Be A Hero

Be a Hero.

I don’t mean go out and perform dangerous and daring deeds, rather become a hero in the true sense of the word:

“A person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities” (Oxford Dictionaries)

Become someone who others look up to, admire, and want to emulate.

If you think back to the post “The Footsteps of Giants” I encouraged you to go out and seek inspiration from those you most admired because when we find someone who inspires us it helps to motivate us, helps us to overcome obstacles in our lives and gives us someone to relate to when we hit times of struggle.

When you develop a goal in your own life and work on pursuing it think about how you can, in your own way become a hero to others. You could be a hero to your children or grandchildren, a hero to your work colleagues or a hero to your friends.

There are endless debates about how we as humans learn best yet the one aspect often overlooked is the fact that we learn most from the behaviours of others. If you watch a toddler nowadays you will often see them putting their hand to their ear pretending to be on a phone, nobody actually teaches them to do that, they copy behaviour.

Think back to how you learned to do many things, did someone teach you to turn a door handle or was it something you just picked up? Or are there times now when you suddenly find yourself doing something a parent did, again this was something you picked up rather than being taught.

On a grown up level you will often find bosses at work who tell you to act in a certain way but act themselves in a different way, if you look closely you find that their team will actually copy the boss’s behaviour rather that act as they are told to.

If, as you follow your dream, also think about how that path can influence and inspire others you add an extra level of motivation to yourself.

There will always be difficulties and challenges in life and following our goals will, at times, be hard as life and others things intervene, slowing us down or temporarily diverting us. Yet if we can meet and overcome these challenges with determination and success we can also inspire those around us to meet their challenges in the same way.

Think about your heroes and what it is about them and their life that has inspired you. What particular qualities do they have that really resonate with you, it may be their dogged determination, or their calmness in the face of adversity or perhaps their enduring pursuit of wisdom. Whatever it is once you have isolated it apply that to your own life and use what inspired you to underpin your behaviour so, in turn, you can pass inspiration on to those around you.

By thinking about how what we do influences those around us helps us think about how we behave and how we follow our dreams. It helps us focus on that path rather than simply giving up because we can’t be bothered, after all, is that the message we want to send to those around us? We motivate ourselves when we think about how we motivate others, we are more able to stick to our path when we know that others will be influenced more by our behaviour and actions than by meaningless advice. Because advice and words are only meaningful if backed up by experience.

The other advantage of knowing how our behaviour can positively influence others is that it helps build our own self-confidence and self-esteem. Imagine how good it will feel seeing others you care about following in your footsteps as you inspire them in achieving their goals.

Be a Hero today. Move on through your life knowing that what you do is seen by those around you and by bettering your own life you know your behaviour and determination with inspire others to better their own.

Flex Those Motivational Muscles

What is your motivation for change?

We may dream of changing our lives but unless we have the motivation to make that change it will remain just a dream. To help us find that boost which gets us to our goal it is useful to understand what actually motivates us.

On a basic level there are two motivators, “away from” and “toward”, sometimes known as pain and pleasure or the carrot and the stick etc.

The “away from” motivation comes from our desire to leave or get rid of something. For example, we might want to lose weight to escape a negative body image, join the gym to escape health problems or join a group to escape loneliness. It is not just goal is our life that the “away from” motivator works, it is there at a basic level. We eat to get rid of hunger and we run away when we sense danger. The “away from” motivator is a part of our fight or flight response.

On the flip side the “toward” motivator takes us toward pleasure and success, again it works at a base level, those times we eat, not because we are hungry but because we are seeking the pleasure of eating something that ignites our pleasure hormones. The “toward” motivator is about adding something to our lives, making ourselves feel better, losing weight because you have an event where you want to impress, joining the gym for the buzz the feel of exercise gives you, joining a group because you want to expand you existing network etc.

Both forms of motivation are equally legitimate yet both can sometimes lack something in getting the change we want.

When the motivation to achieve something is “away from” we can have that initial push to get us going but once we a sufficiently far away from what it was we wanted to escape our momentum can falter. Think of it like using your feet to push you off in a swimming pool, the push itself will only get you so far, without any other action you will just be stuck mid-water.

With “toward” motivation we may gain momentum as we close in on our goal but it is getting started in the first place that may be the issue. Imagine you want to drive somewhere where you can really enjoy yourself, you won’t get there though until you turn the key in the ignition and spark the engine into life.

The real key is to use both methods in order to succeed, push and pull to get you where you ultimately want to be.

Start by thinking about what it is you want to change in your life and why you want to achieve that change. Is your primary motivation “away from” or “toward”?

Be honest with yourself. We can sometimes fail to recognise our true motives, hiding them behind things we prefer to believe.

Once you have figured out what it is that is motivating you move to the other end of the goal and find some motivating factor there too.

So if your initial motivation is “away from” think about what achieving you goal will gain you, what is waiting for you when you get to the finish line, what will success bring you. Say you want to join a group, evening class or such because you feel an element of loneliness in your life, you know your “away from” but what is your “toward”. Imagine the possibilities developing that new skill or knowledge will bring, the focus on the one possibility that really ignites your imagination.

If, on the other hand, your primary motivation is a “toward” one, what is it that is going to ignite that engine and get you moving. Perhaps, you want to be a great dancer, writer or something similar but what will that move you away from? If you are looking to achieve success it does, to a certain degree, mean you are feeling unsuccessful now so use that as you push forward.

Some things automatically lend themselves to having a push and a pull but others we need to dig deep to find the other end of the line that we will be travelling. By finding our “away from” and “toward” motivation we double our chances in succeeding in achieving change and success.

So flex those motivational muscles and head confidently toward your success.

Beware The Secret Psychic

The Secret Psychic lives in your head!

You hear the Secret Psychic all the time, although most of the time you don’t realise that the voice is there, misguiding you through life.

The Secret Psychic whispers into your inner ear, it reads the minds of other people and predicts your future.

The problem is that much of what the Secret Psychic tells you is wrong. Its information is based on out-dated information, assumptions and your insecurities. It channels those negative voices from the past that have held you back over the years. It echoes the preconceptions of society around you.

Think about the times when you knew someone didn’t like you, or the times you may have avoided someone because of the way they looked, and the times you didn’t bother doing something because you just knew you wouldn’t be able to do it.

That was the Secret Psychic whispering.

Telling you that person doesn’t like because they are avoiding eye contact and talking to you with short sharp words, when it is much more likely that person has other things on their mind.

That person you avoid because of their looks? That is the Secret Psychic echoing societies stereotypes, the negative stories you see in the media and, perhaps, the prejudices of relatives in your childhood. It could also be based on your past experiences with people who may have looked the same. The reality though is that everybody is different and unless we get to know the person we cannot make any assumption about them based solely on their looks.

Those times when you knew you would fail, so you didn’t even bother to do it in the first place. That is the Secret Psychic feeding your insecurities, reminding you of past failures, echoing those negatives words that were said to you when you were younger, undermining your confidence.

However, just because you failed at something in the past does not mean you will fail at something in the future. In that time you’ve grown, learnt more and are better equipped to try again. Those people who told you that you weren’t good enough, that you weren’t clever enough or your looks were somehow not right, were victims of their own Secret Psychic feeding them dodgy information.

One of the issues with the Secret psychic is that its words can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. You think someone doesn’t like you so, in turn, you act offish towards them, which then makes them not like you! You think you are going to fail so you either don’t do it or you become too nervous to complete the task successfully in other words, you fail. You become trapped in the Secret Psychic’s endless cycle.

The thing, then, is to learn to quieten the Secret Psychic and stop it from holding you back.

How? Start to question the truth of those negative things that it whispers into your mind because there are times the Secret Psychic could actually be right. We need to be able to distinguish between past fears or experiences and natural instinct.

When you have those negatives thoughts inserted into you mind ask yourself, what is the reality of this? How do I know it is true? What are the alternative possibilities?

When the Secret Psychic tells you that someone doesn’t like you ask if that is likely to be true. After all it could be they do not know you well enough to make any sort of judgement about you. Ask what the alternatives could be, the other person may have things on their mind distracting them and far from making judgements about you they could be so wrapped up in their own issues that they are barely even noticing you.

When thoughts of failure surface in your mind, challenge them. Are they based on past experiences? If so, question how relevant that past experience is to you right now, how have you or the world around you changed which renders that past experience void now. Do your thoughts come from hurtful words said to you in the past? Ask yourself why the words spoken by someone else’s Secret Psychic should have such an impact on you right now.

The Secret Psychic that lives in your psyche needs to be tamed. We need to take control rather than live under its influence. We sometimes need to Secret Psychic to hold us back a little but we need to use it to pause and question, just don’t let it rule your life.

Failure is a Thing

It is unlikely you have reached mid-life without someone, somewhere along the line telling you that that there is no such thing as failure, even Oprah Winfrey has said those words*. Usually there is something added to it. There is no such thing as failure only learning opportunities or, only feedback or, only results etc.

It may be a little controversial but I will say failure is thing.

Life is not perfect, people are not perfect so things can and do go wrong in life. Then when we experience those things we also have an emotional response to that failure. It can range from mild disappointment to depression, it can include frustration, anger or resignation. Failure can sap your motivation, damage your self-belief and leave you feeling useless.

The level of that emotional response is often dictated by the level of personal investment we have in something. The more we put our effort and time into something that means a lot to us then, if things go wrong, the greater our emotional response will be.

If you conform to the idea that there is no such thing as failure then you are setting yourself up for a double whammy. When something, inevitably, doesn’t go to plan not only do you get the emotional response from that failure, you also have the response to the fact you have failed in your belief that there is no such thing as failure! Causing the emotional equivalent of an aftershock following the initial earthquake.

However if we accept the fact that we will have failures in our lives and that we will have some form of emotion attached to that we can develop some resilience and bounce back much quicker.

The first thing to remember is just because you have had a failure it does not make you a failure. Some people will define who they are by the things that go wrong in their lives, ignoring any positives that come along and actively looking for those failures to justify the way they think. But if we know that any failures we have are just a blip on our way to achievement then we are putting things in a proper perspective.

Secondly, work out what went wrong. Be honest with yourself though, it is very easy to blame others or external causes and while these things certainly happen ask yourself if there is anything you could have done to have avoided the impact of the external influences.

It may be that you can’t for the life of you figure out what went wrong. It which case just go ahead and do things again, just make a slight alteration to something in the process and see if that brings about a positive result.

Those little phrases added to “there is no such thing as failure” are actually right, failure gives us learning experiences, results and feedback. We need to use those intelligently and constructively in order to correct any errors in our thinking, planning and execution of our goals. Sometimes learning what doesn’t work can make life much easier for us in the future as we know what pitfalls to avoid.

However, as you reflect on what you could have done to avoid failure also remember to reflect on those wins you had before things went wrong.

We often see top athletes bought to tears when they fail to win. It sometimes seems strange to us because they have achieved so much and coming second is still an excellent result but because they put so much personal investment into winning, that immediate emotional response is to their failure to win. Top athletes have the advantage of coaches and sports psychologists who will help them realise that they have made those huge achievements before meeting someone who was better on the day.

However us lesser mortals don’t have the luxury of such support. Therefore we need to be able to it ourselves. You may be lucky and have someone close to you who can provide constructive support but many don’t have so we need to become our own coach and point out all the successes we have had so far, how far we have come and how we can keep going onwards.

The important thing is, don’t stop, never give up.

Failure is a thing, but if we can accept it will happen and embrace the lessons it teaches then we can move forward on to success.

  

*https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/05/winfreys-commencement-address/

Dastardly Devils

Having learnt to emulate our heroes what do we do with our villains?

By the time we get to mid-life we have encountered endless numbers of people some who have drifted in and out quickly others who have taken a more permanent place in our lives.

And some of those people can be dastardly devils. The villains who seem to thwart our paths forward, the rogues who seem to be out to get us, the scoundrels who seem to demand money and time from us. Many self-help books will tell you that we should eliminate toxic people from our lives but the reality is we still have to go to work and we still have to socialise.

And the thing is, not all of those people are actually bad!

Obviously there are really nasty people out there in the world who are out to manipulate or step on others, those who seek to take whatever they can from the world not matter how much damage they inflict on others and those who knowingly abuse the trust of others.

However not everybody who we cast as villains in our world actually is. We tend to feel anyone who is different from us, who thinks differently from us or who does not conform to our world view is a bad person.

I am sure we all have had bad bosses in the past who we have cast as villains in our lives but were they really bad people or was it their circumstances and beliefs that made us dislike them? What was their motivation behind making demands of you that seemed, to you, pretty pointless? Perhaps the boss isn’t too bad but it is other work colleagues that you avoid if at all possible because spending even a little time with them seems to be an eternity.

We have all had those acquaintances, those friends of friends, who we try to avoid because we just don’t like them, maybe it’s their views and opinions, or perhaps just something we can’t quite put our fingers on that makes us slink away in the opposite direction when they appear.

How do we deal with these dastardly devils?

Firstly we need to take a look at ourselves and ask why don’t I like this person? Are they actually bad or is just that we don’t have the same view of the world. A bad boss may still be a bad boss, not though, because of the demands they make but because they fail to understand the importance of leadership when they are making those demands.

Then we need to see beyond a couple of those cognitive biases that plague our thinking. Not everything is about you! When someone is demanding or in a bad mood, it may not actually be directed toward you. It is more likely to be something else going on in their lives which is causing the way they behave. We also tend you view people because of the worst (or best) trait we see. So ask yourself is this person bad in all aspects of their behaviour or is just one behaviour that is distorting your view of them overall?

Try to step into their view of the world, but you can only really do this by talking to them first. Be polite and attentive, if it someone you work with enquire why it is they do things in a particular way or how the business benefits from what needs to be done. You will probably find that if you do this that your attitude toward them will change as will theirs toward you.

The real villains in life, however, will probably sneak up on you unawares. The real manipulators will, to start off with, be the most charming people around. They will be attentive and pleasant. Then they will start by asking you to do one little thing, then something else, then something a bit more significant. Eventually you will find yourselves tangled in the web they have spun around you. Breaking free becomes especially difficult, if that is, you have even realised that you have been trapped.

There are ways to stop yourself being trapped in the first place.

Always stay true to yourself and your beliefs. One of the tricks manipulators use is our desire to conform, so they ask for small favours, trapping people into a cycle of conformity before making bolder moves. Never be afraid to say no or at least question the reasoning behind what is being asked of you.

Seek out a second opinion. Talk to those you trust about anyone new in your life and listen to what they say and think, particularly if you have been asked to do anything that you are not sure about.

There are real villains out there and there are villains we have created in our minds. Defeating these dastardly devils, both types, helps us free negativity from our lives and create a better world for us.

The Footsteps of Giants

One of the issues with moving your life in a new direction is finding the right way for you.

For example, have you, or anyone you know tried to lose weight – and failed? Maybe you’ve tried the latest fad diet, which worked for someone you know but did not work at all for you.

It is all back to the issue of how individual we all are. We all have different motivations, beliefs and ideals that have an effect on how we do things in life.

One of the most popular ways in joining a diet club, such as Weight Watchers or Slimming World. The reason these work is because of social pressure, the thought of being weighed in the group every week provides an incentive for those who go. However, if you are the type of person that really does not care about what anyone else thinks or if you are an introvert for who the thought of mixing with relative strangers once a week is an horrendous one, then diet clubs are never going to work for you. You need to find another way.

Whatever it is you want to achieve, there is rarely one best way, it depends on the type of people we are.

Similarly we deal with the problems that life throws in our faces in different ways. Think of the times you have been frustrated by something within seconds of it happening and those times when you have patiently, without complaint worked through other things in order to overcome them, or perhaps a time when you have solved something for someone else who could just not seem to get to grips with the issue.

While we have these individual approaches to the  desires  and problems of life, there are those who are similar in their approaches and closer to how we think who have already achieved, or tried to achieve, whatever it is that you want for your life. By seeking these people out and learning from them it makes our lives easier.

In others words, look for your role models and the people who inspire you. If you want to become an entrepreneur, who do you aspire to be like? Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, James Dyson, all very different people who found different ways to make their money. Perhaps you aspire to be a successful author, like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King or Agatha Christie. Again people with different styles, backgrounds and methods.

You get the idea.

The trick then is to take time to study how your role model achieved what they did and then apply that, where you can, to your life. It will not suit every situation but it will help you having a broader perspective on things, a perspective that is more in line with how you think.

Role models need not be distant celebrities, they could be people much closer to home. Where this is the case use the opportunity to speak to them, and ask them how they do what it is you admire so much. They may not be able to tell you exactly (try explaining something you do automatically!) but you can learn how they learned, how they approach life and the problems they encountered and, importantly, who inspired them.

We are most likely to choose role models because we feel we can relate to them, this is because they appear to think and behave the way we do. There will always be some differences but that does not mean we should ignore their experiences and history. If we can learn something from their successes that we can usefully apply to our lives, then we can create our own success in whatever it is we want to do.

In this wonderful multi-media world seeking the footsteps of giants is so much easier and making the time to do that right now can really make it easier to move forward in life.

An example discovered after I put out the post originally - https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/01/health/13-virtues-wisdom-project/index.html - worth a read

  

The Challenges of Change (Part 2)

One of the biggest challenges to change is just life itself.

We have all had times when we set out to do something only to be thwarted by life events which take  time and effort  to deal with meaning we lose that  time and effort  to use as we originally planned.

Modern life is full of things that can take our minds and efforts away from the things we want to achieve but it would be a real mistake to think of this as a modern phenomenon, life has always been like this.

Go back a few thousand years to the tales of Ancient Greece where Hercules, on his journey to immortality had to first fight through madness and twelve labours, or Odysseus whose journey home from the Trojan War took 10 years all because he was in such a rush he forgot to make an offering to the Gods before he left (the Ancient Greek equivalent of forgetting your passport!).

Maybe come forward a thousand years or so to the Bible, where Jesus could not begin his preaching until he had wandered through the desert and faced Satan’s temptations.

It is easy to dismiss these as simple stories but think about the times you have had a problem that you think you have solved but always seems to come back at you twice as bad, like Hercules facing the Lernaean Hydra. Or the times you have been blown off course after being bewitched by a  seductive  distraction, like Odysseus and the nymph Calypso. And the times you have put off doing things because devilish temptations have appeared in front of you, like Jesus in the desert.

To put it in more modern terms

SH*T HAPPENS

And it has always happened. The real issue is how we deal with the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Shakespeare was in on it too!).

Some people appear to drift along in rudderless boats just being pushed and buffeted along by life’s events with no real ambition to get anywhere. There are those who will simply endlessly moan about their constant bad luck in life or those who develop extremely bitter anger and resentment at life as if all of those negative events are deliberately targeted at them. Then there are those who strive to find the best way to  deal with it  and move on.

It is the latter we should all strive to be if we want to grow and move on in our lives.

Obviously it is not always that easy, some life events really push us to the limits, mentally and physically. The tragedies and personal traumas that can occur in our lives can leave us, at times paralysed and unable to move on at first but, eventually we do, sometimes we need the help of others to lift us from the depths, other times we find the strength within ourselves to pull ourselves up and overcome these events.

Life gets in the way, life has always gotten in the way, as long as we accept that and the fact that life gets in everyone’s way in one way or another. As long as we accept that fate, the gods or the universe has not singled us out, no matter if it seems like that, we can begin to overcome the hurdles and move on with our ambitions and our lives.

More to come on how we can leap those hurdles of life…..

The Challenges of Change (Part 1)

Throughout the first half of our lives there are a lot of transition points. These points of change are fairly easy to mark out, the different stages of our education, the change from education to working life, the move from living with our parents to a home of our own, marriage, becoming a parent etc.

Mid-life is also a transitional point yet it is much harder to identify and define.

If you try to search for when is actually occurs you will get a whole range of different ages and ideas about when it occurs and what it actually means!

Because of  our individuality  we all experience mid-life in different ways some with a full blown crisis, others with a feeling that fulfilment is missing in their lives. Our lives to this point have been full of change and now we face the prospect of life becoming stale because even though changes will still occur they do not have the same impact as the first times these changes happened. For example moving home for the second or third time does not have quite the same impact as that first time you had your own home. Becoming a grandparent is fantastic but it is not quite the same as becoming a parent, that responsibility now falls to your child.

So, at mid-life, if we want to continue to grow rather than stagnate we need to be much more active in introducing new experiences and change into our lives.

Change, though, presents challenges for us.

Do this brief exercise, draw a set of circles, one inside the other.

Now write your name in the centre circle, then, in the next circle out, write the names of those closest to you, e.g. your spouse, children etc., on the next those not quite so close e.g. friends (although a BFF may appear in the circle closest to you), carry on working outwards until you have filled the last circle which should simply read “strangers”.

If you think of this circle as a still pond and then you throw a pebble of change into the centre what happens? The effect of that change will ripple outwards to have some impact on those around you, more particularly those closest to you. Even a small change will create some ripple effect.

On the flip side, what happens to that pond if you do nothing, just let it lie still and undisturbed?

It will stagnate and that stagnation will also affect everyone you have placed in your virtual pond.

The trick then is to introduce change in your life but in a way that considers those closest to you. That does not mean avoiding change because it may upset people rather deciding on change and sitting down with people and explaining what you are going to do and why you are going to do it. There are other advantages with this, they may have ideas that had not occurred to you, they may have ways in which they can support you or ideas on how they can adjust in a way that helps you.

However if they are unsupportive or critical you may want to consider where they fit in you circles!

We do not live in isolation (with the odd exception!) and whatever we do has some impact on others. One of the challenges of change is to be mindful of the effect our changes may have on those closest to us and how we can grow our lives and our relationships harmoniously.

Yes We Are All Individuals

Have you ever felt slightly at odds with the world? As if you can't really see where you fit in the world at the moment? When we feel like this, especially at mid-life, we begin to think the problem is with us and this causes worry or stress.

Actually, it is perfectly normal to think like this, because it is a quirk in the way our minds work.

The first thing to understand is that how we each see the world is as individual as our fingerprints.

Each of us filters the world based on our beliefs, our values, our education, our upbringing which means we experience every experience we have differently from those around us. Even family members sharing the same experience will mentally interpret it differently. Take, for example, two children on a family holiday. They will experience the holiday differently, their age difference will have an impact because of their understanding of the world at their age and one will probably get more enjoyment out of the holiday than the other depending on the activities they do. The result is they will have slightly different memories of the holiday adding to their individual view of the world as they progress through life.

As we experience more experiences it makes us even more individual in the way we see the world.


Obviously we are not always so wildly different from everyone else.

As we encounter other people in life there will be those we get on with and those we do not. If you take time to think about it, it is those whose world view is closer to ours that we get on with and those whose view is at odds with our own that we will avoid. All those times you have taken an instant like, or dislike, to someone new, it is our filters subconsciously working and assessing how this person will fit in to our life.

It is our unique view of the world that makes us who we are and who we relate too.

So YES we are all individual.

BUT

While we are all unique we are also all hard-wired to conform.

Conformity is a natural part of human evolution. The survival of the pack, tribe, community is dependent on those within it working together and coming together for the benefit of the community. It is the conformity within society that sets the rules and boundaries of acceptable behaviour (in a given time and place!). It is a powerful force used (and abused) by politicians, advertisers and anyone seeking to gain an advantage over others.

So deeply ingrained is the need to conform that even those who rebel against conformity usual find some way to conform themselves – for example think about “rebellious youth” over time, Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Punks, Goths, each developed their own way to conform, the clothes they wear, their music etc.

Those who truly don't conform in society are usually labelled as insane or as criminals.

Naturally the degree to which the need for conformity affects us is dependent on our individuality but because of our individuality and our need to conform, every so often there are inevitably going to be clashes within us. Sometimes our individuality dominates and we feel at odds with the world other times we can be consumed by the roles we conform to and we feel that we are losing our identity, our individuality.

As long as we understand that this is normal, because that is how human brains work, then we also know that there is no need to get to worried or stressed when it happens and we can work out why it is we are feeling the way we are at those times.

The better we can develop our self awareness in all aspects of our lives the better we can move forward in life.

Individuality and Conformity, and the relationship between them, is obviously a complex subject and I have only skimmed the surface here - for now

All About You (Part 2)

Self: - Confidence/Belief/Esteem/Worth/Awareness

As we progress through life there seems to be ever increasing challenges to our self-confidence and our self-worth.

Our self-confidence can suffer when things do not go right for us, or at least, as we think they should. Perhaps you notice a few more niggles in your body after exercise and then they seem to take longer to heal than they used to. Perhaps you make a small mistake but it seems to dwell on your mind or perhaps you feel like your forgetting more things than normal. These and many other factors can easily start to erode our self-confidence and increase our self-doubt.

Self-worth is how we value ourselves in society and if life events make us feel less necessary to others our self-worth lowers. Children could be less dependent on us, we could feel less important in the workplace or maybe it is we feel we are unable to contribute to wider society because our self-confidence has been dented.

Then what happens is, as our self-confidence is dented or our self-worth falls, our self-esteem, how we see ourselves, also falls.

None of this happens logically, rationally or analytically, we’re humans not robots with self-diagnostic programmes running. We don’t say to ourselves,

“wow that event certainly impacted on my self-confidence”, or

“my self-worth is considerably lower after that tough day”

What happens is that we react emotionally.

We start to feel down, about ourselves and the world around us. Sometimes this is only a blip and we bounce back pretty quickly but other times things just get worse. What kicks in is something called confirmation bias. When we’re feeling down every little thing that goes wrong seems to be magnified yet things that go well seem insignificant, this makes us feel even worse and before you know it feeling down is heading rapidly to depression.

Once we are in that cycle it is pretty hard to break because, usually, we are totally wrapped up in the effect rather than tackling the original cause. Most forms of therapy and counselling are based on addressing this but there are ways we can help ourselves.

Firstly we can make that logical, rational, analytical part of our mind look at the way we are feeling. We can ask ourselves “What caused me to feel like this?” and, more specifically, “What was it about the cause that had this effect on me?”

Then we can engage that other wonderful human talent – imagination.

Take a little time to imagine looking at yourself from the outside. What would you say to someone else who was feeling down about themselves because of whatever cause you have identified? What words of advice and encouragement would give to that person? By detaching ourselves mentally we can begin to detach from the emotional effects of the cause. This may not fully stop us feeling down or depressed but it is a start and just by being aware of what is happening to us helps weaken the cycle that is dragging us down.

The second thing is to re-evaluate the whole idea of self-worth. It is something that happens unconsciously and based solely on the perceptions we develop through life. However, the reality is, as we get older our value to the world around us increases all the time.

Both our successes and failures add to our worth because both success and failure give us something far more valuable, EXPERIENCE.

Success gives us experience of how to do things, failure gives us experience of how not to do things. If anything failure gives us more value as we learn more, we will learn how to change things in order to overcome failure whereas we tend not to change or learn when something is successful. It is gaining experience in life that helps us grow as individuals, the more we grow the more value we have to the world around us.

Now I can almost guarantee that anyone reading this has had times when their advice or experience has been ignored or dismissed by others but that does not devalue you or your experience rather it is about the other person being on their own journey through life, gaining their own experiences and learnings (more on other people in the next post!).

In essence life throws seemingly endless things towards us which knocks our self-confidence, self-worth, self-belief and our self-esteem, which, in turn, can impact on our mental well-being

However, if we develop our own self-awareness in recognising these things we can help ourselves, and our mental well-being. And by learning and practising that self-awareness we can better recognise our value in the world.

All About You (Part 1)

When writing this post in my head I was struggling hard not to make it sound too much like a New Age piece, with elements of spirituality and meditation because these things do have a kernel of truth at their root and, when we reach a crossroads in life or are seeking ways to give new meaning to our lives, introspection is a necessity to ensure that the road we will take is the right one for us.

Why is this so introspection important?

Simplistically the better we can understand ourselves, our motivations, our beliefs and our values, the better we can build ourselves a life that truly fulfils us.

But before we can really start searching and understanding those things, we need to acknowledge one important fact that has hindered our lives so far.

We are very good at lying to ourselves!

There is a huge list of cognitive biases that impact on our thinking and our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Many of these biases will be dealt with in later posts but for now it is important to recognise that how we perceive ourselves is just that – a perception.

Do this simplistic exercise:

Write down a list of 10-20 things that you can’t do.

Now working down that list how many things fall into the following categories;

            I could but I don’t know how to

            I could but I don’t have the confidence to do so

            I could but I don’t really want to

            I could but it would be wrong for me to do so

            I could but I don’t have the time/money/resources

            I could but to do so would have a detrimental effect

How many genuine “I cant’s” do you have left? My guess is not many, obviously there are some, usually based around physical issues. So for the vast majority of things we say we can’t do what we really mean is;

I could but I have come up with a reason not to do so.

Some of those reasons are very legitimate, e.g. climbing Mount Everest when you have a condition like COPD is likely to be detrimental to your health as you struggle to breathe at altitude. However other reasons are just an excuse not to step out of our comfort zones.

One of the keys to personal growth is learning to take time to challenge the beliefs we hold, especially if they are hindering us in what we want to achieve.

We are all very good at making generalisations and, because of that, we tend to lump things together in a way that hinders our thinking.

For example, someone might say they are not very good at communicating with people but if you dig further you find that is not quite true. If you ask, do you mean all people or people in a certain context? They may answer, all people but it is worse at work. Probe further, all people at work or specific people, again the may narrow down the field. Throw in another question, so you have never communicated effectively with anyone at any time? And you start to break down that belief which is just a generalisation developed from a specific instance.

It is harder to do that to yourself but it is something worth trying to do because as you break down barriers in your own thinking you can move forward in your life with much broader horizons.

Remember your life is all about you.