| If there is any such thing as a universal evil or sin, it is the words: "I can't change."
–Dr. Nathaniel Branden, pioneer in self-esteem This is the second in a series of articles to help readers learn to modify their self-esteem through their own efforts. The step-by-step discussion of the principles presented have come from my clients' most successful changes. However, the final decision to change or not to change must come from you.
Assume Low Self-Esteem Is Alterable
Difficult relationships are the leading reason you aren't able to focus on needed changes. Not all problems can be blamed on difficult people, but unhelpful anger, in the guise of rejection, resentment, and revenge, quickly diverts your attention away from being able to focus on your goals, choices, and competencies. Low self-esteem can be conquered.
Think of negative people as anti-change. Keep your energy high by conquering negative emotions that reinforce low self-esteem. Don't let the fear of change add more frustration to your life. The solution to negativity? When you do get uptight, focus your thinking inward to find your growth answers. Try out each good idea that comes your way, and you just might be able to raise your self-esteem to new heights.
Looking At – Not Out For – Number One
What must you know about mastering the fears and frustrations that accompany self-change, and what must you know to keep moving forward instead of giving up when you hit a bump in the road?
As a change-expert, you have learned that your answers lie within, like mounds of gold that are hidden under the belly of a sleeping dragon. Yet, somehow, you must find your way into, and back out of, the lair of negative emotions without being eaten alive.
There is no other way to grow.
The positive purpose of every negative emotion is to force you to think clearly about changing, even when you might not want to. Take a good look at yourself when you feel frustrated. Developing adequate self-esteem requires you to LOOK AT #1 in order to conquer fears that block success.
Self-worth is diminished with these three words: I CAN'T CHANGE. Dr. Nathaniel Branden, who has studied and written about self-esteem for over forty years, contends that those three words are pockmarked and worm-holed with evil. Strong words, indeed, from a rational scientist.
Only the mastery of forbidden emotions can release you from CAN'Tism. You must not fear any feeling. Rather, you must make even anger into a friend in order to master the tasks and risks of professional and personal happiness, intimacy, and love. Negative emotions are meant to be a bleak and rough reminder that YOU CAN, TOO, CHANGE!
Take, for example, anger. Unprocessed anger erases your secret strengths, and suppressed anger predictably lowers your self-esteem. You must own up to your strengths and anger, or risk being controlled by them. Learn equally from love and frustration to bolster high self-esteem. Managing high self-esteem in relationships, personal and professional, means learning something new from every failure, hurt, and rejection instead of being alarmed and disarmed by these negative emotions. Men and women alike must learn to communicate better to stop reinforcing the fear that the opposite sex cannot be trusted to volunteer to change.
Masters of change keep traveling through lonely, dark places, even when they are filled with fear. No feeling is too strong or too petty to ignore. All feelings are created equal: fear/trust, resentment/intimacy, jealousy/pride, pain/happiness, revenge/success, anger/self-esteem, rejection/confidence…and so on. Your change-challenge: the more you can regulate negative emotions, the more likely you are to change at your own healing speed and subsequently build high self-esteem. Low self-esteem can be defeated!
Self-worth is diminished when frustration dominates your life, but underneath the belly of futility lays the chance to reclaim your ability to change. High self-esteem means challenging the fear of change by getting to know the inner self. Change-experts have learned to master the art of looking deep down into the self-interior to find curative answers to heal the spirit and to gaze at the genuine self, calling for positive actions and attitudes. |
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