Consider this scenario where you believe – I am not good enough. I am unworthy, incapable, incompetent.

When you feel this way about yourself, you feel demotivated, are low on energy and low on confidence. This would cause you to do what ever that you try to do poorly and that in turn would make you continue to feel the same way. Do you see the vicious cycle that you are stuck in.

Can you break this cycle? Certainly.

Self esteem is a sense of ones own value and worth. How we value ourselves and how we perceive our value to others. It is an emotional evaluation of oneself. When you have a poor evaluation about yourself, it is one of the main hurdles that you face in the attempt to realizing your full potential.

Your low self esteem may have been built over a period of time. For some it may have started from childhood. For some, a significant event may have made you start feeling this way about yourself.

A lot of people with low self esteem, tend to label themselves and generalize their failures.

If I do a bad job, then concluding that – I am not good enough.
If I fail in my exam, then concluding that – I am a failure
If my lover leaves me heart broken, then concluding that – I am not worthy enough. And I will never find love.

What is required is a change in perspective.
If I do a bad job, Its is an opportunity for me to learn.
If I fail in my exam, I get to know where are my weaknesses and work on them.
IF my lover leaves me, then my lover doesn’t deserve me. And I also know what mistakes that I did which I should not repeat.

Another way of improving your self esteem is to stop the negative messages that you give yourself and give yourself positive affirmations.

The post Self Esteem – How Low Self esteem affects us first appeared on Inner Dawn Counselling.

If the answers to these questions are ‘Yes’, read on.

First Step – Awareness. Be aware of your thoughts and their strength. Be aware that you look at your world through the lens of your beliefs. Your beliefs define your perception of your world.

Second Step – Question your beliefs. There are many different techniques to question your beliefs. Reality testing is a technique to keep asking for “Real” proof to substantiate your beliefs. For e.g., – I am no good. Question yourself – is it true that I cannot find even one thing about me that I am good or good at?

Third Step – Once you are convinced that the belief is untrue, construct a belief to replace the untrue one. The new belief needs to be realistic and true.

All these steps are easier said than done. If you have significant emotions associated with your earlier belief that has stemmed from your childhood or other experiences, you would need to resolve some of those emotions before you attempt to work on your beliefs.

Counselling can help you identify your unhelpful beliefs, help you question them and incorporate helpful beliefs in their place in a warm and safe environment.

The post Can I change my Beliefs ? first appeared on Inner Dawn Counselling.

A thought by itself may not have significant power over you. But a thought that has significant emotions associated to it, that you regard as true, a thought that has been ingrained into you as a belief has a lot of power.

Beliefs about yourself, have a lot of say about who you are, what you become and how you feel about yourself. Beliefs about others define your behavior, attitude towards others. Beliefs regarding life situations define how you get impacted in everyday life. Your beliefs define your perspective, the way you perceive yourself and your world around you.

Your beliefs could have been formed based on your own experiences in childhood or later, from the cultural aspects of your upbringing or surroundings, from observing your parents during your childhood etc.

Some of your beliefs may be confining you. Some of them may be unhelpful to you even hurting you. Though you may realize that some of your beliefs are not helping you but hurting you, yet it is fairly difficult to challenge your own beliefs.

Why is it so difficult to challenge your own beliefs or to change your beliefs? It is because you consider your beliefs to be yourself. When you try to argue against your beliefs, you reckon you are arguing against yourself. To even consider the possibility that you may have to admit that you are wrong is so painful. Some times your beliefs give you comfort and helps you avoid the pain of admitting the reality.

For eg, “I will not succeed”. This belief may help you avoid the guilt that you will need to face if you have not put enough effort into your work. But the resulting failure will act to reinforce your belief that “I will not succeed”. The belief is unhelpful to you that it influences a string of failures in your life.

The post The power of your beliefs first appeared on Inner Dawn Counselling.