Muscles: Self-esteem muscles

If you have come into contact with your deepest core of fear, you have the courage to be vulnerable. You are probably aware of your protections linked to shame, anger and sadness. Read more about shame, sadness and anger.

Our ego, ie. our radio, (read more about the radio concept here) is designed for one thing: survival! This has helped humanity from dying out but has also stopped us from personal growth. The ego has become in charge of your life and demands your total loyalty at every level to ensure its continuation.

So what gives you the best chance of basic survival? To live a life with the least possible risk? Doing the same thing over and over and over again? What would make your Radio / Ego “safe” would be to never try anything new and to keep you at its beck and call. Fear is therefore the radio’s greatest protection mechanism; so it will use it at every opportunity to keep you in line. So If you are feeling fear right now, it could mean that you are on the brink of changing!

The way we feel fear is often a feeling of resistance

Every time you have gone through a big change in your life: got married, changed jobs, moved to another city, divorced, etc., there is always a little fear or anxiety or apprehension. See if you can see that fear is a signal that you are on the right path. Fear is a way of you truly deciding whether something is for you or not. It gives you that breathing room to make the decision. For many though, fear is a terrifying mental state where they scare themselves into inaction.

Behavior linked to unconscious fear:

• People pleasing
• Confirmation seekers
• Co-dependence
• Indecision
• Manipulating
• Self-negation

Get to know your fears.
Who needs you?
Who do you need?

Now think for a moment: what if no one really needs you? How would that feel? Meaninglessness? It would be the death of a product, company or an industry. We build a lot of value, joy and confirmation around being needed, wanted. We may unknowingly have acquired a lot of projects, jobs, children, etc. so we can constantly feel needed. At the same time, we resist not being free to decide for ourselves what to do. Again, internal conflict. Fragmented. 

The deepest core of fear is the vulnerable truth about ourselves. The truth that we perhaps dare not look at, feel and absolutely do not want to reveal or show to others. We might even have hidden the truth about ourselves so much that we ourselves cannot even get in touch with it.

How does it feel to be unimportant and meaningless to others? 

Ego: “Why even find out? No, it’s best to be as far away from that feeling as possible.” The fear of death is linked to the feeling of unimportance in a way; it triggers the fear of being forgotten, the fear of oblivion. Because if I die, I will not exist, and if I do not exist – well, then I am in the complete climax of meaninglessness. Panic – right? Best not to talk about it or even think about it!

Some of us suffer from very low self-esteem – no positive feelings or recognition for ourselves. We can be divided here. Some of us can look at ourselves in the mirror and say I look good. The second part wants us to look again and again and again for assurance that it is true. 5% of us may know that we are enough and 95% may feel that we are not. 5% is your awareness. 95% is your subconscious. And as we all know now – it is the subconscious that controls us (read more about the inner child / the subconscious here). Where the will (conscious mind) and imagination (subconscious mind) compete, imagination always wins.

I’m smart, beautiful, creative, kind, loving, enterprising, humble, funny, curious, I’m a good dad, I’m fit. Maybe we can all say nice things about ourselves and believe in it. Even knowing that it’s true. The trick is that the inner child (the subconscious) often does not know and feel it. We therefore believe that we have to have other people around us who reinforce this. Who affirm us so we can feel worthy, happy or good.

Self-esteem equals Being okay with being yourself in all your emotions. It is also the recognition and regard you give to yourself for being you.

We must sooner or later, if we want to feel good, meet the inner child. Help it change perspectives. And help it be ok with all its emotions. When we practice this, we increase our self-esteem. we accept our self in all states of being.

What we do know is that not many people have good self-esteem!

Those who are the most successful and work the hardest. Most recognized. They may have come to success out of fear of not being good enough. Beating ourselves up and therefore performing and feeling bad, stressed and exhausted about it. It may have started with passion and joy but ended with anxiety and hard performance. People with burnout know this first hand.

An ordinary ingrained subconscious core belief that the Radio acts and speaks from is that we must not relax. If we do so, we lose the star shine, the money, the power, the beauty, and so on. And if we lose it, the emotions of meaninglessness, insignificance, unimportance will come back. Best to keep it up right? We might not be aware of this but this forms the core of our stress: wanting to appear in a specific way to others.

Our Radio’s biggest fear is that we are unimportant, insignificant and meaningless

What if being meaningless is the best thing that can happen to us? It may be hard at first for the Ego, but how would it feel if we were okay with being meaningless? Freedom right? If so, then maybe it would be huge and very meaningful again. Sometimes we have to walk the whole circle 360 degrees to get there.

What is your biggest resistance?

Reflect: What do you feel most resistance to? If you can surrender to the opposite of your belief then you have gone into the shadows, turned on the light and the training has begun

Conscious beliefs:

I do not have time.
It must make sense.
It must mean something.
Death is the worst thing that can happen.
I do not want to be alone.
I need money to be happy, feel good or be able to exist.

Subconscious unconscious beliefs:

I have to perform or give to be worth something.
Alone means having no value.
Being bored = nobody cares about me.
Rejected = Something is wrong with me.

What happens when all our behavior and protection from uncomfortable emotions are removed? What happens when we stand there with ourselves and there is no one to help, nothing to perform, nothing to sell?

Do you avoid or escape your fear?

The opposite – Seek the truth and learn from it.
“-Why are you rejecting me?”
“-Why do you not want me to work here?”
“-How do you like me?”
“-Why do you not want to be seen?”
“-Why do you not want to cooperate with me?”

Blind spot

Understanding for example, why someone said no to us can actually help us see our blind spot. Daring to ask why is very scary. As scary as rejecting and saying no to someone and telling them why.

See if you can ask the one who rejects you for the truth. Dare to look at it. Dare to stay in it. Dare to understand it. Dare to drop into your blind spot.

Knowing the truth can feel hard, but it also helps you move forward. Daring to ask is an act of self-love and it also characterizes self-esteem.

See if you can do the same for others in return. Share why you reject them.

With a trained Self-esteem Muscle, you can be in all your emotions and talk both about them and in them without escaping or blaming yourself or others. You can share your fears from a vulnerable place. Basically you are in touch with your emotions and also your fears.

Do you want to understand more how to train your self-esteem? Come to EQ Gym’s free session this Sunday on the subject, or work with a coach. You can find us here!

This is a guest post. Any opinions expressed are the writer’s own.