Over the last month or so I’ve been to several concerts and music events.  I heard some very talented artists but listening to other band’s lyrics made me wonder about the messages we subconsciously get from our entertainment. 

When I was in hypnosis school, we learned that something repeated often enough will slip into the subconscious mind and become a part of our life script.  I’m not one to censor artists but are we paying attention to the information that is being slipped into our consciousness by our music and movies? 

At the recent, KROQ LA Invasion I watched women sing along and pump their arms in the air to music with lyrics that were degrading to women. As good as the beat was, I just couldn’t bring myself to discount the message.  I sat down and really listened to the message–not surprised but a bit sad that people were taking part in community hypnosis.  As they sang and rocked to the music part of their subconscious must be buying into the message. 

Questions occurred to me. What does that do the energy of every person in that stadium?  What does that do to our collective self-esteem?  Are the things we call harmless entertainment really harmless?  Are they lifting you up or adding something darker to your consciousness.  This is something to think about.

I love rock ‘n roll.  But I’m finding myself a bit more careful about the music that I listen to because I don’t want to repeat lyrics to myself that tell me–women are useless or that violence is the answer. I’m not advocating any sort of censorship other than the power of choice.  We need to make sure we are not getting negative messages by default. 

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about choosing our perceptions, yesterday in my email was a lovely post form the DailyOm about seeing goodness in everything.  I wanted to share this lovely post with you.  The Importance of Seeing Good In All.

I love the term that it uses:  Sympathetic tolerance.  Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all increased our levels of sympathetic tolerance?  If we were more able to see ourselves and others as doing the best we can and being empathetic for our struggles, would we all get along better?  Would we feel better about ourselves?  I think we might. 

I ran across a blog post from Therese Borchard, who is writing about coping with depression.  She talked about creating a self esteem file.  A file where you put the compliments that other people send your way or other items that remind you that you are a loveable and capable person.  I think it is a great idea especially whether you are struggling with depression or feeling up to taking the next step.  Therese describes her self esteem file beautifully here.

I’m starting my own self esteem file.  It will be a great place to go back to when I doubt that I have anything to say or wonder why I am pushing so hard on developing my business. Although true healthy esteem comes from within, it doesn’t hurt for us to have reinforcement from others for those times when we don’t remember how great we are!

One of the ways I work to improve my life is to improve my thinking.  Every day as a hypnotherapist, I see how critical the way we think is to the quality of our lives.  People can actually make themselves sick by focusing on one thought and begin to feel better by focusing on another. Did you ever worry yourself into an upset stomach?  I have. 

I remember one incident clearly.  I was working at a very difficult job with an almost impossible boss.  The boss asked for a meeting with me and I was certain that I was going to get chewed out again.  I started thinking about what I possibly could have done wrong.  I went over and over every project I had worked on and everything I had said to her.  I couldn’t think of anything but I knew she never asked anyone for a meeting for something good so it had to be bad.  By the time the meeting time came, my stomach was in knots.  I sat down in her office and she looked at me and smiled and said, Carol I have extra tickets to a benefit and I’d like to take you to it as a thank you for all your hard work.  Would you like to go?   My stomach cramps started to ease and I almost laughed out loud for the 2 hours of hell I put myself through imagining the worst.

From that incident and many others like it, I realized that I need to spend more time anticipating that good things are going to happen and that in general people have the best of intentions. 

Every day we attach meaning to things especially to other people’s motives.  We think someone who cuts us off in traffic is a *#@!, rather than someone who is distracted.  We think that the co-worker who speaks to us sharply is out to get us, rather than having a bad day or a person who doesn’t have the skills to ask for what he wants in a better way.

We can do a lot for our own self worth if we start to look at the way we interpret things from the viewpoint of whether it helps us or not.  Does it help me be the type of person I want to be to hold this thought or interpretation?  I know someone out there is saying, "yeah but the guy really is a jerk!"  I say, "Does believing he is a jerk help you?"  What does believing that guy is a jerk bring up for you?  Anger?  Defensiveness?  What does changing the thought and thinking: "This guy really needs some help with his social skills.  He must be a really unhappy person to act that way, " bring up for you?  Which is more helpful to you?   

When we can look at the way we interpret things and change our interpretations in a way that is helpful to us, we reclaim our power. 

As Victor Frankl, concentration camp survivor wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning wrote:

[E]verything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I love this quote and I return to it time and time again.  If men and women faced with unspeakable horrors can still see that the way they look at the world is the essence of their power, who am I to let the pettiness of day to day life bring me down? 

For today, find one thing tht you are placing your own meaning on and see if changing the meaning you give it can change your day! 

I was just reading on Dr. Gupta’s Blog on CNN and he reports on a study in that says that self censoring leads to higher death rates in women.  The study says that women who don’t express their dissatisfaction or anger are more likely to die earlier. 

The study focused on women in marriages, but I believe it points to a larger problem in our society is that very few people know how to express their needs in a way that is productive.  Holding in our anger and frustration isn’t good for us.  Pouring out all our anger and frustration in a diatribe isn’t healthy either.  There are some people who are really good at stating what is and isn’t okay for them in a firm but fair way.  But most of us struggle with this.

I’m a recovering people pleaser myself.  I still want to be kind and I love helping people–I wouldn’t be a hypnotherapist, if I didn’t.  But I also realize that I only have so much energy to give and when I am giving up a piece of myself consistently, I eventually become resentful or ill.  Half the time the other person doesn’t even know that I stuffed a feeling or gave up anything for them so that compounds matters even more.  So in essence, I’m resenting someone for not reading my mind!  How fair is that?  LOL!

One of the things that really helped me was Jack Canfield’s Self Esteem Audio Product, Self-Esteem & Peak Performance. I first listened to this seminar on tape about 15 years ago but I find there is so much good stuff on it. I keep coming back to it.  As an exercise, he had people say, "My needs are as important as your needs."  And then notice what came up. 

How many readers cringed when they read that statement" "My needs are as important as your needs?"  Most women, especially mothers, have a problem with that one.  "My  children’s needs are more important than my needs," they say–and to a certain degree they are right.  A newborn’s need for nourishment at two in the morning does trump mom’s need for sleep at that moment.  But some of us have taken putting other people first and denying our needs to the extreme.  Notice the statement isn’t my needs are more important than your needs.  It is that the needs are equal.  I know many of us have a hard time with that.

Marshall Rosenberg, who writes about communicating in a way that honors all our needs in his book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values (Nonviolent Communication Guides), talks about communicating in a way where everyone’s needs are respected.  He has used this technique to mediate everything form family conflict to conflict between warring tribes in Africa.  I highly recommend you grab this book  if you worry that expressing your needs makes you selfish or unkind.

If the study Dr. Gupta cites is correct, learning to express our own needs directly but with compassion is not only important for our mental health but for our physical health. This syncs with everything I see working with clients one on one.  Our mental and physical health are linked.  They are not two separate entities.

There are times to be stern with yourself and Eat Your Peas as I said a few days ago and then there are times when you need to put away all the "should’s and have to’s" and be gentle with yourself.  Sometimes our expectations can lead us down a path of despair.  As I said yesterday, we all are human.

One way we can be gentle with ourselves is in the area of feedback and criticism.  It is inevitable that at different times we are going to get feedback from others that they didn’t like something we did or said.  We can handle this information in many ways, we can get defensive, we can use it to beat up on ourselves because we aren’t perfect, we can get mad or we can listen and give ourselves time to evaluate what of the feedback is valid and what of the feedback is not helpful.

Telling someone, "I need time to process what you are telling me before I can respond" is an option. Many of us faced with criticism especially, criticism we feel is unjust,  lose our ability to think on our feet.  But there is no rule that you have to respond the minute the feedback is given. 

Setting time to sort the truth from the emotion and reaction can help us be gentle with ourself and have better relations with others. 

Carol

One of the things that can keep us feeling good about ourselves is the need to be perfect.  I’ve struggled my whole life with setting such high standards for myself that I always felt that I was falling short.  I’d beat myself up because I wasn’t quite achieving what I thought I should, I’d be really tough on myself for making a mistake.  Part me would say, "Everyone makes mistakes and another part would say–but you shouldn’t make any.  You should be better than that!" 

I see this battle in many of my clients who are all intelligent, competent, lovely and loving people.  I ask them to think about all the expectations they have for themselves–all the rules they’ve created for themselves like never losing their temper, having the perfect body, never missing a deadline or being late and the list goes on.  Then I ask them, "would you be comfortable telling someone else, these are the rules I expect you to live by?"  Most people shake their head no and have a small "aha!"  about how hard they are being on themselves.

Why is it so hard to let go of this internal drive for perfection?  Perhaps it comes the human desire to grow and be better.  I believe we can still set our sites on achieving and excellence without beating ourselves up for being what we are–human beings who are doing the best we can on any given day and trying to figure out who we are and just what we are capable of doing. 

As I write this, I just got my blood work test results back from a physical I recently had.  My blood sugar was at a pre-diabetic level and my cholesterol was elevated.  I started to beat myself up about how I let myself get out of shape by not exercising enough and eating less healthy foods.  Then I thought, all I can do is work from here and make better choices.  Beating myself up isn’t going to lower the glucose level in my blood or take off the weight I want to lose.

I can learn the lesson from my past behavior and choose something else.  I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to choose something else.  Whew!  That’s a relief.  I know this moving away from perfectionism isn’t going to be easy.  After all I’m human–no one is perfect–even at trying to move away from perfectionism.

Carol

PS.  If health and weight loss is an issue you are working on, check out livewellstressless.info, a blog that Karen Maleck Whiteley and I write about our adventures in losing weight and living well and stressing less.

I had a potential client ask me, "what percentage of your practice is related to core issues like self-esteem as opposed to losing weight or stopping smoking?"  My reply to her was that everything I do as hypnotherapist is about self-esteem.   

When we have a habit that we just can’t find the way to get past, it affects our self-esteem.  We feel silly and weak because a habit controls us.  Often our habits are formed as coping mechanisms or ways to handle stress or comfort ourselves.  When we learn less destructive ways to cope and conquer that habit our sense of accomplishment goes up. 

In addition, sometimes we can’t tackle issues at all until we feel we a certain sense of core competency (core net worth).  For example, many people come to me to get over test anxiety or fears of public speaking.  I find if I only address it from the "you can speak without anxiety"  stand point, I miss a lot.   

Many years ago, I had a client I’ll call Jane. Jane had to give a major presentation for her company in front of all sorts of important dignitaries.  She was terrified!  I did the first session walking her through being able to release the anxiety and something just didn’t feel right.  I called her after the session and checked in with her and she said it didn’t work.  We started probing deeper and realized that she was sabotaging herself because here it was 1 week before the presentation and she didn’t know the material and her Powerpoint presentation was ugly and not helpful to the audience.  We spent another session prepping for the speech from a coaching stand point–breaking down the material and helping her learn it.  Jane still didn’t feel ready.  Then we untapped something far deeper–she didn’t think she deserved to be in the position she was in.  She felt like she was an impostor and didn’t belong on the dais of speakers for that event.  Once we were able to break through to that baseline belief and work on that, she felt much better about doing the presentation.  Obviously we couldn’t do all her self esteem work in the few sessions before the speech but even addressing the impostor syndrome in one session helped her do what she needed to do for her job.

People ask all the time why I choice the name Core Net Worth for this blog.  They think I’m a financial planner.  But the reason is simple.  Beyond money or fame, or those who tell us they love us, we all need to believe that at our core we are worth something.  Jack Canfield says that self-esteem means we feel we are lovable and capable.  Having that certainty deep inside is what everyone needs.  Imagine a world where each person knows at a deep level they are lovable and capable.  Wouldn’t that be a nice place?  I think so. 

So when you see beyond hypnosis and coaching and all the topics I work on with clients–I can easily say–I do self-esteem work.

Carol

PS When I write about clients, I change their name and circumstances to protect their privacy. 

There’s a tricky place between our vision of the future and the reality of where we are right now.  I get worrried when I hear people talking about the movie, "The Secret."  I do believe in the Law of Attraction, that we need to be able to see things and the more we believe in our vision and see it as though it has already happened, the more synchronicities occur and things just seem to happen.  There is also a place where we have to have a realistic vision of where we are now and what we can do today to advance ourselves toward our goals.  I’ve seen many people get caught up in the visioning process and forget about the steps it may take to get there. 

For example, I had a client who I will call Mary.  Mary was working on her own business.  Her business wasn’t making any money.  In fact, she was close to being evicted from her apartment because she didn’t have the money to pay the rent.  She came to me because she wanted help visualizing her business successful.   I told her we could do that but first she needed to handle the "wolf at the door"  and figure out how she was going to get the money to pay her rent.  She had skills in waitressing and secretarial skills. I counseled her to get a temporary job to pay the rent and then we could work on growing her business.  (It really didn’t seem likely that she would be able to raise the rent with her business sales in two to three weeks.)  Initially she resisted. "I believe in metaphysics," she said,  "I believe our thoughts create our reality."  "I do too, I said, "but the thoughts you have been having so far have you close to being homeless–so let’s deal with that problem first."  She left my office and I didn’t hear from her for several months.  I left messages and emails but she didn’t return my calls.  I thought to myself, "She didn’t like what I told her, so she is avoiding me."

Several months later, I got a note from her saying that she was doing well.  That she had gotten a 20 hour a week job that gave her some income that took the pressure off of growing the business so fast and now her business was growing and she was less stressed because she had reliable income every week.  She thanked me for being upfront and tough with her.

I had one of these incidents personally the other weekend.  I went to a speaker’s conference and I was moved to sign up for further training with a highly regarded speech coach.  The only problem is:  It is a HUGE financial commitment–A $5000 down, $25,000 out of future speaking fees commitment.  I know I’m ready to step up to the next level of speaking engagements.  I know this man can help me get there.  But to be honest, I didn’t have the $5000 to put down.  But part of me said, "act as if, and the money will come"  and I signed up.  I had a very stressful next week– as I thought to myself, "I can act as if all I want, but the reality is today I don’t have $5000 to pay for this training."  After several days of fretting, I contacted the trainer and said, "I want to be honest, I don’t have the $5,000 right now.  I know you can help me get to the place where I am earning more out of my speaking fees. I want to work with you.  Can we work something out?"  I got a clear message that I am supposed to work with this man, "Sure we can work out a payment plan. "   

I could have taken all my savings and maxed out my credit card to take the training.  This would have added significant stress to my life.  The vision helped me think about where I want to go.  The reality was I needed to find a creative way to get there.   

"Acting as if" has gotten a lot people in deep financial trouble.  The other day I was in Bevery Hills and looking at everyone driving $50,000 cars and I wondered–how many people can really afford these cars and how many cringe each time they write their lease payment check?    I was talking to a mortgage broker at a networking event and mentioned my Beverly Hills thought.  He said, "you’d be surprised at how broke people who make $500,000 a year can be. I see their financial statements and there are many people who are so maxed out.  They look successful but they are under a lot of financial stress."

So my friends, you know in your heart what you can afford and what is causing you stress.  Hold to your vision of where you want to be, but remember the reality of today. Don’t let "acting as if you already have that vision" get you caught in stress that you can’t really handle.  Be brave enough to say, "this is where I’m heading but I’m not there yet."   Live in your reality and know that you can change it step my step vision by vision.  It takes both vision and action.  Know that you are worth more than your stuff!  It is more self honoring to be truthful with yourself and hold both your vision and your reality in balance as  you move forward.

Carol