Improving Self-Esteem

Overcoming Doubt

My last post was about doubt and a little on how to over come it. This time, I want to dig a little deeper in how one might try and overcome it. To see if I can't flesh out a process a little more, and maybe help anyone out there that might be having some issues with self-esteem or doubt. I myself (as of the time of the writing) recently went through an episode of depression, doubt, anxiety and fear. It all sort of culminated into an ugly moment in my life, and I struggled to find my way out of the darkness.

For most of my life, I have struggled with self-esteem issues. Always looking at myself as if I was unworthy or inadequate. Never quite measuring up to the standard of things, a born failure if you will. I would have my good days, sure, but they usually proceeded a bad day, which would quickly put a lid on any optimism I might have acquired during those good times. A victim of circumstances, always allowing the bad in my life to carry more weight then the good.

A couple of months ago, I figured something out about my life. Something that in-fact would change my whole world. It was like a light-bulb had finally turned on, and I could see everything more clearly, which allowed me to put my energies in the right places to help fix my life. It was great! Everything was clicking. Like I was the guy from the movie Limitless. I literally became faster, smarter, stronger, happier, less stressed and fatigued, and I for some reason, didn't need as much food or sleep to get me through the day, with no ill-effects. I felt 120% better! Like a whole new person was born.

Of course this was short lived. A week or two into my new found happiness, when then something happened (which I wont go into) and suddenly, the walls around my new life buckled and the ceiling collapsed hard on me. Hitting rock bottom after climbing so high was very difficult to deal with. I went from living in a dream world, to living in a nightmare. I was tormented by fears and doubt, which lead to depression, and depression further fed the fears. My mind swirled with images and thoughts derived from these fears. It swallowed my mind, turning it against me. I couldn't control these thoughts, or push them out of my head. They even began to wake me in the middle of the night, or prevent me from sleeping in the first place. It was pretty bad.

All I wanted to do was return to being happy, feeling confident and full of energy. I figured the best way to do this was to retrace my steps on how it managed it the first time. But there was a problem. I suddenly couldn't remember how I did it. Only bits and pieces of it remained, but most of the path I took to achieve it vanished from my mind. It was unbelievable to me. During that great period, only weeks prior, I had spent most of my waking days just thinking about how good I felt, and even how I managed it. I even meditated on it, everyday! Yet now, when I needed it the most, I couldn't remember...

All I remembered about it was, that I focused on myself above everything else, it involved the subconscious mind, as well as the Soul, and energy. But now, when I thought about those things, they felt so distant from me. Like petty wishful thinking. Even though I remembered not only believing in these things, but also being aware of them, and feeling them. It was like I was in touch with some deep part of me. But now, I felt like it was all an illusion. A trick of the mind I played on myself. Even though deep down, I knew it wasn't.

So I was trying to juggle retracing my steps and dealing with my depression at the same time. Trying to remember how I came to a point in which I was able to reach some deep place inside me, and begin to turn my negative beliefs around into positive ones. I spent weeks on it. Everyday dedicating it to just finding my way again. And everyday, coming up with only the same bits and pieces that I already knew, and they felt empty. I kept trying to believe in myself, and looking to the future with hope, but it did feel hopeless. After a while, it began to stress my body, and stress developed in the back of my head and neck, which made matters worse. Finally after a couple of weeks, I began recalling a few more memories. Like, everything tormenting my mind was just crap. Crap that needed to be cleared out because it was fear based, and nothing more. Others included the importance of energy in your physical, emotional and psychological health.

Finally I began to remember more, and here is how I did it.

We as a people are conditioned from an early age to be subjected to the outside world. We get our happiness, love and confidence from the experiences around us, and it doesn't need to be that way. I'll give an example. Lets say today is an average day for you, and you are feeling pretty neutral, not too good, but not too bad though either. Suddenly, someone comes up to you and pays you a compliment, one that hits you just right, and suddenly you are feeling better and happier!

So, why are you feeling better now as opposed to a few moments before the compliment? It's not that the person gave you happiness. It's not even that the person is responsible for your happiness. It was all you. You see, when the person in the example above, complimented you, YOU responded internally. It's partially psychological, because we aren't really taught to be that independent. We are taught to mostly respond to outside stimulus, and not as much inside stimulus. Even though that feeling of happiness was always within you. I mean, it came from you, right? It had to be in there to be felt and experienced in the first place, right?

So if that feeling, or any feeling you want for that matter, is already inside of you, why can't we call them up on demand when we want them? Because we are conditioned to be responsive to the outside world, not the inside world. However, if you focus a bit more on responding to yourself, and less on the outside world, you could feel as you wish, all the time. It's a matter of reevaluating where you should put the most authority in your life. Why can't YOU make YOU feel happier? What could possibly be standing in the way?

Maybe believe in yourself? Perhaps you respond to others more then yourself because you believe in them more then you? Ever ask yourself why that might be the case? Maybe because everyone else looks to them (figuratively speaking) or others as an authority, so perhaps you should too? Then again, it was probably 'them' that convinced you to trust 'them' over yourself in the first place.

So it just becomes a matter of learning to respond to yourself a bit more. Learn to feel happier because you want to. Not needing something outside yourself to accomplish it, because it's already within you in the first place, or else you couldn't experience it. Once you begin to respond to yourself, you will begin to believe in yourself, and you will feel like your thoughts and feelings matter the most to you, and you will have authority over your own life. You will feel centered and grounded in yourself.

Once you pop the lid, things really begin to pour. You may even start to challenge other negative beliefs. Start asking yourself why you can't feel smarter, or calmer, or have more energy to do things, or anything you want really. You could start changing everything you don't like about yourself. You are effectively a walking psycho-energetic being, and everything is energy. So imagine what you could do if you could change your mind around, and spend all that energy on positively reinforcing yourself. Why not, right? After all, it is your life.

Meditation helps wonders with this too. Although, the prospect of sitting still while contemplating yourself may not sound all the thrilling, it does allow you to focus your mind on just the task at hand with no other distractions, so you can dig deeply into yourself and turn things around. You aim is to simply get yourself to respond to yourself, on as deep of a level as you can. Don't stress over it, stay as relaxed as possible, and you begin to notice as you do this that you are almost talking to yourself on a deep level. I kind of looked at it as giving myself therapy. And after a while, meditation became quite pleasant, because I was responding to myself more and I could then make meditation feel however I wanted it to feel. Even being able to tell aches and pains to go away, because I held a connection with some deeper part of me.

Anyways,

I hope this was at least mildly helpful.

Hope you enjoyed!

Later...

The Folly of Doubt

Doubt

I figured I would just a ramble on a little bit about doubt.  I recently experienced a fit of doubt, it often comes with other emotional side effects, such as; Depression, anxiety, fear, emptiness, loneliness, lack of self-worth and more.  I guess I always had that feeling that once a hurdle was overcome once, it was in my past, safely overcome and dealt with, so it may never cross my path again.  But that was probably ignorant of me, but I did like to believe once something was accomplished, it was done, and need not be handled a second time.  I’m childish in that way I guess.

But the truth is, I have to face it on a weekly basis.  Something always pops up during the week that makes me stop and question.  A lot of times, it’s a site or information I read on the internet somewhere, that conflicts with an idea or belief I had.  I wont just accept anything that I run across, it has to bring something to the table to stimulate my questioning.  Whether it be pictures, or evidence, or wording, it’s always something.  But, most often, it’s really none of these, just me who gets in my own way.  Pictures don’t actually sway me much, but a video can.  I go to youtube a lot and watch all kinds of videos, it’s a nice hobby to pass the time.  Evidence can quickly catch my attention, especially people who claim to have evidence against something I believe.

When it comes down to evidence, it usually involves tests, or studies science has done.  Then people quickly run and grab the findings and point to different parts of the results to emphasize their claim by pointing out evidence.  This can be very confusing when you go to different sites or sources pointing to the same tests and studies, but different parts of it, to back up their claims.  For instance, a skeptic could make a video showing a specific part of the test or study, showing how something is wrong, or fake or whatever.  If they ’word’ their video correctly, they can create a compelling case against something you thought was real, or something you just personally believed in, which in turn, can and probably will create doubt.

Wording is so important when it comes to expressing what you believe in, and trying to get others to believe in it too.  This is especially true when the level of vocabulary is higher then your own, it has a tendency to bring authority to the subject, and therefore is more inclined to pull upon your will and beliefs, making it waver.  No worries from me though, I suck at wording.  If you stop and think about the things in life that make you stop and question, it generally involves 2 to 3 things or more.  Evidence, Wording and Confidence.

Confidence to me is one the most important things, but it can also easily be faked.  Although on it’s own, it’s worthless, it is what makes evidence and wording shine.  Let’s take the video example from above and apply it a second time.  Let’s say, you believe in Psychic Abilities, I figured it would be fitting… And you’re on youtube cruising around looking at videos, and your stumble across a video that claims to prove all psychic phenomena are fake, so out of curiosity, you give it a look.  The video has all three, evidence wording and confidence from the presenter, to make the video a smooth representation.  To you, the person doing the video gives off the feel that he/she knows what it is he/she is talking about.  The person is confident in presenting this evidence, wording it elegantly.  The video itself may have even branched into areas you haven’t looked into yet, and this adds more pressure to your beliefs to hold it’s ground.

This happens to me all the time.  I run across places or information that is presented to me in a way that is slightly over my head, in a confident and elegant fashion.  It even makes me feel a bit dumb from time to time, or maybe makes me question if I jumped before I looked ahead to see if I had gathered all the information to make a well informed decision about what I was getting into and what I decided to believe in.  In fact, some places have been so good at it, for a short time, I did drop everything I believed in and took up what they where saying as truth.  They had the evidence after all, they definitely gave me the impression they knew what they where talking about, as well and giving me the impression I wasn’t fully informed, or I was even duped into believing in something that was completely fake, as if I had been had….

I will be the first to admit, I’m not the strongest willed person, and I consider myself more open minded then many people around me.  Hell, I sometimes even waver at times when people are just confident in what they say, even if they can’t back up their claims.  Worst yet is, if someone purposes an idea that conflicts with mine, my brain seems to lock up, as if it seized.  The harder I try to dispute such claims, the more it locks up.  The social norm can also be a factor.  People have a  tendency to judge you on small things, and then label you based on a single attribute of yours, this can and has caused problems with me.  So after years of this, I began to wonder if I was right, or if I was wrong.  If I was right, how do I dispute it to those so willing to crush my beliefs.

I honestly can’t answer that.  The best advice I can give you, is if you are having doubt, go out and do more looking around in the area.  I know now, I will never be able to sit down and dispute a topic to the degree others can, I’m just not that good.  The only offense I really have is defense.  Learn what I can and try and understand what I can.  For instance, I know if two different people look at the findings of a study or test run by science regarding a topic such as psychic phenomena, that each person can see different results.  People see and believe what they want to see and believe.  People are biased like that.  I know for instance that if I run across a video that supports psychic phenomena, I will be more inclined to believe it then toss it aside, the only exception being it was so poor or too wild of a story to be real in any way.  But my personality also likes to give people the benefit of the doubt.

There’s only one way I fight evidence, and that’s with evidence.  First, I begin to doubt, and wonder if it’s true, so I go take a look.  And I usually look in the skeptics area first… what do they have to bring to the table that I have overlooked.  I try to read up on where they are standing the best that I can, but I always keep an eye out for holes in their argument.  If I find anything suspicious, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it, I will then begin to look at their claims more closely, specifically trying to find a source of information that is trustworthy that is the least biased, that goes over the case study or experiment from beginning to end, and then I draw my own conclusion.  The second and probably best way to gather evidence is through personal experience.

Personal experience is so very important.  First you need to understand, that what ever you feel or uncover, is for you and you alone.  You can’t really hand out personal experience as the word of god.  People don’t take personal experiences as fact.  Hell, most will try and use it against you.  But at the end of the day, it has to be important to you.  You, after all, did have the experience, so on some level it was real… wasn’t it?  Only you can say yes or no, no one else can say it for you, because it wasn’t them who had the experience, was it. 

Anyways, I’m starting to run in circles I think now.  Somewhere along the lines here I lost track of where I was going and I think it just turned into me venting a bit.  But I will leave you with this.  Science is leaning more and more closer to the paranormal each day.  It’s a subject up till recently was regarded as myth.  I’ve found that many studies that presumably proved that any psychic ability or phenomena was fake, either did the opposite, and they only showed the low points or tried to explain the findings as incoherent anomalies.  Or, the test or study either didn’t exist at all, or wasn’t specifically done for psychic phenomena.  I also know that people don’t know everything.  So if someone shows me compelling evidence against or for something, I know that test was done with the information we have available right now, and the results where scrutinized by methods based off what we know right now.  So they could have missed something key completely.

Lastly, a lot of people tell me one thing or another about something they’ve read about how it’s fake.  Second hand information is never completely trustworthy regardless of the source.  I do a lot of reading and give people the benefit of the doubt when I read or watch something, but at the end of the day, if all I do is watch and read then take what they say as truth, then I have lied if I pass it off to the next guy as truth as well.  This is why personal experience is so important, if nothing else but to yourself.  If they say something is someway, and I take it and tell it to the next guy without trying it myself, then how can I be sure what I’m saying is even true?  So understanding that a lot of what people say to you is just second hand information being passed on again, makes it a little easier to deal with, even if you can’t immediately dispute it. 

Anyways, that’s my little ramble… you don’t have to take it to heart… oh damn, I forgot one major doubt.  Just plain ol’ self doubt.  For no apparent reason you maybe begin to question if your ability to do something.  Ever get the feeling like, “Ya, I know it exists, but maybe it’s just that ‘I’ can’t do it”.  This question can pester me to death when I begin something new.  This doubt stems purely from your own strength and will.  The best way I find to turn this around, is to sit on it.  Dwell on the idea that you might not be able to.  Try to feel your emotional state at the moment.  You might realize that it’s just your emotions talking, maybe out of frustration, fear or something else.  Once I realize my emotions are playing a big part, I slowly try and turn it around.  One way I do this is by re-evaluating what I believe in and why, and how I came to believing in it.  Another way is I question why I believe I don’t believe I can do it, and see if I can find evidence somewhere to suggests I can.  This doesn’t have to be about the subject in question specifically, sometimes I look at other things in my life that I at first didn’t believe I could do, but eventually ended up doing.  Or, I try and figure out why I can’t do it, and begin to fix whatever is stopping me in the first place.

Doubt will likely continually afflict you throughout your life, and it likely will be where your spirits are at the moment.  Are they low or are the high.  I personally believe doubt creates growth, in one way or another.   Though I don’t personally believe there is some miracle cure to doubt, I do believe there are ways to help alleviate the potency or even turn it around.  Though, I’m still looking for the miracle cure to doubt and instant self belief where it never wavers.  Or the perfect formula to psychic and spiritual potential, I know that at the end of the day, it will have to be me walking on my path, discovering myself and dealing with my own hurdles that allow me to progress and grow and come to my own beliefs in my own way.  But, I still have a tendency to want to look else where at those who are where I want to be, and have them show me how they did it.

 I know I can learn from them, but I also must learn to apply what they tell me in my own way…

Anyways, I think I’m done… I doubt this was helpful (No pun intended…?) but I do know that many people are afflicted with doubt, and if nothing else, at least you know your not alone… It affects everyone, and by overcoming it, hopefully we grow just a little…

Phew... long post...

Later...