April 2023

Build Self-Esteem

Turn Being Self-Critical Into Thinking Well of Yourself

     Being self-critical is epidemic in our society and mostly all around the world. It's almost a pastime to beat ourselves up over real and imagined imperfections. We became unwitting devotees watching our parents and teachers direct their anger towards us with their negative judgments and demeaning labels instead of dealing with their own emotions in appropriate ways. Being receptive little beings, we took on those unkind messages and learned to call ourselves stupid, unlovable, or unworthy. Today we know the words by heart and speak them inside (or out loud) without even thinking.

     We rarely feel satisfied with ourselves, trying to measure up against an invisible standard or believing if we had or did something else - got married, earned more money, looked more beautiful, had more time - we'd finally be happy and feel worthy.

     As we have experienced, none of these strategies work. Our mistake: we are identified with our actions and qualities rather than our essence. To stop being self-critical and show yourself more love, you must learn that you are whole, complete, and worthy, no matter what. You must realize your self-esteem exists from the first day of your life until the day you die and doesn't change according to circumstances.

     According to Attitude Reconstruction the solution to our faulty thinking - such as never feeling "enough" - is to express the underlying sadness, ongoing anger, and incapacitating fear physically and naturally, and rewire our crummy thinking. A self-critical attitude is a triple shot because it is associated with the emotions of sadness, anger, and fear.

SADNESS -- Your focus is on yourself in a less than honoring way.

ANGER -- You are not accepting yourself unconditionally, have such high expectations, and are judging yourself negatively.



FEAR -- You're distorting reality and have lost perspective.

How to Successfully Eliminate Being Self-Critical



      To change deeply rooted destructive thoughts, you first must determine what your old messages are. Write them down or say them aloud. Then select a couple of the contradictory Truths below, or make up your own. Write your chosen truths down.

• I'm doing the best I can.
• I love myself unconditionally.
• I'm not perfect, but I'm good enough.
• There is nothing wrong with me.
• I am whole and complete.  

 Relentlessly repeat your new thoughts, especially whenever you're judging yourself and especially when you're crying and feeling down. Interrupt the "yes, buts" and other discounting thoughts that surface. Continue to repeat your new truths over and over. 100,000 reps should do it! Imagine how many times you have told yourself the opposite. It's a battle worth fighting. 

Two More Ways to Combat Being Self-Critical

 1.    Another way to raise your self-esteem is to shower yourself mercilessly with kindness in the form of self-appreciations. Throughout the day, interrupt yourself whenever you have a negative thought about yourself and an action you took, and substitute something positive and true.

·     I did the best I could at the time.

·     Good for me. I gave it a try.

2.     An additional approach to increasing your self-perception is to shower yourself with self-appreciations or positive thoughts about yourself, as an exercise, at a predetermined time, like before bed or first thing in the morning. To do this, name a specific positive trait, talent, or quality and look at yourself from this new perspective. It’s a lovely exercise to write down one, two or three self-appreciations each day, and at the end of a week, read the list out loud with enthusiasm, conviction, and a smile. You’ll be steadily building your self-esteem.

     See how wonderful you feel when you focus on your good and fill the black hole of unworthiness yourself. Emphasizing your positive qualities and contradicting that internal critic will give you an unshakable positive view of yourself no matter what.

Further information about how to overcome being self-critical, self-deprecating, self-loathing, and demanding perfection

         There is additional information I'd like to share about a "self-critical" attitude and how to overcome it, but it would make this newsletter ridiculously long if I included it all. The following tidbits are from my book, Attitude Reconstruction. It's in Part 3, where I summarize how to work with 33 of our most common "bad" attitudes. click here.