Improve my self-esteem

Ok, so I have taken ages to do this final tutorial. I guess it was because I knew it was the last one and that I wouldn’t get behind by not doing it and have a lot of catching up to do. Anyway, in this last tutorial it basically explained how I have to keep on doing what I have been doing in the past five tutorials.

“The best way of building lasting self confidence is to do things that make you surprised at your own ability. Typically, under-confident people have high standards so they don’t see little things as being worth much. SO PUSH IT!

This week I had to write down five situations where I felt I had improved in my self confidence. This was quite tricky, but eventually, with a bit of exagerating, I managed to reach five. Just one tutorial left now. Although I didn’t expect a huge change in my self esteem after doing these tutorials I guess I was hoping for a bit more. But I know that I haven’t been giving it 100%. It’s hard to give 100% when there is no one there supporting you when it gets tough and noone there to give you constructive critism or feedback.

In this tutorial I had to pretend that I will wake up the next day with all the self confidence that I am trying to achieve. I then had to write down things like:
How did I feel when I woke up in the morning;
How did I interact with others with this new self confidence I had;
How did I feel about the way I was before I got this self confidence etc…

I’ve found that these tutorials are doing more harm than good. Every time I complete one, instead of feeling better about myself I end up feeling really stupid and useless, and get frustrated with myself that I am not like everyone else. :-(

I’ve been having dumb dreams too which put me in a low mood for at least the morning. Like last night I had a dream that I was suffering depression again and in the dream I thought, well, this is right, this is the norm for me, it runs in the family, I’m supposed to be depressed my whole life, I don’t deserve happiness because I’m a failure at everything, etc etc etc. So of course, I wake up feeling a little less like the ray of sunshine that I should.

In this tutorial, I had to put my last two tutorials into practise. Easier said than done. I’m good at reading notes and writing things down but when it comes to putting them into practise, it’s a different story.

Exercise

This exercise builds up an unconscious pattern for confidence. One of the biggest problems with self confidence is that people spend their time trying to be less uncomfortable in a situation, or less nervous. Getting away from something is hard, and there’s no guarantee you’ll end up where you want to be.

Now, for the first confidence model on your list from Tutorial 2, (if there’s more than one), read carefully through what you wrote about them until you begin to build up a strong idea of them. Then, as long as you’re somewhere you won’t be disturbed for 5 minutes, close your eyes and imagine being with that person in the sort of situation where you admire their confidence.

The more relaxed you are, the better this works. Focus on the way their voice sounds, the way they look, how other people interact with them, the way they stand or sit, their facial expressions, gestures and so on.

Once you’ve got a good imagination of that person in your mind, then imagine merging with them, or drifting into them. Imagine what it’s like to be that person, seeing how others react to you, how they look at you, how they talk to you, how it feels to be that person.

Although this may seem very simple, it is startlingly effective. If you can ride a bike, you may remember a time when it was very hard to do. Then all of a sudden, it became easy. After that, even if you haven’t ridden a bike for years, you can hop back on one and off you go!

In this tutorial I had to think of one person that I think has self confidence in each of the areas I wrote down in my last tutorial where I lack self confidence. I had to write down what each person did that made me think they had self confidence. For example, I had to note down their posture, gestures, tone of voice, how they interacted with others and how others reacted to them.

This tutorial was basically just making me aware of what I think self confidence is. I had to define what self confidence means to me, individually, and then write down all the areas where I think I lack confidence. I also had to write down where I already had confidence. (That list was much shorter!) Lastly, I had to write down what I will be able to acheive once I have gained self confidence.

Well, this is going to be up here for long time because I’ve had low self-esteem for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure what has made me decide to do something about it now, but since something has, I’m going to go with it…

I had a look online for some self help stuff and found a free 6 week tutorial that gets emailed to me each week. (www.self-confidence.co.uk.) I intend to write on here how each tutorial went.