I’m excited to share with you this beautiful article by Kathryn Orford who has over the past 30 years, empowered thousands of people to believe in their innate ability to realize their goals. After I read her article, I found this photo of me as a little girl and I’m practicing positive self talk. Enjoy and leave your comments!
Self Esteem and Confidence
If we were to fill a huge auditorium with 1000 women and asked them to close their eyes and put up there hand if there was something about their body that they didn’t like, chances are the majority would raise their hand.
How quick are we to judge ourselves based on our body image, our hair (or lack of) our facial features etc…….? And how incredibly disempowering is it? It perpetuates the pattern of feeling inadequate. And depletes our self esteem and confidence.
So I strongly encourage you to STOP THE BEHAVIOR right now.
But for most of you, before you can make that decision you may need to understand WHY you do this to yourself? WHERE and WHO you learnt it from? And WHAT it’s stopping you from achieving.
Then once we’ve established answers to those questions we can move on to the best part………………HOW to stop it once and for all!
So lets talk about WHY we do this to ourselves. Can you remember the first time you judged your self? Chances are it was a while ago? In fact I’m guessing most of you will find it hard to pin point exactly when you starting doing this incredibly disempowering behavior.
WHERE and WHO do you think you learnt it from? The Media certainly has a lot to answer for with its obsession about who’s go the perfect body, which celebrity got their post baby body back and who didn’t. Who’s got cellulite, who’s looking anorexic, overweight, sexy, totally ripped etc….
But its highly likely that you learnt to criticize yourself a long time ago.
We come into this world as tiny babies full of love, joy and positive anticipation. We know nothing about judging our selves or other or feeling “not good enough, attractive enough, slim enough etc…..” because as babies we know who we are is enough! And that our needs are important.
So what happened?
For most of us somewhere between the age of 18 months and 2 years of age we received our first piece of negative feedback. And it came as a huge shock, because up until then all we had been on the receiving end of was love, positive reinforcement and encouragement. Our brains were nowhere near developed enough to realize that the negative feedback was just about a behavior we were doing and not who we were. So began the process of feeling “flawed” in some way.
Are you familiar with the name Jack Canfield? He’s the guy that co authored all of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Books and also featured in the movie The Secret. He’s also one of the top Success Coaches in the world.
In 1982 he researched how many negative and how many positive comments a young pre-schooler receives each day. He found that on average, a pre-school aged child received 460 negative or critical comments and only 75 positive or supportive comments. Now that’s both scary and very revealing!!
So in one week that’s 3,220 negative comments and 525 positive ones.
In a month that equates to 14,260 negative comments and 2,325 positive ones.
Over a year that adds up to 171,120 negative comments and only 27,900 positive comments. And by the time we’re 8 years old we’ll have received an average of 102,006,720 negative comments and only 167,400 positive ones.
Is it any wonder then as adults that we’re going about our lives feeling “not good enough?” But we try not to show it to the rest of the world, and create a “persona” that isn’t who we really are. Its more like an invisible suit of armor that we wear to protect ourselves from more negative feedback. And unfortunately until we “wake up” and take charge of our self esteem and self worth we perpetuate the pattern by criticizing ourselves on a daily basis.
The great news is that YOU’RE IN A POSITION TO CLAIM BACK YOUR SELF ESTEEM AND SELF WORTH right now and change that pattern for good.
Repeat after me “I am not my body.” “I am not my behaviors.” “Who I am is a magnificent human being.” “I am a GIFT to the world!”
Chances are your Negative Self Talk chimed in with some smart ass comment to negate what you just said? If not, that’s fantastic. If on the other hand it did, how would you like to learn how to Re-Program your Negative Self Talk and turn it into a Cheer Squad?
Click on the link below and you’ll find a video of me teaching you exactly how to go about it.
http://theconfidencecoach.net.au/resources_videos.html
Another thing you can do to re-claim your self esteem and self worth is to reconnect with your Inner Child.
EXERCISE
Find a favorite picture of yourself aged somewhere between 6-18 months of age. Put a copy up in your bathroom or bedroom. Look into that tiny babies eyes and reassure them that you will never desert them again. Tell them that you’re sorry you abandoned them and that from this day on you will treat them with the love and respect that they deserve. Some of you might find you start crying. And that’s to be expected. Allow the tears to flow as healing is occurring on a deep level.
Every morning as you start your day, look into your tiny child’s eyes and tell them you love them and that you’ll look after them and treat them with respect. Carry a copy of your picture in your wallet as a constant reminder to be gentle on yourself.
Surround yourself with people that have strong self esteem. Who we hang out with we become.
Every time your critical voice chimes in, use your new found skills to reprogram it and turn it into a cheer squad. Research in Neuro Science has proven that neurons that fire together wire together. So be persistent. You’ll see in the picture below dendrites in our brain creating new neural pathways.
Kathryn Orford
Playful Spirit, Resilient Goddess, Visionary
As a Peak Performance Coach, Author and Speaker Kathryn shares her journey from feeling suicidal to living the life of her dreams.
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