The Strength of a Structured Mind.

To achieve our goals, we need to take a nothing and turn it into a something. The first step in doing this is to collect a ‘mind let loose’ into a ‘mind harnessed’. As we need to saddle a horse to ride, so we need to saddle our mind to having something for an idea to hold onto as it rides along the path to full realization.

Creating a healthy mind is a matter of creating mental structure. To use another analogy, like an ovum would have noting to develop in if not for the structure of the uterus wall, a thought will have nothing to imbed in without some structure of mind, and the more structure, the better the development.

Today I will objectively assess how structured my mind is? If a mind has little structure, it is almost difficult to contemplate this idea. Today I will look, without judgment, at how indulgent am I with my mind? Do I let it dictate to me or is it in service of me and my dreams and goals?

These are difficult questions to hold in a non-structured mind. It may be a useful starting point to simply acknowledge that we are not sure and to accept the idea that any additional mind capacity would be a useful thing.

Humbling ourselves enough for a karate kid style “paint the fence” and “wax the floor” approach to winning the fight, may be the best approach to learning how to achieve your goals.

Let us equate Paint the Fence with Observe your thoughts. Just do that over and over again until; like the up and down stroke of painting the fence, the observation of your thoughts is a natural, graceful and strong as a crane taking flight.

Let us equate Sand the Floor with Routine Focus. Here, I set myself one self improvement, mind stretch task, like learning a language, reading about something that interests me. Now schedule between 10 minutes to half an hour of time, at the same time every day and do that reading or studying no matter what. Do not use any excuse not to do it. Your mind is not subject to your emotions, you can still read for 15 minutes when your partner leaves you. You can still study for 20 minutes when you are spitting mad or really tired. Feeling unwell is also no reason to give up a practice. You are likely to feel as unwell if you are reading than if you are not. Don’t even think about it just do it. Like the karate kid, it will help you beat the bullies in your life and to find the joy of honour well, really it will structure your mind. The strength of our bodies comes from it’s structure – muscle and bone.

Today I will observe my thoughts and see if it causes anything interesting to happen to me.
Today I will think of something that I have always wanted to know and I will set it as my routine focus.

Visit Self-Esteem for Africa, in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.

Nurturing Spontaneity

Maintaining the space in your life for spontaneity is, ironically, hard work. The positive spontaneity that we often long for in our lives is something quite different from the act of changing our minds or not following our disciplines or not taking a needed step towards achieving our goals and doing something else instead. We often dress up something that is more typically an act that gives in to avoidance or resistance or our addictions or fears as spontaneous rather than the shortfall of courage and commitment that it really is.

Spontaneity is, in reality, an intensely conscious process. Spontaneity involves actively clearing space in our lives where spontaneity, or the abundance of energy in the universe, can be allowed in to work with us towards something new, creative and expressive. This space that we talk about is what is created when we are very clear about where we want to go and how we would like to feel getting there, without being too prescriptive about HOW we are going to get there. This implies that spontaneity is supported by setting clear intensions and letting go of our control and attachment to how things should happen. Spontaneity then, is trusting in ourselves enough to not have to be rigid about the how. Spontaneity is the act of not limiting what might happen by our current perception. It is a conscious letting go of blocks. It is an act of surrender that allows co-creation with the universe in the interest of achieving our truest desires.

Today I will contemplate how I have understood spontaneity until now. Could my definition use a little attention?
Today I will consider how taking the time to know what I want will help me to achieve the joys of a spontaneous life.

Visit Self-Esteem for Africa to attend our evening or one day workshop on Self-Expression.


1 Day Workshop:
Self Expression
Developing Willingness
Emotional charge & the Now
Establishing Support
The question of Stamina
Available on the following dates (Sundays):
20 February
08 May
17 July
25 September
11 December


Evening Workshops:
The Stamina for Self-Expression
Tuesday 18 Jan
Tuesday 19 July

More Joy From Self-Expression
Tuesday 25 Jan
Tuesday 26 July

Wanting Quality Time

Some times I quite simply ache for uninterrupted time with people. I want to spend time with my brother, just him by himself, I want to have time to see what unfolds between us. I have certain friends and other members of my family, with whom I long for tracts of time… I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to invite you to dinner because you will bring your spouse. I want quality time alone with the spouses too. I want us to do nothing so that I can have time to see what unfolds between us.

I suppose that this is the longing that is talked about in children; for ‘quality time’ with their parents.

I used to find my need for people difficult to handle and saw it largely as a weakness on my part. Wanting something from someone used to cause me great stress. Today I know it for the onset of my personal maturity. I have lost my need to pin, just wanting someone to sit with me and grow with me, on a justifying activity. Inside myself I know that this longing for quality time is evidence of my heart opening, my shame healing and my courage to face the real task of life head on emerging. Today I know that this need is the highest thing within me. Today, I am calm, humble and happy.

Today I come to understand that I need no justification, least of all drama or conflict, to legitimate my need for others time and company. Today I allow myself to need for no reason at all.

www.selfesteemfa.co.za

Nurturing my capacity for love

Ones capacity for love, and that’s giving it, receiving it and maintaining it, is something that one actively need to grow.

I can grow my capacity in three ways.

1) I can practice putting into practice the action and feelings of love that I already know.
Here I can choose to express love for myself and others more and more often. I can become determined to notice and pay attention to the love that is around me that I can sometimes take for granted.

2) I can learn new ways of loving and being loved. I can discover and explore more techniques and contemplate additional possibilities of love.
Here I might take a class on opening my heart . I might do a meditation group that helps me connect with and love and forgive myself. I might send someone flowers or dance around the house with the children. I could explore the connections between self nurture, discipline and love. I might risk more hugs. I could explore the tantra of love.

3) I can remove from my life the things that keep my capacity for love limited.
I make an effort to make peace where there has been a long standing feud. I might do a course to learn to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ and then getting angry latter. I may take a good look at my childhood experiences with the help of a mentor. I could find away to address my fear of intimacy. I might attempt to broaden my horizons and to get out more socially. I might join a processing group that works with dealing with fear and healing old wounds.


Today I will meditate on my capacity for love.
I will lovingly decide to do at least one thing for myself to grow my capacity for love.

Why bother with people who we find offensive or difficult to be around?

We could simply not bother with people who we find offensive or difficult for us to be around. Some times, this option can feel quite honest and natural. When we are deciding what to do, we need to consider what and who we want to be. We need to ask ourselves; “Are we maintaining the status quo or building a world that we would prefer to live in?” What kind of a world do you want to build? This dilemma is at its core, a question of understanding your life purpose and how you want to work with affinity (the relationships with people), that you will need to fulfill that purpose.

One thing is certain, that taking the time to Find a positive way to interact with these ‘difficult’ people, will grow you and teach you to get you through any difficult moment that you find yourself in. You are after all having the encounter for a reason. Are you sure that you are having it so you can choose to walk away?

It is also important not to confuse the issue. Are you sure that the situation is not fraught because of your own identity issues, with your shame issues, value issues? Are you acting out your own feelings of having to not express certain parts of yourself for fear of anticipated negative responses? It is important, if you want to move forward socially and personally, to love and make room within yourself, for those parts of yourself that you reject in others, even if you choose not to express those parts in your interactions. Have compassion for yourself and others. Taking time to find a way to interact passively with ‘these people’ will be mirrored within you as a greater integration of the parts of you that are naturally at odds with one another.

Look at any given situation and feel if it would serve you to put effort into resolution or whether it can only cause harm and choose from that place.

Today, I will make an effort to find mutual ground with people. Today I will not miss opportunities to love myself and integrate parts of myself that I have previously turned my back on or shamed and rejected.
Today I will make effort because I am worth it.

Visit our Website for Course Information for Cape Town, Johannesburg & Port Elizabeth.

Self Esteem For Africa

Social scenarios and the Exercise of being friendly and warm with people whose behaviour you find really hard to handle.

Social situations are complex and laden. You would probably like to be more than just non-offensive to be okay in difficult social scenarios. You would probably want to be able to handle the situation without having to resort to using similar behaviour in order to show approval. You would probably also do well to be careful not to try to ‘teach’ them anything or shape their behaviour with your response. – You do, after all, know how well you respond to people who use shaming techniques on you. At the same time, it is our responsibility to show people how we like to be treated or interact. If we show people what we want or like rather than what we don’t want or like about what they are giving us, we will start to fare far better in social predicaments. If we laugh at jokes that make us uncomfortable and tell some of our own that do the same, when we can be pretty sure that they are going to give us more uncomfortable jokes. At the same time, a deathly hush can make someone feel very judged and have them not want to engage with you at all or have them engage in such a way that avenges their hurt feelings. This is a good place to briefly acknowledge their comment. We can comment on the mode of delivery if the content offends us. If the mode of delivery is offensive find something to say about the
content and then dare to put something of your own, that you would like to be talking about, into the conversation.

The trick is to be prepared to have the other person find your topic or delivery difficult and to try and steer you away again. It is definitely not about trying to dominate the exchange. It is about trying to find a common playing field. It is about leaving the encounter enhanced, and without leaving any self-esteem wreckage, to either party, behind you.

Today I will practice showing people what I want and like rather than what I don’t want or like.

Setting and Achieving Goals

Sometimes I feel like the most important thing that I have learned, the very hard way, and think it is the most important thing to teach people is how to set goals as a prerequisite to achieving them.

Goal setting is the most important thing.
It is the most important action a human being can perform.

How many of us realise the importance of goal setting? And then, how may of us do it consistently and as a matter of priority?

Why is setting goals so important?

I believe it is because as McKay and Fanning put it so clearly in their 2000 book, Self-Esteem, “Self-Esteem depends on two things:
1. Learning to think about yourself in healthy ways, - (This stops you covering up who you are) and
2. The ability to make things happen, to create your own life. – (Your actions with their results reveals you to yourself) " (McKay & Fanning, 2000. Italics; mine)

Self-esteem is the ingredient that makes: yourself worth being and your life worth doing.

Self-Esteem is the control setting that dictates how pleasant or unpleasant our experience of life is going to be. I want my self-esteem, – Ability to experience life as joyful, setting turned up as high as possible.

Goal setting is so important because it is integral to self esteem.

A wonderful chicken and egg scenario is set up between practicing feeling good about ourselves and setting and achieving goals. As we feel better about ourselves, it is easier to achieve our goals, first because it is easier to know what we want and secondly because our energy is not being used up in trying to manage pain. As we achieve our goals we feel better and better about ourselves. This in turn makes it easier to think about ourselves as innately valuable and leads to better goal setting. …and on and on in a happy upward spiral. If either one of the processes is blocked our self-esteem can only stagnate and because we are not achieving our goals, begin to decrease.

Today I will consider how effective I am at knowing what I want and setting meaningful achievable short and long term goals for myself.

Self-Esteem for Africa has a one day workshop entitled; What I need. It covers some key areas: Accurate Self-Assessment, Goal Setting
& Recognising Achievement

Visit http://www.selfesteemfa.co.za/ or call us on 073 971 1673

What Feeling Mental & Emotional Pain does not mean.

Feeling mental and or emotional pain does not mean;

That you are weak. On the contrary, it means that you are strong enough to face what many of us deny is there.

That you are falling apart. You are in fact holding yourself together by not separating off the part of you that feels. You are more whole than you have ever been and if you continue to feel, your trajectory will be increasing wholeness.

That you are self-absorbed. Pain is most often what opens us up to compassion, understanding and connection with others.

That you are selfish. Your expression of pain can be a great gift to yourself and others in that it can allow you to release what would otherwise remain within you to fester and come out in inappropriate ways. It prevents the build up of resentment and bitterness. Walking around like a ticking time bomb brings no good to anyone. Your expression of pain can also help others to see that it is okay to deal with their own.

That you are self-indulgent. Perhaps not facing pain because you are scared to do so is dressed up as self-indulgence when it is in fact, dealing with pain is courageous and responsible.

That you are self-pitying. This idea has no basis in reality; it is one of those ideas that has grown from a pure justification that helps us to avoid that which we fear; namely, feeling, facing and healing pain.

That you are off balance. Pain is part of the full box of chocolates of human emotions. You can only be considered off balance if you never feel the pain and sentence yourself to a half life. Avoiding pain can limit many of lives greatest joys and excitements.

That you are shameful. Pain is an emotion, pure and simple; there is never any shame in what we feel. Try to really accept this truth and make an effort to let go of the habit of shame that was instilled in childhood. Shame is a myth passed to us from our parents and society. We can stop passing on the myth which is the cause of so much unnecessary pain in the first place.

That you are a liability. Feeling is an asset and a remarkable tool that it would do us all well to explore as far as we can.

That you are boring. Sound like another defensive reason to avoid feeling?

That you are unpleasant to be around. You choose: would you rather be around someone who is volatile and unpredictable because of buried, unprocessed pain or someone who gets on with it?

That you are unreliable. To express and be present to your true feelings is the most trustworthy position on earth. True reliability is consistently being where you actually are.

That you can’t be there for others. Facing your pain allows you to give others your best and to help them through their stuff with your experience of working through yours.

That you will lose respect and power. Do you think this is true???

That you look stupid. What a great obstacle this belief can be. It is perhaps the only way of really letting yourself down; not having the life you want for fear of looking stupid.

That you will become crazy or loose your mind. Remember facing pain is more likely to bring you into balance than to knock you off the edge. Nervous break downs don’t happen to people who routinely face their feelings.

That you will die. There have definitely been some cases in history, mostly in romantic movies, where heroes and heroines have died of heart break but no one has ever died from healing and dealing with it.

Integrating Pain – A one day workshop
Offered by the Institute of Self-Esteem for Africa
– Cape Town, Johannesburg or Port Elizabeth.

Imagination Vs. Fantasy

Imagination is never obsessive. Fantasy is the core of obsession.

I believe fantasy to be an act of escapism that is born out of a judgment of something as not being as it should be. Fantasy declares the world to be "not enough, not right". Imagination on the other hand is an act of faith. It expands the world by breathing out a "what if...". It is built on an acceptance of what is and a joyful or curious desire to expand on that. The essential difference is rather like the difference between a "yes, but" and a "yes and also...."

Self-Esteem is greatly affected by whether we are judging or accepting our worlds and or ourselves. Self-Esteem is all about recognising that what we are ok, even if we’d like to make some changes. Fantasy is a indicator that our self-esteem could use a little work. Imagination,
and ever increasing imagination, in particular, is a sign of healthy and growing self-esteem.

Today I will ask myself if I know the difference between my imagination and my fantasies.
Can I grow this part of my awareness?

Today I will remember that imagination cannot grow out of a place of denial while fantasy almost always does.

Today I will remember that; FANTASY IS THE MECHANISM THAT KEEPS DENIAL IN OPERATION.

Today I will make a strong intention to choose imagination over fantasy every time.

Today I will recognise that exercising my imagination will automatically begin to loosen and lift suppressed feelings and memories so that they can come up to be processed healed and allowed into the past where they belong.

Today I will acknowledge that exercising my imagination (not fantasising) will help to dispel the fear that sits behind the denial.

SHUTTING DOWN AND BEING IMAGINATIVE (OPEN) ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

Today I will think of ways to exercise my imagination;
Perhaps I will join a creativity class
I could spend sometime playing with children
I could make up a story with characters and lives of their own
I could invent a new dance move.
Paint a bizarre scene.

Visit http://www.selfesteemfa.co.za/ or call us on 073 971 1673.

"....If only s/he would just love me..."

"....If only s/he would just love me..." is an addictive drug that keeps us from dealing with our stuff and getting on with what is important, as much as alcholism, workaholism or any other adiction would.

What would I be doing if I wasn't spending so much time and energy dweling on how they don't love me and how they should and how badly I am being treated?

www.selfesteemfa.co.za

What do I Contribute to the Group?

I attend a self-development group on a Saturday Morning with Dora Dias and mid way through last year the question of what each of us contributes to the group came up and we looked at the roles we tend to favour within a group context be it socially, work related or familial.

At a Tao evening on Thursday 6th of Jan, a wise man made the following comment that really got me understanding what I can bring to a group, any group, anywhere.

He said: There is a great importance in getting people to want to see you again. It is about building affinity and if you are doing it without tactics, it is your surest indicator that you are on your life's path.

People-not-wanting-to-be-around-us is a clear sign, not that we are in anyway faulty or less than, but that we are hiding our true magnificence under a bushel.

Respect always has to do with being yourself.
Getting people to enjoy being around you is not about covering up the differences between you or about accentuating them.

It is about letting others be who they are, (really letting them) and then daring to risk showing them your talents and genuine interests.

Our only duty is to find out what really interests us and to let ourselves pursue it, to bear its fruit in our lives…. and then, we can openly bring those fruits to share with a group, at work or at play.

Can I dare to let myself believe that it is ok to want people to want to see me again,…..that it might actually be a need that helps me along the road of finding out what I truly want?

To explore how to increase your self-esteem visit www.selfesteemfa.co.za or call the Institute of Self-Esteem for Africa on 073 971 1673. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth.

A Wise Tao Gentleman Said to me last night:

The character of the spaceship needs to be such that it can break out of its orbit.

How does one build one's self into such a spaceship?

This raises a number of additional questions: What is my orbit? What is outside of my orbit that I might want to break out to? What does my ship need to be and be made of to be able to break out of my particular orbit? What are the forces that I particularly have to overcome and how will I be able to do this? What are the enemies that I will face in the process? Not men with guns and knives or high seas, but foes like fear and dispair, disbelief and ignorance?

Today I contemplate myself as the vehicle of my own life. I will spend a bit of time with each of these questions. Each one is bound to have useful insights that can help shape my 10 year, 5 year, 3 year, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, 1 day plan that will ensure that I achieve whichever flight pattern I determine.

Visit us at The Institute of Self-Esteem for Africa or contact us on 073 971 1673.