Self Affirmation

Somewhere surfing in Internet, i cam e across a Article named, "SELF HELP MAKES U FEEL WORSE". The article stated that the people with "low self-esteem actually felt worse" when they practiced SELF-HELP. The article went on to explaining that the University of New Brunswick and the University of Waterloo had measured research participants' moods after they had repeated "I am a lovable person". The researchers' conclusion was that "self-help" only works for people with high self-esteem and, in fact, makes people with low self-esteem feel worse.

The problem is that repeating "I am a lovable person" to yourself - when the facts of your daily life suggest otherwise - is not self-help, it's self-delusion. It's just like the magical illusion where the magician saws his beautiful assistant in two - we all see it happen but we know in our heart and soul that the theater isn't littered with bloodied body parts!! (( The researchers in question appear to me to have been a little naive.))

If we don't believe our own self-worth in our heart and soul, no amount of trite SELF-AFFIRMATION will fix us up. Of course we'll feel worse for the experience because we'd tried to convince our self that we were a "lovable person" (or whatever other nonsense you might repeat to yourself) and not only have we proved that such nonsense doesn't work - we've proved ourself right, all over again, that we're not, in fact, a "lovable person"!

SO, self-affirmation, can be considered as a scam - but it's got very little to do with true SELF HELP that can. And I am confident that self-affirmation is a SCAM, smoke and mirrors that make no difference to the quality of your life, your self-image, your success or happiness. Why? Because self-affirmation is addressed to the conscious mind - the part of our mind where we do our thinking. But it's our subconscious mind where we do our doing. Somewhere I had read: seventy years research made on subconscious mind proves conclusively that your subconscious mind creates your behavior and reactions and, as a result, creates your life and who you think you are. It's in your subconscious mind that you hold your beliefs - in your heart and soul, so to speak.

So, if we don't believe, in our heart and soul, that we are a "loveable person", no amount of self-talk will convince us otherwise. We need to get to the very heart of the matter - in our subconscious mind. Before we explore how to do that, it's important to understand that our current limiting self beliefs are there because, as young and impressionable children, things were impressed on our subconscious mind. If something happened us in our formative years that made us feel uncomfortable or inadequate, our subconscious mind's replaying of that event continues to make us feel that same way many years later.

We need to by-pass our subconscious mind's proven obsession with the past. And, when we stop to think about it, the solution to your perceived problems is absolutely and obviously found in the present. We simply need to re-learn how to focus in the here and now. I say "re-train" because, as children, we were all expert at paying attention to the present moment - we didn't worry whether dad would deposit money in account or whether we'd get that Apple Ipod like the one which our friend owns- we simply went about our business in the here and now.

SO, now I feel we want to improve our life, our "self-esteem", our happiness, our success, we need to become like a child all over again - childlike, not childish. We need to train our subconscious mind to focus in the present moment - the more you do this, the less your subconscious mind can focus in the past. Our past "programs" won't go away but as you give them less and less energy, they will hold less and less power over us and our life will begin to change.We retrain our mind to focus in the present by using our five senses - by training yourself to pay detailed attention to what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste only in the present moment.

For starters, I think this should be done in the privacy like in own home - otherwise normal people will think you're mad (by the way, all the evidence points to the fact that it's the normal people who are, in fact, mad). Or we can choose to go for a stroll to practice using your five senses. If you like working out or jogging, you could use these activities as an opportunity to pay full attention to what you're feeling in your body, in the muscles and muscle groups that you're using - it means you'll have to unplug the iPod!!Little by little, day by day, we can all recreate our lives through bringing our attention into the only place and time that we have - the here and now. Little by little we will realize low self-esteem for what it is - another illusion, this time created by subconscious snapshots we took of events long gone. Little by little anybody, can create the life, happiness, success, relationships that your heart desires. But it's something that's done little by little - every day - and the little by little will give rise to startling results.