I’ve worked with many people as their coach and seen the insecurity in their relationships. But I’m an expert on that insecurity inside my young self and I can now tell you where it came from and how it showed up.

It came from the lack of security I had with my parents. I was yelled at, compared in a losing way to other girls and criticized unmercifully and often – by my mother. I was always afraid my girlfriends would think I was a loser – so insecurity in relationships with peers showed up first.

Then there was the pressure to be popular, date and marry – all, for me, fraught with insecurity and self-doubt. Imagine you were looking at this beautiful young woman who thought she was a loser – who probably tried too hard and took almost any little attention by a male as good enough. She gets asked out by a good looking boy in her freshman history class. She’ll never have to worry about not having a date again. And so it went. And so we married and stayed together in our really lousy relationship for 19 years.

Some of the reasons for insecurity in relationships lay in childhood as they did in mine. Until I began to gain some self esteem and learned that I was important enough to say what was bothering me and how I felt about another’s behavior toward me, I would continuously experience insecurity in relationships. So will you.

Solution: good self esteem and good communication tools. YOU University is the best place I know of to findthose solutions. The tools you learn are useful now or for life. Consider joining our journaling community so you can get to know us and see how we handle insecurity in relationships.

Maggie Currie

Have you forgotten who you are?  This may seem a ridiculous question to ask, but frequently people do forget who they really are.  For instance you could be viewed as someone’s parent or partner, someone’s sibling or someone’s carer or employee.  Sometimes you are not seen as yourself but as an extension of someone else.

This very common state is generally brought about because you have low self-esteem symptoms and ultimately very little confidence.  You are not always aware of this lack of self-esteem as you have been viewed in this light for so long that you believe it is normal.

I know exactly how that feels. I was brought up by my adoptive parents to be who they thought I ought to be.  I was frequently told that I should be seen and not heard, and that I had no opinion of any value. This led to me go through life in a daze, being who I thought I ought to be and not myself and with many low self esteem symptoms.

I spent my life looking after everyone else’s needs and forgot all about my own needs and what made me happy.  The one very special person I neglected was me!

Did I change this situation? You bet I did, and it took some really hard work.  Is there a solution for your low self esteem symptoms too? Yes there is.  And I believe the action you need to take is this:

• Find ways to break the old habits and thinking patterns that have prevented you from living your life to the full and realizing your potential.
• Then you can create new habits, new patterns, new beliefs that will empower you and set you free from those low self esteem symptoms!
• Accept and love yourself just as you are.  This is the key to your ‘inner life’ makeover; and ultimately ‘outer life’ results will follow naturally!  When you begin to feel great on the inside you will begin to exude confidence. Your circumstances will begin to change and develop as the inner, happy you begins to shine out!
• Listen to your intuition. It is there to help and protect you.
• Be kinder to yourself – verbally, emotionally and physically.

I know how it feels to really want to make changes in my life, and not knowing where to start. My fears dominated me, my self-belief was in shreds and I had forgotten what makes me happy because I hadn’t been happy for so long. I had become a shadow of who I really was.

With the help of life coaching and my experience and the tools in YOU University I began to change the way that I see myself and began to think strong positive thoughts about my life.  I started to be grateful for the life I am living and to notice the abundance that surrounds me. Everything started to change for the better. My self-esteem levels increased and so did my confidence.  Now I am helping other people to re-build their self esteem and confidence, and loving every minute of it.

 Learning to love yourself is tough to begin with but with help and practice each and every day you will succeed in raising your self esteem levels too.

If you think you are the only one interested in improving self esteem, you are not alone. Most people think that they are the only ones that have low self esteem while the truth of the matter is that most people at some time in their life suffer from self esteem issues. I mean really, who wants to walk around all victimy these days and say, “Poor me. I’m working on improving self esteem for myself?” Anyway, self esteem issues are a pretty good subject for your old friend denial to pop right in and cover up the whole thing from your conscious mind.

So if you want to check it out, ask yourself the following to uncover self esteem issues:

• Do you settle for way less than you want in a relationship?

• Do you absolutely never let anyone see you dressed less than perfectly?

• Or do you go the other way and dress pretty sloppily quite often?

• Do you work at jobs that are way beneath your talent ability or allow yourself to be way underpaid?

• Do you tell yourself that those kinds of jobs are all that’s available or that you’re only doing them temporarily but find that you’ve actually done them for years?

• Do you let your personal environment go to the point of severe clutter and either clean up only for visitors or keep people out of your home?

• Do you secretly feel your aren’t very talented?

• Do you sacrifice your wants and desires for others all or most of the time?

I’m sure many people could add to this list of questions but these are ones I can think back to from my own severe self esteem issue days.

The good news is you can change this. You can learn how to have higher self esteem. If you look around on the internet, you might run into statements like:

•    You just need to learn to love yourself and your life.
•    Let go of any anger or fear you are holding onto and be grateful for all that you have already been blessed with.
•    Forget about the past and the mistakes that you have made along the way. You can’t change them now and it will not accomplish anything by making yourself feel worse.

They sound nice and maybe even easy. But how do you accomplish those ends?

Look around this site. Every coach trained by YOU University Online has worked at improving self esteem themselves – oftentimes dramatically.

Develop your strengths and use them to gain any knowledge that can help you in the direction that you would like your life to go in. High self esteem is not a luxury it is a necessity and the only thing that will allow you to accomplish all of your goals. Since self-esteem affects every facet of life, having a healthy, realistic view of yourself is important. You also deserve to like and respect yourself and to be happy with your life and who you are. And remember, high self esteem doesn’t mean that you’ve gotten too big for your britches — it means you value yourself.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

]]> http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/improving-self-esteem/feed 1 http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/is-no-one-happy-not-even-in-australia http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/is-no-one-happy-not-even-in-australia#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:00:28 +0000 allaboutlifecoaching http://allaboutlifecoaching.com/?p=939 I spend some time each week looking around the internet to see what’s going on in the world related to things like self esteem, the law of attraction, feelings and emotions. I look for the things I write about in this blog and that I imagine you like to read about. I was struck by an article in The Australian entitled Pursuit of happiness is personal. It starts out by saying:

TEN years ago I would not have envisaged that I would need to lecture or write about happiness. Nor would I have imagined that political parties and governments would be enthusing about policies promoting happiness as the big idea of the 21st century.

Happiness has become the objective of a powerful crusade. Its advocates insist on making us happy whether we like it or not. Richard Layard, leading prophet of this crusade, has stated that it needs “a cadre” of “specialist teachers acting as proselytes and high priests of the movement” to see through the “educational revolution”.

Basically the article says: In watching the campaign news in the last few elections and observing our children in school, it is becoming clear that governments and schools have shifted some of their focus from the real issues to the matter of happiness and self esteem. The candidates are trying to make us happy. Teachers wish to instill happiness and self esteem techniques into their curriculums of reading, writing and math. While these methods may make those people happy and make them feel as if they are making headway in our children’s futures, what about teaching them that the only one that can increase their self esteem or make them happy is themselves. While teachers have always attempted to inspire their students, it used to be about making them feel good when they are learning things, not teaching them to be happy.

Teachers and governments may have the right to teach us what is right and what is wrong but how can they even attempt to teach us how to feel and what is the right way to feel in any given situation. Happiness is brought about by our life experiences and our peace of mind. That has to come from within and can not be taught out of a text book or from a campaign speech.

The past has certainly shown us that being happy does not make us good and a good life does not always indicate a happy life. It is a personal, unique concept that no one but the person themselves can expand on and learn from.

He has many good points. I don’t agree with it all but I am taken by the fact that we have started to talk about what I consider important- how each and every person feels about themselves. I imagine a world where self esteem is so high that no one would consider hurting themselves, each other or the planet.

What are your thoughts?

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Maggie Currie

Have you ever wondered what is the single biggest of the self esteem issues? Surprise, surprise, it is us, ourselves, human beings. While it is one of our biggest desires – to be self-confident and have no self esteem issues, because we believe itwill help us to achieve our goals, at the same time, we are also our biggest saboteurs.

It all started for me in my childhood. I remember my mother being so nice and friendly to my neighbors, teachers and friends, only to turn into an infinitely more critical person when it came to me. I was to be seen and not heard, my opinions were of no value and I was to do as I was told and not question it. That obviously had a huge influence on me. I began automatically demanding so much more of myself than I would from other people. I also began to believe that everyone was so much better than me. I felt like I was very small and insignificant. And this feeling stayed with me for many, many years and affected every part of my life.

The truth is, nobody is perfect. We, as humans, just handle our imperfections differently. Some people accept their imperfections, live quietly with them and do just fine. Some people don’t notice their imperfections. Others even take the situation a bit further and turn their “shortcomings” to their advantage, for instance actors and comedians. But me, I decided to dwell on my weaknesses and use them as excuses for not moving forward in my life. I lost my self confidence completely and was easily manipulated and controlled. This of course was not a happy time in my life but I have now managed to turn my life around, find the real me, the confident me, the intelligent me, the capable me and really enjoy my life.

So, is there something you can do if you made those same decisions as me and made excuses not to move on with your life? Is there some way to deal with these self esteem issues? Yes there is.
• Accept your imperfections and start working on them, the sooner, the better.
  • Consult a Life Coach who specifically knows how to work with self esteem issues with clients and themselves and find out how you can begin.
  • Accept that you will never be perfect at every single aspect of your life, you are who you are and things happen at the right time for the right reasons.
  • Enjoy life, laugh at your imperfections and when you reach the point that they really drive you mad, work on them and move on!
You will find that you life is much more fun and enjoyable.

Are you spending your life feeling ordinary? Do you feel like you are just a “normal” person like everyone else and that life is no big deal – particularly your life? That is what’s wrong with your thinking and your self esteem. Every single person on earth is completely unique and not exactly like anyone else. Think of the miracle it takes for two people to come together and actually have all the conditions exactly right to create another human being! Think of the miracle that it takes for that little tiny creation to properly grow and develop into the unique individual that you are today!

That is beyond ordinary. Remember that there is nothing ordinary about you.

• Focus on what you really want in life and you will begin to receive all the things that you have always wanted.

• If you love and accept yourself first, you will treat other people the same way that you want to be treated and your relationships, your work and your overall happiness will change and you will realize that you are way more than ordinary and begin to prove it to yourself  and your self esteem every day.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Funny thing is when I was in school I loved my English classes but was always critiqued by teachers for my ability to speak well about what we read but my very limited writing ability.

I write poems, little essays and comments on life. Now I love all of my writing. I see creative writing as another self empowerment.

Hair Stories

Honey

I was 2 or 3. I lived in an apartment in E. Orange, NJ over a store – a drug store that my mother worked in while my father was away in the Army. My father was in Europe in the Army in WWII. I lived with my very nervous, unsure mother and her roommate, Joan.

I remember walking between our neighbor’s apartment, an old lady named Blanche, and my apartment. Blanche sometimes combed my hair into special hairstyles. I remember two braids pinned up on my head. The hairstyle came with her honeyed love – honey because it was sweet and it clung to me when I went home where a more nervous, matter-of-fact kind of love lived.

Dad’s Shoulders

One of my favorite things to do was to sit on my dad’s shoulders as he sat on the couch and fix his hair. I used barrettes and bobby pins, (remember those?) – maybe even bows. He’d let me comb it and play with it as long as I wanted to. My mother was impatient and I would never have even asked her. She felt too uninviting.

I felt like I was floating in a safe cocoon-like bubble – just me and him. It was a little girl version of a hot tub with your closest friend.

Bobby Pin

It’s a bit of a stretch to call this one a hair story. It’s actually about a bobby pin and my brilliant 4-year-old experiment with electricity. (Ah! My mother was fixing her hair, so it actually qualifies.)

My mother was sitting at her dressing table combing her hair. (Does anyone have a dressing table any more? They seem to signify a slower time when women weren’t in a rush to look beautiful and be out the door. They took their time to sit down and make themselves beautiful. And they even took the time to put “skirts” on the dressing table.) I was hanging out on the floor watching when I saw a bobby pin. I thought, “I wonder if this would light up if I put it in the plug?” So I tried it. Wow! Ouch! Fire came out and burned my hand. I spent the whole day lying on the bed with my mother helping me put my hand in ice water so it wouldn’t hurt and blister. It was too cold. She did it with me to make me want to do it more. It blistered anyway and I never forgot what’s in the plug.

The Permanent

I had very straight hair when I was a child and, being female, I wanted curls. Sometimes I’d bug my mother enough so that she would set it in rags but those curls came out right away. A couple of times my mother let me get a permanent in a beauty parlor because the Toni’s she gave me, always came out in a few days and they were very smelly, too. Not only that but my mother was all thumbs so it wasn’t very like the picture showed it to be. The curlers were crooked and falling out.

I believe it was 2nd  grade and we were going to have our pictures taken and my mother agreed to let me go to the Pleasantdale Beauty Salon to get a permanent. I was very in love with my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Sokely, and wanted to look especially wonderful for picture day. I have that picture some place in my pile of pictures. My bangs (cut by my father with a dish towel across my forehead) were straight and the rest of my hair was straight right down to my ears where it stuck out in bushy permanent curls. To top this picture of feminine pulchritude off, I was missing some of my front teeth. Did I think I looked beautiful enough for Miss Sokely? Although this seemed like a major event at the time, I don’t remember. There’s something for me to learn here. Whatever is happening today, in 50 years I won’t remember.

The Wig

Oh, my poor overly self-conscious 21-year-old self! In the early sixties wigs were “in” – particularly for Black women. My father sold clothes and wigs almost exclusively to Black women door-to-door. And he sold wigs. Lots of wigs. Sometimes I was coerced into working with him and he made me wear a blonde wig! Can you imagine me in a blonde wig? I couldn’t either.

But this was my very own dark hair, almost black hair, wig. My boyfriend and later first husband got it in his head that I should have one and he bought it for me from my father and gave it to me as a gift. Of course, I felt I had to love it. But wearing it was a whole other story! I hated it! I knew everyone was looking at me and thinking how weird I looked. But did I tell my boyfriend? Of course not. I managed to convince him that it was appropriate only for very dressy situations. And then I was asked to be a bridesmaid for my friend. And my boyfriend expected me to wear the wig. I did. I had the worst time I ever had in my life. I was in 100% stress throughout the wedding. I even brought another dress to change into after the ceremony trying to convince myself that it was the dress that stressed me out. But it was the wig. I shlepped that wig along on my honeymoon to Europe. I never wore it; I just shlepped it. I don’t recall what finally happened to it – how I got over having to please him and force myself into wearing it. I know it wore it very few times. I know it was long gone when I finally left him in 1980. He probably just got tired of caring about the wig. And the funny thing is I had long, beautiful, almost black real hair.

The Braid

I was what I like to call a “middle-class hippy.” I wore long dresses exclusively for 3 years while my husband went off to work as a programmer in a suit everyday. I had the requisite long hair and we belonged to a somewhat exotic spiritual organization which completely freaked my parents out.

I loved wearing my hair in two long ponytails or one long braid. I looked so “in” and exotic. It took 3 years to grow my hair long enough to have a braid that touched my waist. It took a full day for my hair to dry when I washed it in N.J. humidity. It was a real challenge to have hair like that. I had two little kids – one a baby who’s little chubby hands loved to grab my long hair.

One day when I was driving around doing the mom-like errands of a mother of two and a wife, I had it! That damn braid kept feeling like a lump of coal stuck in the middle of my back while I rushed around and tried to keep a 2 year old and a 6 year old from killing me from the back seat. I came home that Friday and told my husband I had to cut it off. I called around to local beauty shops but the women were booked for appointments with full force that Saturday. So we left the kids with my parents and went into Greenwich Village that very night and I found a somewhat famous beauty salon open until midnight that would do my hair. All the operators stood around while the man who cut my hair cut it to a pixie! And here I am at 66 thinking of growing a braid again!

Hair Dye

And then there’s the story of my dying my hair. When I was around 30ish, I started to get a bit of a gray streak in the front of my hair. I kind of liked it. Never thought about dying it – being the mother earth type and all that. Until I met Barbara D. I gave her lots of power and she thought I should cover the gray and try a reddish look. Why did I listen to her? I did it because I thought she knew.

Dying my hair is a big pain in the neck. My dark hair is very dark. Roots weren’t in like they seem to be in today. But I think it’s dark roots with light hair and mine was the other way around anyway. I dyed my hair for about 12 years until one day I dyed it and I had a really bad allergic reaction. The light came on! I am the “natural girl”. Dying my hair doesn’t go with me. Thanks for the message, God. I’ll let it grow out. But how ugly. First thing I did was cut it and use a hair pencil to cover the roots. And it looked worse. So I went to a beauty salon and asked the owner who had very long striking natural gray and dark hair herself if she could do something to temporarily cover it while it grew in. She said she could. And my hair turned pink and green! I had it cut very, very short and survived until it all the dye grew out.

Do you notice any an underlying theme throughout these little stories? Do you notice the self-esteem journey written within?

Exercise: Try writing a story of your life choosing a theme and showing your growth. I recommend a wonderful book to use as guidance: Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!