Moment In Time

Looking back over our lives and considering what experiences we have gone through, what tragedies we have survived, the heart break we managed to get over in time, the lesson’s learnt through good times and bad.  Each one of us has something to be proud of, for during that time we have not only created our own life, but we have influenced other lives.  Whether that influence was a positive one or not depends on our initial intentions.  It is a reasonably safe assumption that, for the most part, our human existence is filled with individuals who state that all they want out of life is “to be happy”.  But although each of us are seeking, for all intensive purposes, the same thing, it alludes us more and more.  We are taught as children that if we are accepted then life will be easier for us, although there are just as many people with low self-esteem as adults who were accepted at different stages.  Being ‘accepted’ simply means that for a moment in time there has been an acknowledgement of something external that your existence is a worthwhile one.  That acknowledgement may last for a second, a minute, a week, a year, a lifetime depending on the reason behind it.  At the core essence of each of us there is an intrinsically good and an intrinsically bad nature, depending on what is nourished as children and what we are taught is the ‘right way to live’, we enter our teenager years with, what we perceive to be, a fair idea on what life is going to be like and how we are going to face it.  By the time the early adult years start to occur, many things may have changed, depending on what we learnt through experience in our teenager years, in our perception of the world and, more importantly, the perception we have of ourselves. Our concepts on what is ‘right & wrong’ as we grow will develop more as we understand life through our own experience, rather than understanding situations through someone else’s experience.  It is through forming our own experiences, good or bad experiences matter not compared to the lesson’s you gain from those experiences, and how we get through them that build our self-esteem.  For those building blocks to start occurring though, there has to be some form of recognition and acknowledgement from within one’s self.  These sorts of building blocks cannot be created from external forces; essentially the individuals’ self-esteem has to be built by the individual.

During early childhood we learn how we are to receive love, it’s not a manual lesson but rather one that is taught over many years subconsciously and, depending on individual, it may even continue into late adult years.  Our Mother & Father define for us what ‘love’ is and how we will be receiving love from other Female’s & Male’s in our lives, they will be teaching us how we will be sent love and from that we must gather data to interpret our own unique way of understanding that and bringing it into our conscious when needed.  If we have Brothers and Sisters, then our understanding of the various ways of supplying love will extend beyond the scope of an only-child case.  And that is all it is, during those initial years we learn, from a close proximity, how people operate together and get what they need from each other.  When we first start schooling our scopes are extended that much further because of our interactions with multiple types of individuals from all sorts of diverse background.  And as time goes on, we learn boundaries for different types of people and their personality types.  i.e. when we are toddlers we feel quite comfortable in approaching people and talking to them, it is not until we are ‘taught’ that talking to strangers can be dangerous do we then start only talking to those we know.  Also, to demonstrate the difference in how we interact as very young children compared to teenagers, take a look at your average kindergarten school in the modern world and you will see young boys and girls hugging and holding hands as they play.  Then take a look at teenage boys and girls and you will notice that the boys have definitive boundaries with each other and no long hug or hold hands.  We are taught that our love, by the time we hit teenage years, is to be restricted and only provided to a select few out of fear that we might be hurt, it’s not until later in life that we realise that suffering is part of life and unavoidable and as such we (if possible) need to learn how to deal with the pain, lessons that by all rights should have happened naturally and should have been established by this time.  So it’s no wonder that by the time we hit teenage years we might have ‘enemy’ lists (even though initially a prank of some sort, the intention is still not a healthy one) and even specifically dislike certain individuals because of certain traits they have.  Again, this is not a healthy set of intentions to have.

The teenage years presents a new era in self-esteem too, as it is during these years that our interests and focus’ really begin to change towards the opposite sex and towards sex in general.  Our focus changes slightly so that we aren’t looking for same sex friends as much as we might start looking for different sexed friends.  And this is when the early ‘love lessons’ start to come into action for the individual because if the new found companions don’t match up to the pre-set ideal & expected of what ‘love’ is then there is trouble.  As there are two people who grew up, generally, differently and had different parents who taught them different lessons on what love is and how to interact with it, it’s little wonder that there is friction and one side doesn’t understand the other side.  It’s because the logics are programmed in totally differently.  So we tend to bounce from one relationship to another as teenagers, looking for the perfect one.  Some find it, most don’t and enter adulthood still on ‘the search’.  However entering adulthood is when something special happens, if the self-esteem is there, we start to really ‘find our place in the world’ in regards to how we feel about things, our morals and principles, the way we interact with others and the sorts of people we have in our life, also the way we earn a living and the level of power we feel in regards to those things.  The self-esteem of an individual will make the difference between whether they see life as a pathway of challenges or a big obstacle.  The friends and family around the individual determines whether or not that individual has support during their journey, and the type of relationship the individual may have that those friends and family depends on what they were taught about love as an young child and how to interact with it.  The smallest of ripples as a child can produce the largest of obstacles as an adult if not understood for the lesson it is and dealt with appropriately.  The determination of those lessons and whether or not they are taught well comes down to the parents early on in life.  Responsibility of an individual passes from parents, to individual-parents-friends, to individual-friends, to individual-partner-friends.  Essentially, once the individual is no longer a child there should already be some sense of ‘self’ instilled into them, they should feel some sort of presence and meaning within themselves.  Throughout the teenage years this will be defined more and more, as well as be there safety net in being strong enough in personality to not suffer from peer-group pressure during unhealthy moments.  Depending on how the teenager dealt unhealthy peer-group pressure situations they will enter into adulthood ‘knowing’ there is a place in the universe for them and feeling confident within themselves in that ‘knowing’.  If that ‘knowing’ is not there as an adult it is only because of prior issue’s that are still being suffered for.  The suffering may not be conscious or out in the open, but it’s existence is why there are things like neurosis and anxiety in individuals today.  Dealing with those past sufferings allows the individual to feel empowered in life, providing them the self-esteem they were robbed of all those years ago.  But for some, dealing with those past issues is too much and the subconscious creates cycles in life that repeat over and over again, generally the same mistakes and lessons or thoughts, anxiety and neurosis.  And because the lessons of dealing with suffering were not taught as a child, or as a teenager, the same suffering continues into adulthood.  Only now the cycles are more dangerous as we are developing our own lives completely on our own.  The decisions the individual makes, essentially only affect the individual in question in regards to long-term benefit or damage.  The decisions we make today are the same decisions we will look back on tomorrow, will be with joy or regret is up to how much we stuck to the person we are trying to be in that decision making process.

As adults we, if self-esteem is positive, further our information seeking and continue our journey through life picking up experience along the way.  The experience’s, good and bad, all once processed develop an inner wisdom within us which we draw on when working through our general day-to-day experiences.  Sometimes the inner wisdom serves us well, other times things don’t always go to plan, but either way our inner wisdom is developing all the time to suit our needs for who we are and what we dream of becoming.  If the self-esteem in an individual is not positive, the inner-wisdom rarely gets a word in as the individual tends to listen to ego and external factors more than themselves.  Not feeling as though they are ever in control, nor that they have the power to gain that control over their lives, those with negative self-esteem tend to look to others and external environments for their solutions.  Quickly latching onto any ‘quick fix’ that happens to pop it’s head up, always believing that ‘this is the one’ that will change everything for ever for them.  It’s a shame that this occurs, as each time the individual is built up with high expectations, only to come to realise with time that the answers they thought were in front of them were actually only more questions being presented to them.  For the most part the individual at this time will, continuing on with the ‘external cycle’, blame the situation and experience on external factors and will start to tell themselves that they did their best and it was definitely something else that went wrong that they couldn’t control.  Once again, feeding their ‘lack of control’ belief.  Continuing on this way is obviously destructive, but there is little anyone but the individual can do.  For it is up to that individual to see the patterns for what they are and to decide to be aware of them in an effort to stop them from occurring again.  Without the tools to do this being developed early on in childhood, the modern day adult seeks remedies to this situations with things like therapies, self-help books and various individual empowering courses.  These are all good and healthy if implemented properly, however due to prior attachments to ‘quick fixes’ it must be realised that any therapy or productive work that this individual starts, needs to be understood thoroughly and developed to suit the individual in question.  Providing someone who has had 12 years of physically abusive relationships with 6 months worth of therapy and then to tell them they are totally cured is not only irresponsible, but dangerous.  If this person was to then enter into another abusive relationship, at the time they realised this having occurred they would feel even more powerless than before the therapy, simply because after 6 months of therapy for them to fall ‘back into the cycle’ can be devastating to their self-esteem and send them into an even more sever downward spiral of emotions.

Treatment for self-esteem is a life-long experience.  Simply because self-esteem is a long life energy that pushes us along in life, letting us know we can accomplish the experiences we want most.  To provide self-esteem with a half-hearted effort, will only result in a half-hearted self-esteem.  If the individual in question regards themselves highly, their self-esteem should be at the top of their priority list in their day-to-day activities.  In other words, if they feel good about themselves and want to continue this feeling, they should refrain from doing things which they know is not beneficial to their self-esteem.  For example, an individual who feels good about themselves wouldn’t believe that beating up old ladies is a healthy thing for him to do.  Simply because that individual realises that they won’t continue feeling very good about themselves once they have inflicted pain upon another.  And this is all part of it, as we all interact with each other, the smoother those interactions go the better we feel about ourselves.  Picture the last time you had a day of interactions that went badly, now compare it to one of your ‘better days’.  The difference in interactions was more than just ‘one day was better than another’, the whole attitude you had on your ‘good day’ compared to the attitude you might have on a ‘bad day’ makes the world of difference.  On each of the days you carry the attitude with you from one interaction to the next, and each time you affect the initial stages of the interaction.  If you are in a good mood then your effect is positive, if a bad mood then the effect is negative.  If a situation starts off well, it tends to continue that way, just as if a situation starts off badly.  As such, walking into any given interaction with a  ‘good frame of mind’ can dramatically effect not only the outcome, but how you walk into the next interaction of the day.   Which will affect the next one, and so on.  At the end of the day, if our interactions have been predominantly good, we feel we have had a good day and feel good about our selves.  Now if we were to take that one step further and create initially in our minds of a morning that our day was to be positive, and as such we approached each interaction with a good attitude, it makes sense to follow the logic to the natural assumption that, on average, we would have better days and feel better about ourselves at the end of them.

And this is where the therapy of an individual with negative self-esteem needs to be a little bit more wary.  It’s one thing to assist someone in realising why they react to certain situations in certain ways, but it’s another thing to teach someone in how to feel good about individual selves and be in control of their moods.  It’s another thing again to teach someone how to feel responsible for themselves and really take control of their life.  But it’s a lesson worth learning, wouldn’t you agree? And really when it’s broken down all that is occurring is the individual is shown something they already knew, they are shown that even though the decision they have made haven’t always worked out as they had planned, the decisions were still their own and they formed the life that the individual has now, good or bad.  They are also shown that just as they have changed from the person they were 5 years ago because of the decisions they have made, they will also evolve into a totally different person again 5 years from now, due to the decisions they are going to make, good or bad.  How they feel about themselves in 5 years time simply comes down to the way they felt towards the decisions they made during that time.  If they made the decisions knowing that it was the best thing for themselves and everyone involved, then at the end of that 5 year period their self-esteem will be healthy.  If they have made the decisions based on reaction and external factors, their self-esteem will not be a healthy one and the cycle will continue.  Self-esteem can be increased every single moment of any single day, all that needs to occur is for the individual to ask themselves “what is it that I want to accomplish today?” and then to go out and give it their best.  It’s not necessarily important whether they accomplish their entire list of ‘things to do’, but it is important that they are:

(A)  Making the effort to focus on good intentions.

(B)  Making the effort to give it a go regardless of failure or success.

(C)  Doing something they truly feel inspired to do.

These small factors make a world of difference at the end of an individual’s day and whether or not they lay to sleep with happiness in their minds or regret.  To rest after a day’s activities and to have “what if…” or “why didn’t I when I could” type statements running through your mind can be quite damaging to the individual.  With these thought patterns in mind while dozing off to sleep, it can cause quite a lot of restlessness and reduce the benefit of the nights sleep, which then (in a background sort of way) continues the cycle onto the next day.  To go to sleep with regret is similar to driving your car with the handbrake on, there is always something in the background that is restricting your progression.  Through better self-esteem, an individual is able to remove regret from their lives as they realise that ‘past is past’ and right now is a chance to improve.  Where as an individual with negative self-esteem will tend to ponder what hasn’t been accomplished and as such will implant another seed into the subconscious for the negative self-esteem to fester over and build another barrier.

Each day, every one of us to some extent, puts off a task or an experience until a ‘later date’ or a ‘better time’ knowing full well within ourselves that the ‘later date’ or ‘better time’ is in no way set in our minds.  We also realise that half the reason we delay this is because we, in some form or another, don’t want to experience a part of the potential oncoming task.  The reason we don’t want to experience a part of it is mostly due to a prior experience we may have had that did not turn out as we had expected.  Perceiving a potential situation not for what it is, but rather for what we assume it could be, is a very restricting attitude.  Life is full of suffering in some context or another, just as it is full of happiness and peace in many areas.  Whether we perceive a situation to be difficult or joyful is up to just that, our perception.  A prior bad experience could shy us away from an lesson that could actually change our perception of that prior bad experience.  At any moment in time our morals, principles and beliefs are evolving into and updated copy, this is because during each of our interactions (and even when sitting by ourselves) we are always re-accessing ourselves and what is happening in our lives, subconsciously or consciously this is always occurring whether we are aware of it or not.  If we are aware of it, generally we have a healthy self-esteem, if we are not aware of it or taking an active part in it, it tends to mean we are blocking that aspect of our conscious out for some reason.  We listen to others and discuss topics close to our hearts, getting external points of view and opinions that we had no previous awareness of.  This new information is compared to what we have formed within ourselves as our opinion and if adjustment feels right, it takes place naturally.  If adjustment doesn’t seem right then we either take comfort in our already formed opinion, discredit the new information or alternatively, we attempt to understand the new information better so a better judgement can be made on it once compared to our current beliefs, morals and principles.  Those who stay in one belief and never extend on it or re-access it tend to be very defensive of it, the reasoning for this is because it acts as almost a foundation for that life.  Everything rests upon the foundation that can not be shaken, the reason it can not be shaken is not because it is un-shakeable but rather because the individual has built up so much of a defense system that he will not even question the foundation and whether it is a positive one or not.  Those that stand-by-their-grounds with no consideration towards an alternative perspective, tend to react and attack when their foundation is questioned, rather than looking at the foundation for what it is.  All things change, there is nothing in life that is permanent.  Even the hardest of rocks will eventually wear down to nothing and blow away with the wind.  To hold onto a belief, moral, principle or lifestyle that doesn’t allow growth is not only restricting, but can be very difficult to see for what it is.  An individual attaching themselves to an opinion so strongly that they defend it vigorously, is an individual that is scared to live.  They hold onto something, telling themselves that if this ‘fact’ is true then their way of life is the right way.  Why they see that particular ‘fact’ as truth depends on the individual in question, as this is not something that can be generalised.  But to attach to anything is not healthy, to feel comfortable with something and understand why you feel comfortable is healthy.  Just because something feels right for you, does not mean it is right for every single person, as such, flexibility in all things is necessary to find a healthy middle path.  Dismissing information, just like attaching to it, is not healthy.  All things are connected and to understand the whole you need only look at a small part, but just as there are many parts that make up the whole, the more parts you understand the better the appreciation of the whole you will acquire.  To feel comfortable with a section of information and to turn away all other information because of that initial comfort does not serve the information, nor the individual.  To understand ‘tall’ you need to know ‘short’, to know you feel ‘cold’ can only come when once you have felt ‘hot’.  To feel comfortable with one opinion comes only when you have felt discomfort from another opinion.  Holding onto information and assuming it’s truth while pushing away potential growth makes the individual difficult to communicate with and potentially damaging to be around.  Growth needs to come from within before it can start to sprout outwards.  And the individual needs to take time to be truly aware, before anyone around them can share new information with them beneficially.