Many people have little regard for their own skills and capabilities. Some cannot even realize that there are many potential abilities within them just waiting to be activated to serve as solutions to any given problem or keys to actualize their long-held dreams. The reason why this happens is caused by having a low self-esteem.
Are you one of these people? Do you often say to yourself, “Why am I like this all the time?” or “What can I possibly do to bring out the best in me?” I’m quite certain there are many things you want to do with your life. You may want to visit many places, you may want people to admire your talent and recognize you for your skills, you may want to have more money to buy more things, or you may simply want to be loved by someone special. However, all of these will not be possible if you don’t pay attention to the most important element that can make all of these things happen. That element is your “self.”
This should be my first post after doing a major renovation of my blog, so I thought about creating a special article for my new visitors. The following items are some common techniques I’ve learned when I was trying to find ways to boost my own self-esteem years ago. All of these techniques can have powerful effects on your mind, and your mind is the tool you’re going to use to make significant changes to yourself, that’s why I’ve chosen to synthesize these two topics – mind power and self esteem. Let’s proceed, shall we?
1. Behavior modeling
As social beings, humans are deeply inclined to imitate one another. Little children most often learn to copy their parent’s behavior. Teens try to mirror the physical appearance of famous celebrities and musicians to get in with the latest trend. More mature individuals emulate scientific, political, historical, and other societal figures. Quite too often, people get stuck in the mush of social roles without being aware of how these roles affect their lives.
Have you recently asked yourself what kind of role you are trying to play within your social environment? Archetypal simulation, as complex as it may sound, is an influential factor in the development of human behavior. This means that the kind of people you look up to, the traits they have, and the characters they reveal in front of everyone, including you, have a great effect on your mind and inner self-esteem.
To boost your self-esteem, you can apply this method by writing down seven unique characteristics of the people you admire. Choose the characteristics that are uniquely and positively attributed to these people. For example, Albert Einstein was not only recognized for his genius, but also for his kind and friendly character. Assign each of the characteristics you’ve gathered to a particular day and label it “character of the day.” If you’re wondering about what you’re going to do with this, well I guess it’s quite obvious that you’re supposed to demonstrate the behavior you assigned to a certain day of the week. So, if you assigned “genius” for Monday, you are expected to act like a genius throughout the whole day. A month of doing this is guaranteed to give you surprising results.
2. Autosuggestion
Can you tell me what or how you feel when you see the words
“rich,” “famous,” “wealthy,” “popular,” “admired,” and “successful?” Yeah, I thought so. Does it not give you a bit of pump in your blood? Well, I understand that the words “sex” and “orgasm” are more powerful in giving you a pump, but we’re not talking about that. But you felt that too, didn’t you?
Autosuggestion works by sending out commands to your autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system or ANS is the part of your nervous system that operates principally below the level of consciousness. You may be familiar with the terms placebo-effect and self-hypnosis. These are just some of its derivatives, but ultimately the purpose of these methods is to give you results by changing your beliefs.
Our beliefs rest inside our superego or between the unconscious and the conscious part of our minds. By repetitively suggesting an idea or a belief to yourself, you communicate with your preconscious mind and it responds by believing your thoughts to be true. Hence, if you constantly remind yourself that you are “rich,” “famous,” “wealthy,” “popular,” “admired,” or “successful” that red pill that Morpheus is holding might actually make your dreams come true.
3. Mantras
Similar to autosuggestion, another mind power technique that can boost your self-esteem is the use of mantras. A mantra is the religious counterpart of autosuggestion. If you’re running out of natural methods and you can’t think of anything else to help you enhance your self-esteem, a minor deviation by using supernatural methods may likely be suitable for you. If you don’t believe in any of this crap, then a short visit to my mind control archives can probably open up your mind.
Moving on to the subject, let me first define what a mantra is. Mantras are the verbal repetition of sounds or the mental repetition of thoughts. In church rituals, people don’t know that they are chanting mantras when they offer their songs of praise. In yoga, people use the word “OM” and repeat it several times during meditation. In satanic rituals, well, let’s just not mention anything about it.
How do you use mantras?
Personally, I did my mantras by typing them repetitively on a word document. It may sound silly, but as months go by since I first started doing it, I noticed significant changes in my behavior (you can’t rule out its effectiveness if you haven’t tried it for yourself). Anyway, I learned this method from a book that suggests writing five hundred statements on a notepad. It wasn’t optional for me at that time so I opened up MS Word and typed my statement a hundred times. It said five hundred, so I did the technique everyday for a whole month. Now, that’s more than five hundred. One of my mantras stated this: “I am asserting the mastery of my real self.”
4. Visualization
Visualization is one of the basic techniques you can also use to boost your self-esteem. It has many applications, but since we are focused on self-esteem, this method is designed to enhance your perception about your self.
The visualization technique was one of the techniques advocated by the New Thought Movement in the late 19th century. When the movie The Secret was released, more people have become aware of visualization and the useful benefits it offers in changing people’s lives. It may sound cheesy, but athletes all over the world have been using the visualization technique for several decades already. If they can use it to win medals in the Olympic Games, it’s clearly possible that you can use it to achieve your own goals.
If you want to try this technique for yourself, just imagine having the kind of characteristics you desire. To make the effect stronger, include the five senses while you are doing this exercise. For example, imagine what you will look like once you’ve reached your goal (visual), imagine the positive comments people will be saying about you (auditory), imagine the nice clothes you will be wearing (kinesthetic), and imagine aroma and the taste of the food that you will be eating (olfactory and gustatory). If you condition your mind long enough to believe that you are the kind of person you’re thinking about, sooner or later you’ll be surprised with the results.
5. Breathing and Stretching
Many people neglect their own bodies and then complain how miserable they feel when, in fact, their issues are physical in nature. Sometimes people think they don’t have enough energy to complete a given task, and then they rant about not being able to do anything meaningful. Sometimes people feel they are ineffective because they can’t think of any useful ideas to change their lives. Maybe these people just need to breathe and relax.
If you often see yourself like this, then remember that what you think is connected to what you feel, and what you feel is connected to your body. Your mind is not separate from your body. Therefore, when you don’t feel well, you’re likely to have the same thoughts and vice versa.
Aside from the benefits it could give to your health, breathing and stretching techniques are widely used by people to liberate the mind and the self. It has its roots in an eastern religious tradition, particularly called Yoga. Your brain, as well as other parts of your body, needs a steady supply of oxygen to be fully functional. Yoga practitioners have a method called pranayama which means “restraint of the prana or breath.” The science behind this is that the cells in our body release toxins through the air that enters our lungs. A person who practices the proper form of breathing, through pranayama, is certain to have healthy cells, which therefore leads to a healthy body and a healthy mind.
Another way to improve your body’s vitality and energy is through postures and positions, which yoga practitioners call asana. I tried to reduce the methodology to an exercise by calling it stretching, but if you want to know more about the powerful effects of asana and its other uses, you can do your own research about Raja yoga.
6. Concentration
There are people who associate concentration with the toilet bowl. I don’t know why that happens and I surely don’t want to concentrate on that thought. If that’s enough for them to develop a high level of self-esteem then, I have nothing against them.
Seriously speaking, however, when you spend enough time concentrating, you will start to get a lot of significant thoughts about the subject of your attention. I do this all the time when I write. So, when people ask me how I’m able to write all of this stuff, I just tell them “I expend tremendous amounts of energy sitting on toilet bowls.”
Ok, my apologies. I just can’t help it. Anyway, when you begin to develop the habit of concentrating deeply upon yourself, you will start to realize facts about your own character. Ideas will start entering your thoughts and memories about your past experiences will start flashing inside your head to offer you solutions to the problems that you have at present. You might get the impression that I’m talking about daydreaming, but this is far from that.
When you concentrate, you should be in control of your thoughts. You can do this by constantly asking yourself questions about the specific issue you want to address. So, for example, you want to figure out how you can become a better writer, you can ask yourself questions like, “What kind of subjects am I capable of talking about for hours spontaneously?” or “How skilled am I to write about stuff that I am predominantly interested to discuss with other people?” The answers to your questions will come in the form of memories. Remember how Sherlock Holmes uncovers mysterious cases by linking one evidence to another? It works just like that. Thus, if you want to solve a particular case you have about yourself, concentrate. No more crapper jokes for now.
7. Thought Liberation
I was having second thoughts about adding meditation to this list because I’ve already included it to a number of articles I’ve previously written, so I gave it a new name. I don’t know if it sounds cool, but I just thought about informing you.
Moving on, meditation and the name I substituted for it basically means the same thing. In ancient spiritual traditions, people use meditation to reach higher states of consciousness. They do this by preventing the mind from generating any thoughts. Of course, this is not something you impose upon your mind because it defeats the purpose and is self-contradictory. Meditation is something you practice everyday and you don’t force yourself while doing it. You set your mind still by focusing on a single thought, an object, a word, or a prayer. When you get distracted by any other thought inside your head, simply acknowledge it then bring your attention back to the object you’re meditating on.
Have you ever asked yourself why people say prayers and where this practice originated? That’s correct! Prayers are just one of the forms of meditation and people use it to communicate with their higher selves – one that is collective of all consciousness that exists. Rarely do we find time to pay attention to our innermost source of strength which is our SELF. Remember that you are spiritual in nature and the most powerful technique that will truly let you attain a higher self-esteem is to communicate with your inner self.