Personal Growth Princess » limiting beliefs

Can Jealousy Raise Your Self-Esteem?

Nina East — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:58:38 +0000

If you’re like most people in western culture, you’ve been taught that jealousy is a bad thing. You may have even been told that experiencing jealousy means you are a bad or ungrateful person, or that being jealous makes you weak or less spiritual. For most of us, when we experience jealousy, we try to eliminate it or prevent it from ever coming up. Given that jealousy is a natural emotion, this is a pretty futile effort.

There is an important distinction that needs to be made in order to have a more helpful understanding of jealousy, one which can actually raise your self-esteem…

Jealousy is a mental uneasiness about something or someone, usually triggered by seeing or experiencing something you wish you had or wish you could do. It is an awareness of difference, and a wishing for something similar to be in your own life.

Jealousy has developed a negative connotation in part because of general cultural perspectives, but also because of the inappropriate behavior that sometimes follows. We tend to get emotion and behavior mixed up, but, jealousy, as a feeling, does not have to be negative. In fact, it can be quite positive and empowering if you look at it the right way.

Resentment, on the other hand, has a bite to it. It involves a sense of indignation, of having been wronged by the other person, and even the belief that when they have something you do not, whether it be a skill, a relationship, or a tangible item, that it has somehow made you “less than”.

Words, and therefore feelings, are defined by other words. How you define something gives it its meaning. The word “resentment” is often used to define jealousy, but that doesn’t have to be so.

If you were to choose to eliminate the word “resentment” from your definition, and experience, of jealousy, what might be different?

If you believe that you are “less than” someone who has what you do not yet have, or if you believe their having it reduces your chances of ever having it, then you are experiencing Resentment, not jealousy. Resentment has a definite self-esteem lowering quality. Not only do you feel bad about yourself because you don’t have what the other person does, you may even feel guilty for feeling resentment, setting off a downward spiral of lower self-esteem.

What if jealousy were just a signal to you about something more you want to be, do, or have? The actual person who triggered the jealous response is not as important as the desire it brings up in you. Jealousy can give you clarity about what you really want. It can help you define precisely what you want to create in your life or business. The more clear you are about what you want, the easier it is to take productive action – and one of the greatest self-esteem boosters is taking effective action.

If you believed this about jealousy, how much more gentle would you be with yourself? How much more understanding would you be of other people? How much more likely would you be to get into action because you have a “possibility” mentality versus a “lack” mentality? How much higher could you raise your self-esteem by defining jealousy in a positive way, rather than trying to eliminate it?

Leave a comment below – I’d love to know what you think!

90% of Corporate Life is Feigning Interest

Nina East — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 14:54:02 +0000

OK, so whether you agree with that statement or not, I suspect it gave you a bit of a chuckle.

After all, we’ve all feigned a bit of interest at times, yes? Hopefully not too often, and perhaps this cartoon from artist Hugh McLeod at The Gaping Void will give you pause.

Hugh has many funny, poignant, and even disturbing cartoons. I subscribe to his daily cartoon update and am always excited and curious to see what he’s been thinking. One warning, though – occasionally the language is a bit colorful, so if that disturbs you, you may want to check out his work at his site before you sign up for the daily updates.

So what do you think about this particular one? Comment below and let us know. I’m curious!

Famous Failures…how do you deal with adversity?

Nina East — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:34:57 +0000

I ran across this video the other day…full of poignant examples of how someone else’s opinion or assessment of you doesn’t really matter.

Adversity is a peculiar thing. For some people it is the call to action, the call to step up and do the unexpected. To others it is the slap that knocks us flat.

Which is it for you? Chances are it’s a little bit of both, depending on what else is happening for you. If your environment is an invalidating one, you’ll lean toward the being-knocked-flat side. If it’s validating and empowering, you may feel like you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

What this video demonstrates is that it’s what inside YOU that matters. You get to choose what you pay attention to and what influences you.

I know you’ve heard that before, yes? Perhaps all you need is a compelling picture.

Letting Go – quotes for the soul and mindfulness

Nina East — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:05:36 +0000

From Transforming The Mind, Healing The World, by Joseph Goldstein

What Happens When We Do Not Let Go?

What happens when we do not let go? Asians have a very clever trap for catching monkeys. People hollow out a coconut, put something sweet in it, and make a hole at the bottom of the coconut just big enough for the monkey to slide its open hand in, but not big enough for the monkey to withdraw its hand as a fist. They attach the coconut to the tree, and the monkey comes along and gets trapped. What keeps the monkey trapped? Only the force of desire, of clinging, of attachment. All the monkey has to do is let go of the sweet, open its hand, slip it out, and be free. But only a very rare monkey will do that.

What kind of monkey are you? [superemotions file="icon_wink.gif" title="Wink"]

From Living Meditation, Living Insight, by Thynn Thynn

Clinging is a Stressful State

The moment we want happiness, we start to cling to it in our mind. First, we cling to our own idea of happiness. We relate to the outside world as a source of satisfaction and look outward for the things we normally associate with happiness – accumulating wealth, success, fame or power. As soon as we become attached to any idea – happiness, success or whatever – there is already some stress. Clinging isitself a stressful state, and everything that derives from it is also stressful. For example, try to clench your hand to make a fist. As soon as you start to clench your hand, you have to use energy tokeep your fingers clenched tightly. When you let go of the clenching, your hand is free again. So it is with the mind. When it is in such a state of clenching, it can never be free. It can never experience peace or happiness, even if one has all the wealth, fame and power in the world.

Limiting Beliefs – how do you change them?

Nina East — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:06:04 +0000

If you are like me (and most other people on the planet), you have many beliefs that serve you well. Beliefs that help you accomplish goals, contribute to others, and guide you in difficult times.

But if you are really like most people, then you also have a whole bag full of beliefs that get in the way and hold you back…otherwise known as “limiting beliefs”.

Most of us know what at least some of our limiting beliefs are, though there are always some we haven’t become aware of. Sometimes our best approach is to focus on the beliefs we know about. The trick is in how to change those limiting beliefs so that they not only don’t get in the way any longer, but also actually transform into beliefs that help us.

I had a personal encounter with this very issue today.

Like you, I’m a personal growth enthusiast, so I’m always seeking new experiences and greater self-understanding. To help with that, I’ve been working with a coach who is helping me look specifically at self-esteem – my self-esteem. I wish I could tell you it has all been fabulous and fast, but it seems that shifting some of those long-held and hidden beliefs can take more than a little bit of nudging and nurturing in order to shift.

My coach and I believe that language plays a significant role in how we make meaning and interpret events. So, at my coach’s suggestion, we were brainstorming phrases/affirmations/incantations I could use to help shift some of the low self-esteem beliefs.

What happened was very interesting, and a tad bit disturbing.

My coach suggested I use the phrase “I’m wonderful just the way I am.”

Innocent enough. Maybe even inspiring.

It’s certainly a lovely thing to say to oneself, right?

However, what happened for me let me know it wasn’t the phrase for me. As soon as I said “I’m wonderful just the way I am”, another voice inside began pointing out the reasons why that wasn’t always the case.

The purpose of affirmation is to change our default way of thinking – a sort of re-wiring process. The idea is that through repetition, eventually you begin to wear a new groove in your brain, create a new pattern, so that it becomes automatic.

What people sometimes misunderstand, though, is that emotion plays a critical role. Anything you repeat over and over again, in an emotional state, digs a deeper groove. This is true whether it is a positive emotional state or a negative one.

When the other voice in my head started telling me that my affirmation wasn’t true, it was doing so from an emotional place. Like many people raised in the United States, I had stronger emotional connections to “not” being good enough, than to being wonderful.

In other words, this exercise in using language and though repetition in order to gradually open up a new perspective, was actually having the reverse effect. Each time I said the affirmation, I also ran through a litany of anti-affirmations.

This experience reminded me of one of my clients.

My client had a habit of saying “I don’t know” whenever I asked her something about herself. She realized she did this, and knew from her own study of personal growth, that the more she said it, the more it would always be true for her. Obviously we needed to come up with a sentence to replace the habitual “I don’t know.”

Together we came up with the phrase “I’m figuring it out.”

At first we thought this was a strong replacement. It didn’t have the same doubt or negativity of “I don’t know”, and it left things open to possibility. It also gave her permission to “not know”.

But after a few trials of it, she realized that she was coming up with negative responses. She realized she just simply didn’t believe she was figuring it out.

So we needed to back up and design a phrase that was believable, but also made room for possibility, as well as making it OK if she didn’t know quite yet.

The phrase she landed on was “I might be figuring it out.”

The words “I might” were exactly what she needed to make it believable. After all, there was always the chance that she might be figuring it out.

After a week of “I might be figuring it out”, she was able to transition to a slightly more empowering statement – “I am figuring it out most of the time.” And eventually she believed that she was figuring it out.

By stair stepping her affirmations, making sure she could absolutely believe what she was saying, she was able to shift her thoughts, and ultimately her behavior and her results.

In case you’re wondering what new affirmation I came up with, here it is:

“It’s healthy to believe I’m wonderful just the way I am.”

Silly study in semantics? Perhaps.
Negative consequences? Not a one.

I can totally believe it, and I know that soon it will make way for the next stair step.

Limiting Beliefs – all self-imposed?

Nina East — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:46:58 +0000

A good friend of mine, Dr. Eric Schneider, just sent me this video. I was so impressed, I had to share it.

It is a huge reminder about what we can do, if only we will stop thinking about why we can’t.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.