Maximum Self Esteem

Positive Self Esteem

It’s easy to gain self confidence and increase positive self esteem. The goal will be to get your mind to a state where you will always take steps to positively work on your confidence and in overcoming self esteem issues. You really can build your own positive self esteem. Once you have taken steps to gain self esteem, it will become easier and faster to build on those successes.

Mind Your Own Business

The first, most important thing you must learn is that what other people think about you is none of your business. I know that is a hard one to overcome since you probably want to control what other people think of you, but that is impossible to do. People will have positive and negative opinions about you no matter what you do. Read our short article on this subject here: What You Think of Me

Learn to mind your own business – for your own sake and sanity! Once you drop the desire to control what other people think of you and increase your positive opinion of yourself, you will gain self confidence. You can do this without being arrogant but rather sublimely confident.

Productive Work

Productive work is one of the most important keys to a happy life. You need it for your self-esteem, mental growth, and a genuine sense of purpose. Productive work will help you build your self esteem. Being productive can produce feelings of accomplishment which will help you gain self confidence.

One of the keys to happiness is to do what you love as your work. Any type of work can be productive work, and it is up to you to develop ways to be as productive as possible while keeping that love for work constantly going.

Vacation Life

You might think sitting on a beach for the rest of a vacation life sounds like it might be a nice life, and yes, it may be for a while, but eventually boredom will set in and both your body and mind will waste away. This kind of life does nothing to build your self esteem.

Humans are not supposed to sit around all day doing absolutely nothing. Productive work is one of the most important keys to life. It can bring you self-esteem, gain self confidence, increase social interaction, increase mental growth, skyrocket motivation, and endow you with a positive sense of purpose.

The key to a good vacation life is to add value to the world even while you are on vacation! Have a real vacation life every so often, while keeping your productive work going your entire life.

Overcoming Shyness

Regardless of how severe or how minor your shyness and self esteem are right now, know that it is possible to train yourself in new abilities and to achieve better self esteem and greater confidence. Shyness is just a state of mind and states of mind can be changed. It is possible to overcome your shyness and to begin to reach out with confidence and make new friends. Here is another excellent article: Overcoming Shyness

Gain Self Confidence

How do you handle criticisms and compliments? If someone puts you down, do you find yourself overcoming self esteem that is suddenly low? Here is another Power Essence article that talks about criticism and compliments:Improve your self-esteem

Learn to take all criticism as constructive criticism. Know when someone is coming from their own low self-esteem if they are negative or harshly mean.

Gain self confidence in knowing that you can take in all criticism regardless of how negatively it is delivered to you. When you’ve learned to not bother with negative opinions and to really listen to the constructive criticism and learn from it, then you truly will gain self confidence that gets stronger and stronger with each experience. Push for maximum self esteem!

Kitchen Nightmares Great for Business

Kitchen Nightmares is my favorite Gordon Ramsay show. It’s so satisfying to see him go into a struggling business and turn it around.

Gordon Ramsay knows the secret of success. He does what he loves and he learnt to do it well. He concentrates on the essence of business, creating value that customers will want to spend their money on. He compliments this with strong business prowess, ensuring that he delivers quality products and service in the most efficient way possible. On top of all this, he is in a niche that affects everyone – food.

The businesses Ramsay helps are mostly clueless. They’re so hung up on emotional issues, focusing on the problems with their workplace relationships while expecting customers to swallow bad food and bad service. I can’t believe how much crying, tantrum throwing and power struggling happens instead of concentrating on what the business is there for. It’s usually always grown men, too.

Business is about giving the customer what they want and providing it in a way that is better than they could provide it to themselves. Having a business all too often gets caught up in the politics of people, the needs of the staff instead of the needs of the customers. It’s a simple change of focus, that when combined with Ramsey’s inspiring talks, turns businesses around.

This simplicity is testified to by the makers of the show. They have a working formula of “Bad restaurant > Crying staff > Shouting Ramsey > Fixed restaurant” that they repeat episode after episode to keep their customers happy.

And I for one can’t get enough.

Overcoming Shyness

Almost Everyone Experiences Shyness

You would be surprised at how many people exhibit shy tendencies. With some shy folks it can be a little shyness and for other people it can be an almost crippling sensation of shyness and low confidence that can have detrimental affects on the quality of their lives. Avoidance, seclusion, and the inability to effectively operate in society due to being shy can feel as if you are in a downward spiral to the depths of loneliness and forever doomed to have low self esteem.

Regardless of how severe or how minor your shyness and self esteem are right now, know that it is possible to train yourself in new abilities and to achieve better self esteem and greater confidence. Shyness is just a state of mind and states of mind can be changed. It is possible to overcome your shyness and to begin to reach out with confidence and make new friends.

Granted, there are strange and even dangerous people out in the world, but the majority of people are nice and they are more than happy to chat with people like you. Increasing your self esteem will attract people to you. It really is okay to be noticed and be appreciated for the person that is you!

Analyze Why You are Shy

Are you shy because of your appearance or because of your intelligence or is it because other people seem unapproachable or even scary to you? Look within yourself and become familiar with the reasons that make you shy. Even if you cannot think of it right now, try to become familiar with why you become withdrawn. Close your eyes and meditate on a situation that you had where you were the most shy you’ve ever been. Describe to yourself, even write down notes as to why you think you were shy in those situations. Was it due to someone you were romantically interested in, or at least with whom you were infatuated? Does it have anything to do with someone in a position of power over you and that makes you want to submit and become withdrawn? If you cannot figure out why you are shy, ask someone you trust to list reasons they think people are shy. Maybe you can identify with other people’s shyness or figure out your own reasons. It may take talking to a professional, such as a school counselor to get to the root cause of your shyness.

Get In the Zone by Stepping Out of Your Shy Zone

Learn to stretch beyond your comfort zones. You know what you are used to and comfortable with doing, so now go beyond your familiar comfort zone and then take in that experience and review it all. If you keep stepping out of your comfort zone and practice, practice, practice, soon the new territories will be familiar, and then stretch again to a new zone. Conquer new territory and assimilate what you’ve learned. Learn to step out of your shy zone and practice. Force yourself to explore beyond your comfort zones by simply doing the things that make you shy and practice.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

If you are severely shy or even moderately shy, try some dress-rehearsals in front of a mirror. Imagine that the image you see is someone else. Make eye contact with yourself. If you look away, reestablish eye contact with your image in the mirror and hold it as long as you can. Move in close and really look yourself in the eyes and become comfortable with doing that.

Now step out of view of the mirror and then back in and wave to yourself while keeping eye contact. The more you do these simple steps, the easier it will be to change yourself from shy to sociable to even personable and outgoing! Your self esteem will get a tremendous boost! Pretend that you are rehearsing for your starring role! When you’ve rehearsed several times, stretch to a new zone just past your comfort zone by stepping into view of the mirror and with eye contact, say hello. After rehearsing those steps several times, step toward the mirror and extend your hand to shake hands all the while keeping eye contact with your mirror image. It’s important to keep eye contact and continually stretch beyond your tendency-zone to look away.

The Next Big Step Out of your Shyness

If you live with other people and you trust them to help you in a supportive way, then the next thing to do is to practice with people you know and trust. Pretend they are strangers. Start with one other person and eventually try approaching two or more people. Approach them from a distance, make eye contact (with each person) and say “hello”. Rehearse that several times.

Next, approach them while making eye contact, extend your hand to shake and introduce yourself. Rehearsing greetings several times will lock that familiarity into your mindset and practicing verbal greetings will enable you to speak smoothly and confidently from memory. Remember practice, practice, and more practice makes perfect! Memorize phrases so that you can effortlessly say them in any situation. Being prepared for different situations will increase your self esteem and your confidence will show in your body language and how you talk to others.

The Next Huge Step to the New You

Remember, step beyond your comfort zone by trying new things, such as actually getting out in public to practice and increase your experiences and confidence. Now that you have practiced enough, your rehearsing has already made this aspect of your mental development easier. Compare an outing in public to ones in the past and see if you are already more comfortable about being around strangers. If so, then your self esteem has increased!

Learn to recognize your comfort zones and that imaginary boundary beyond which lies new territory. Getting in the habit of stepping beyond your comfort zones will allow you to do that whenever you want, without the severe hesitations you’ve experienced previously in your shy life. If you are still dreadfully shy about being out in public, continue rehearsing in private and with family and friends. Notice how your comfort zones are expanding.

Practice by going to the mall or into a busy store and try to make eye contact with people. After that feels familiar then try saying hello even if you feel nervous. Keep pushing yourself beyond your comfort zones and assimilate the new experiences. Anyone that starts a new job remembers how strange everything felt and the stress of learning new things, but you know, after a week or two, things became familiar, you were more confident, and after a month or so it was much easier. If you’ve been working at the same place for a long time, notice how things are almost second-nature to you now compared to then. You stretched, assimilated, and became comfortable without even realizing it! Build on our successes and continually increase your confidence in stepping out of your shell and experiencing the world!

It’s Not About You

Since most people are shy or worried about their own performances and interactions out in public, the chances are that people are not thinking badly about you at all and just experiencing their own shyness. Assume that no matter how people react to you, or reject any interactions with you, it is because of them and it is not about you at all. Remember, many people are shy, so don’t take ignoring you or giving you short answers as anything bad about you. These people could be even more shy than you!

Also, it’s good to learn that what other people think of you is none of your business. I know it hurts to imagine that people are thinking badly about you, but you wouldn’t want them to control what you think about them, right? Your thoughts are your thoughts and they are your business. Therefore, other people are free to think whatever they want about you or anybody else or anything else. Be confident in your own thoughts about yourself and don’t worry what other people think of you. It may not be as bad or even bad at all about what you think.

If you are always courteous no matter what reaction you get from someone, then the next time you are around that person, he or she might act differently to you. All it takes is a smile and eye contact and most people will hopefully realize that you are someone that can be approached and possibly befriended, even if you still experience some shyness. Remember practice increases ability which increases self esteem which will give you the confidence to step out of your comfort zones more often.

Once you are farther out of your comfort zone and you’ve practiced and actually become more confident, you’ll be able to read people easier. This is because your focus is not on how you are doing or about being shy anymore, but you will evolve to point where you can begin to make better decisions about how to communicate to other people and truly be confident in every area of your life!

Written by Maxwell Jennings

Image courtesy freerangestock.com

Finding Your Purpose in Life

Here’s an age-old question. What is the meaning of life?

That is an old question.

Unfortunately, the con-artist elite have created a huge myth that the meaning of life is so complicated that we need them to unravel it for us. Nothing is farther from reality than that premise. First off, we don’t need spiritual con-artists to know what the meaning of life is.

Happiness. Pure and simple, it’s happiness.

You might ask; Isn’t the meaning of life subjective? What is ultimately important for me may not be important to you.

Yes, it is subjective. However, if you are happy, what else is there besides the basic things you need to survive? We need food, water, warmth, rest, and safety to survive and keep our wits about us. But what do we strive for in order to feel fulfilled — happiness. Even criminals seek fulfillment through dishonest means, but the end result is typically to feel happiness about what they have or what they have done. Sure, some people that have major mental problems may have a twisted sense of what it takes to feel fulfilled, but most of us can feel that we are doing good and that we are successful if we are happy.

It still sounds too easy to be the meaning of life.

Why should it be complicated? The con-artists have created a huge mystique that everything is so complicated and it’s all spiritual. They manipulate our emotions in order to keep control over us and they spread the lie that the meaning of life is hidden from us. It is not complicated nor is it hidden. When you are happy, does anything else matter?

If you were in a constant state of happiness, would the trivial issues of the world bother you?

I want to be clear about this. I don’t mean a reality-hiding, euphoric drug-like state of happiness. Rather, a deep sense of satisfaction and exhilaration based on reality. For example, the state of happiness you experience from honest achievement and bettering yourself.

You can achieve that type of happiness from creating values.

Creating something of value brings tremendous happiness and an ego-boosting sense of self-worth. It can also become a great source of income, because you will be providing something that people want. As you will love what you do, you can learn to do it better than anyone else does. This will make you competitive in the marketplace and be excellent for business.

You will have drive and commitment. Any past motivational problems will be squashed. You will increase your charisma because you will be happier with yourself due to your achievements. You will increase your confidence because you will have a much clearer view of the world. All of these things make you more attractive to potential partners!

We’ve talked about the reason for living, but what about the reason for life?

Well, now we’re getting into a philosophical area. Maybe there is no particular reason for life to exist. Mystics love to assign all kinds of spiritual reasons as to why there is life. Why does there need to be a reason? Maybe it just exists and maybe it just happens without any spiritual influence or reason. The properties and physical makeup of the universe may be enough to cause the development of life.

You’d probably like to think that there is a reason why you’re here. If there is nothing after life, and there is no reason for why you’re here, then why even bother living?

Yet what if there is no reason for life to exist or for you to be alive? Would you live your life any differently? If there is no deity such as God watching your every move and logging all your good actions and all your bad actions, then why even bother living?

Give your own life purpose. We’ve talked about what you can do to increase your happiness and to increase your productivity. Would you love to make a difference in the world? Would you like to be remembered for your accomplishments and for the value that you add to society?

Of course you would — even if it is a small contribution.

Those things alone should be enough for you to truly live a life filled with purpose for yourself primarily and for others too. Always take care of your own needs and desires first. The benefits to society can be a result of your productivity and your own life purpose.

Finding Your Purpose in Life

The meaning of life is to be happy. This is the happiness from a deep sense of satisfaction and exhilaration based on reality, and the happiness you experience from honest achievement and bettering yourself.

Creating values brings tremendous happiness and an ego-boosting sense of self-worth while even providing a source of income for you and providing something that other people want.

You will have drive and commitment. You will increase your charisma because you will be happier with yourself due to your achievements. You will increase your confidence because you will have a much clearer view of the world.

Your happiness, your drive and determination, your confidence and success will increase your attractiveness.

What You Think of Me

What you think of me is none of my business! Also, what other people think of you is none of your business. For some people, this is a hard concept to accept — that what other people think of them is really none of their business.

Some people want to control what other people think in all ways and some people are really bothered if someone else thinks badly about them. Well, guess what? What other people think about anything, regardless, are their own thoughts and they are completely out of the realm of your control and sometimes even influence.

Once you accept the fact that your thoughts are yours and other people’s thoughts are their’s, then a psychological weight will lift off of your mind. What other people think of you is most likely based on personal prejudices and/or other biased beliefs, some of which can be completely wrong. Why waste your time trying to change what other people think of you? Increasing your self-confidence will help alleviate concern for what other people think, and it will free your mind up for more important things.

If someone makes their thoughts public about you, is it worth your time and effort to correct their assumptions or statements of fact? If you get to the point where other people’s opinions of you do not bother you, then more than likely you will not bother trying to rectify the errors and you will address anyone else’s concern if it even comes up.

Everyone is free to think whatever they want — good or bad! You are free to have negative thoughts and opinions of other people too. Once you move beyond wanting to control what other people think of you, the easier your life will become.