self-esteem – The Healing Modalities

Your thoughts about you.

How many of us want to have more self-confidence? There’s a difference between confidence and self-confidence.

Confidence comes from experience. If we’ve done something well before, when we do that thing again, we’ll likely have confidence that we can do it. The thought might be, “I’ve done this before and I can do it this time.”

Self-confidence comes from within. Even if we haven’t done something before, our thoughts about ourselves and our abilities can create self-confidence that we can figure something out. Or if we can’t figure it out, we’ll see it as a learning process, and we won’t beat ourselves up for that.

Self-confidence comes from having our own back and what we’ll tell ourselves when something doesn’t go the way we thought it would. The thought might be, “I tried my best, I learned what didn’t work, and I’ll try it again to see what might work differently. I know I can figure it out.”

Confidence and self-confidence are feelings. Our thoughts create our feelings. So if we want to feel confident and self-confident, we’ll need to think thoughts that create those feelings.

Many of us struggle with self-confidence because we’re used to telling ourselves mean and critical things when we think we’ve “messed up” somehow. Thoughts like:

“I’m just not good enough for this.”
“There must be something wrong with me.”
“Nothing ever goes the way I want it to, so why keep trying?”
“This is too hard for me.”
“They think I’m incapable.”

Those thoughts will create a feeling of disappointment, self-doubt, discouragement, or defeat. Are those feelings close to the confidence or self-confidence we want to feel? No. So let’s try different thoughts. Thoughts like:

“I’m figuring this out and I can keep trying.”
“I’m learning what works and what doesn’t.”
“It didn’t go the way I wanted it to this time, but let’s see if this other way works . . .”
“This is hard and I can do hard things.”
“I’m as capable as I need to be.”
“I’m deciding to believe in myself no matter what.”

When we become aware of the thoughts we think about ourselves, we can choose them on purpose. We can choose thoughts that serve us, that are kinder to ourselves than the ones we might be used to thinking.

Your turn: Are you aware of the thoughts you think about yourself? What thoughts about yourself serve you? Which ones don’t? What are some slightly kinder thoughts you could choose instead? What are some much kinder–and still believable thoughts–you can choose instead?

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

About yourself or to yourself.

Last week I shared about the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – the first pillar being how we think about ourselves. Let’s talk about the second pillar today: how we speak about and to ourselves.

The language that we use can affect us through our mind-body connection.

I hear people say things like:

“That kills me!”
“I’m dying right now!”
“It’s such a pain in my neck!”
“Shoot me now!”
Or even the gesture of a thumb and index finger to the head, creating a pistol going off

These phrases accompany things that relate to feelings: hilarity, annoyance, exasperation, or aggravation. We know they’re just pop culture phrases that people say to emphasize something they’re experiencing. But our words can affect us and those around us.

There’s a book called Your Body Believes Every Word You Say and from it, we learn that we want to become mindful of the language we use about ourselves and to ourselves. Not only to prevent physical manifestations of illness, disease, or pain, but also to reinforce what we believe about ourselves.

If we’re always denigrating ourselves to others – even in playful, joking ways like, “I’m such a dumbass, you’ll never guess what I did” – we might take small hits to our self-esteem without even realizing it. Our words might be reflecting what we really think about ourselves on a deeper level.

This is not a gloom and doom warning, but rather a nudge to become more aware of how we can take care of ourselves – by using our words intentionally about ourselves, when we talk to others and when we talk to ourselves.

AND, even when we talk about or think about others. Sometimes what we think about others and what we judge other people for is also a judgment about ourselves. What is it that they’re doing that we don’t allow ourselves to do? If we judge someone for being late, it’s because we likely never allow ourselves to be late. If we judge someone for being carefree and spontaneous, where in our life are we withholding that from ourselves?

Instead, what if we practice phrases like this externally:

“That’s amazingly hilarious!”
“I’m so gleefully amused right now!”
“Honestly, that’s been really hard for me to manage.”
“I’m recognizing I need support in handling this.”

And internally:

“I’m learning how to really like myself now.”
“I care about how hard this has been for me.”
“I know I’ll be able to figure this out.”
“I love myself no matter what.”

Our words are powerful and we can use them consciously and mindfully. We can use our words to care for ourselves – to support ourselves and build ourselves up.

Your turn: Are you aware of how you speak about and to yourself? What do you notice when you pay closer attention to the words you use? How would you like to shift the language you use in your daily life to support your well-being even more?

Dive Deeper: What are the stories you tell yourself about yourself? (For example, “I’m this [______] way because that [_____] happened to me.”) Are these stories true? What if they’re not and never were? What do you want to change about these stories to make them more empowering?

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Tag: self-esteem

Want more confidence?

Speak no evil