Your self-esteem should come from your 'inner self'!
Originally posted by StockTrader
How can you put your past into perspective so you're ok about it. The NLP and Tony Robbins techniques I know haven't done it so far.
This is kind of long, but I hope it alleviates the pain of your past, if just a little and I hope it may be the solution to your future woes. Just my insight!
I understand why you are still thinking about it. It is because you see it as a time of loss opportunity to be happy, a time that you will not get back - and you have thoughts of "what if I would have done this or that", or "I should have had higher self-esteem and not been so down to let it affect my social life and relationships".
It is ok to reflect back and to still harbor some regrets. This is normal. I do it all the time. But what you must not do is let it affect your present state of mind and well-being. This is how you feel 'ok' about your past. You must learn from it and make a vow never to return to such a state of mind.
Your biggest enemy was your own thinking! And it is this thinking that must be changed to find a permanent solution. You put your self-esteem and total worth as a person and solely based it on one factor, your physical form and this happened to be the ‘thing’ that defined you and your worth to others.
The physical form is what you and others see with your eyes, but the more important form that makes you who you truly are is your inner self that has nothing to do with your physical body, and can only be seen with your mind. It is your ‘inner spiritual’ self that gives you your ‘true’ worth And this is what you should see, as a projection, when looking at yourself in the mental mirror. This is where you should judge your self worth! Your focus was on the wrong form!!
Think about it. You have people that have a beautiful physical form, face and/or body, but can you tell me what they did to receive such a gift? Absolutely nothing! It was given to them. Those who are proud of their body and looks, and get their self-esteem from their physical form are vain people, because they did nothing of merit to attain it. Yet these people adapt well socially because they derive their confidence from their physical form, which is valued by those in their same social circle.
Now let’s look at those who were not blessed with such beauty in their bodily form (you). How do you think you are to adapt socially if you put your self worth solely on your physical form. You know the answer to this. You will fail miserably, and such was the case.
Now let’s look at those who are physically in a wretched condition (your prior state), but now don’t tie your self worth to your physical form, but rather tie it to your inner form. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll define this ‘inner form’ as the things that you do control, such as your attitude, and how you treat others, your motivation to do well in all that you do, etc…
How would you view yourself now? How would others see you, if your self-worth was derived from within and not from without? If instead of seeing your face and body in a physical mirror, you now see yourself as the person that you really are in your mental mirror, how will this have changed your self-esteem? How about if you would have socialized with those who valued your 'inner' form more so than your outer form. You would have been socially accepted! This would have been a much better crowd to associate yourself with.
If you would have valued your inner worth more highly and have rated it over your physical bodily form, you would have had a much more confidence and a totally different perspective and outlook on your social life, and your interactions with others would have been at a different and a higher plane. Your self-esteem would have been held intact because it wasn’t based on a factor that you couldn’t control (physical genetics), but rather on something you could control – your actions (i.e. how you treat and respect yourself and others)!!!
Here is what you should do…
Write down all the ill feelings and ill thinking you had back then. Now next to them list why you had these bad feelings or thought this way. Are there any on the list that you still have today? If so, why? What must you do to resolve them?
Now in another piece of paper write down all the things that you have 'learned' from these experiences. Put this in a handy place where you can always look to it for a lesson, when you feel down. On occasion, see if you are reverting back to any of the same feelings that you had in your past.
Now, here is how you make your past 'ok.
List all the 'missed opportunities' in life' that were cause by your low self-esteem.
For example,
1. "Made no new friends in 5 years."
Now to make up for this failure in your past, you must write down a goal that will commpensate by twofold for the missed opportunities of the past, and what action you must take to make this happen. Such as,
A. Goal ...I will make 5 new friends in the next 6 months
B' How...I will get membership at gym and get a sparring/workout
partner, a basketball partner, a tennis partner etc..
For each 'missed opportunity' of happiness from the past write down a goal and make an 'accelerated' action plan that will 'make up' time, so to speak, of your lost time.
