EVEN OCCUR. Remember that when you’re afraid. Sure, there are instances where it will be in direct reaction to something…that’s not the kind of fear that I’m talking about though. The kind of fear I’m talking about is something like the fear of change.

And so we’ve come full circle now, when I say – in order to break free from fear, we have to then let go of control.

As I type this out, it sounds so much deeper than it actually is. But, it’s still true. And quite frankly, easy to do once you make the decision to do it. That’s the trick though; you have to want to do it. I don’t know about you, but as soon as that meant some of my anxiety would go away, I was on board with making that decision. I don’t need more anxiety than I already have!

So, here are some ways that I have learned to let go of the control.

Change your mindset. This is going to take practice and time. If you’ve made the decision to change, you’ll be more than willing to make time to practice it. But, this means you will have to stop being a perfectionist and understand that we all make ‘mistakes’. I have learned to become more comfortable with letting things go a bit and allowing someone else to take the wheel for me and drive. It might be uncomfortable at first, but in the end, it sure does take some of the load off.
Work on Yourself. Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see? I see a hot mess when I look into mine. But, that’s not going to get me anywhere good. So, the idea here is to create a sense of self-worth and to grow your self-esteem. If you have more confidence, you’ll be more certain of your decisions and also put that confidence into others.
Delegate Tasks. Now this isn’t saying that you need to put your entire workload onto the next person. But, it is saying that it is okay for you to ask for help from time to time; or even allow someone to assist you if they’ve offered. Let’s face it, the weight of the world is heavy at times and our to-do lists can get mighty lengthy. If you have children, a spouse or partner…anyone, don’t be afraid to assign them duties or items to check off that to-do list! I have a hard time asking for help. But, I’m learning that swallowing my pride and allowing for the assistance is a weight lifted off of my shoulders. Sometimes, things even get done more quickly than if I would have taken them all on myself!

Let’s not be afraid of change. I know I can’t afford to fear it. I need it in my life…and a lot of it. But, let that change move you in the right direction. It should be a positive direction with your end goal in mind. I’m not afraid anymore. No fear. And I’m certainly no longer afraid of change. I’ve seen the difference the tiniest of changes can make in my life. I’ve finally looked that monster in the eyes and told it I’m the one in charge now!

Irrational Thoughts That Cause Stress

By catastrophizing and thinking irrationally, we only cause ourselves more stress in the end. I’m guilty of being irrational in highly emotional situations. Hell, I’ll even go as far to say I can be irrational when I’m being stubborn. If any of the following thoughts pop up in your head, consider that you may not be thinking clearly:

It is essential to be loved/liked by everyone all of the time.
I can’t stand for anyone to be angry with me or to dislike me.
I must always be competent.
Making a mistake is terrible!
Every problem has a perfect solution.
I can’t change the way I am/think/feel.
I must not show weakness or cry.
Strong people do not ask for help.
Everything is within my control.
Everyone should see things the way that I do.
I am always right.
People should do what I want because they love me.
The world ought to be fair.

In most cases, these are all unrealistic expectations. I know first hand that it was not easy for me to ask for the help that I am now receiving. And I know that it takes a damned strong person to seek help when they need it. Don’t let pride get in your way. Ever. Emotions are nothing to be ashamed of, you are not always right, and mistakes do happen…we are human after all.

By relinquishing some control and thinking more clearly, you and I will both be leading lives that are at the very least, slightly less stressful.

Tag: control

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