Tired of missed opportunities?

Your self esteem is your subjective assessment of your value as a human being. It is formed on part by the feedback we get from others, but it is formed to an even larger extent by our beliefs and how they serve as filters for the feedback we get.

Possible Causes of low self esteem

A lack of self esteem is often something that is deeply rooted in a person’s past. It can be a style of thinking inherited from judgmental parents, who continually put their  child down to persuade her to work harder. This can lead to the acquirement of a critical inner voice which produces internal fear and feelings of self-doubt.

Fear of failure is an immobilizing condition, that is the product of past negative programming. People fear that they will not be able to accomplish certain tasks because they are not worthy of accomplishing them. Furthermore, they can tell themselves that if they manage to succeed at one level, they will only then have to succeed at a higher level the next time.

The Benefits of Hypnotherapy

One way to improve your self esteem is through hypnotic suggestions where you re-programme your subconscious mind to remove any past negative programming.

Hypnosis can be used to banish the critic on your shoulder so that you see yourself in the most positive light possible.

Rather than putting up road blocks and saying you cannot do something, hypnotherapy can implant positive thoughts such as “I can do it”, “I have the energy”, or “I am just right for the job”.

Through positive suggestions given during hypnosis you can start to see yourself as confident, and become certain of your true own abilities and talents.

Hypnosis enhances skill acquisition, encourages a willingness to try new behaviours, and empowers you to feel better about yourself as you come to better “own” the changes you make.

Photo:Flickr Creative Commons From Sukanto…

If you’ve been following “Smallville: Superman: The Early Years”, then no doubt you will know that Clarke Kent, aka young Superman has been having trouble flying because he’s frightened of heights!

Does Superman have low self-esteem? If he does, then how does he know? More importantly, how does he maintain that self image of himself?

We all have images of ourselves, we may see ourselves for example as highly confident or painfully shy.
What I am trying to get at here is, how do we know and how do we maintain that self-image of ourselves? We humans have five physical senses that we use to orientate in the physical world. Everything we do in the world is encoded using these five senses. Our memories are also encoded using these five senses, they have to be, there’s nothing else.

Here’s what I’m getting at, do we literally have an internal (subconscious) self-image of ourselves? We may not be aware of this image consciously, but it influences our daily behaviour.

The most exciting aspect of this is, can that image be changed and hence our behaviour will automatically change. This image is formed with our interaction with the world and with others and continues to change. We are usually not aware of that image. Sometimes that image may be stuck?

Case Example.

A client comes and says they are stuck. After some work, the clients internal self-image is found to be a Black Panther in an iron cage. When that image is changed and the Black Panther is now in the forest, free to roam, to climb trees, feel the ground underneath it, the sun against its face and smell the air.The client reports that for some reason they no longer feel stuck….

Superman grows up to be able to fly faster than a speeding bullet and his internal image is that of a man of steel.

Flickr Creative Commons image by Xurble

Ever since the Olympic Games begun at Olympia in Greece in 776 BC , runners from around the world have been competing against each other. After 2 millennia, runners with gold medals and broken world records and others with the highest achievement, yet no-one had done the mile within 4 minutes. Was this ever going to be possible?

In fact many of the coaches had actually believed that the attempt could actually result in physical death, that the heart would not be able to cope.

When Roger Bannister an Oxford university student finally broke the 4 minute mile on May 6^th 1954, within a few weeks several other runners had run the mile within 4 minutes.

How was this possible? Did the entire human race all of a sudden get physically faster in the summer of 1954?

No they didn’t, but what happened?

You see Roger didn’t listen to what people had said and he knew what needed to be conquered was not the physically mile, but the mental mile that existing in his head.  The world’s athletes consciously or even subconsciously simply didn’t believe that it could be done, they had made up their minds that they had reached the peak of human physical speed.

But once this fact had been proven wrong, and runners across the world said that if Roger Bannister can do it, then so can we.

Our beliefs are a very powerful force on our behaviour. It is common wisdom that if you really believe that you can do something then you will, and if you believe something is impossible no amount of effort will convince you that it can be accomplished.

Beliefs like “it’s too late now”, “there’s nothing I can do anyway”, I’m a victim..”  can often limit us from fulfilling our full potential.

Limiting beliefs are not set in concrete, they were not there when you were born, you learnt them as you grew up from your elders.

Beliefs are kept in our subconscious mind and like habits, they run automatically behind the scenes without any conscious effort on your part.

Most of your beliefs serve you well, it’s the limiting ones we’re concerned about.

Beliefs can be changed, or is it your belief that they cannot?

Flickr Creative Commons image by sashafatcat