Becoming Stress Free

This week I have more information about reducing the stress in your life and I give you three thought patterns to watch out for. I have also given you some more tips on reducing your stress. As you do this, your self-esteem and confidence will improve.

Don’t forget that I actively encourage comments on my newsletter or take suggestions for articles to include either in my newsletter or in my blog.

Talking of my blog, it is looking a bit sorry for itself at the moment because I have been too busy to write to it for a while. Nevertheless, I will get back to that soon and you can look forward to some quality articles to help you.

In the news this week is a woman who started a new and successful business as a result of improving her self-esteem. I have included the first part of the news item plus a link if you want to see the whole thing. The news article itself includes a link to where you can purchase the bracelets that she makes, so if you like the sound of them, you will be able to get one. I do not endorse these bracelets, having never seen one, so don’t buy one just because I mentioned them. I really know nothing about them at all except what I have read in the article. You will have to make your own decision.

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Personal growth leads to new business

in Danville

By Tara Boznic

Published in the Danville News, July 25 2010.

A Danville woman’s journey toward elevated self-esteem sparked a desire to share her lessons with other women – and eventually launch a new business.

Two years ago, Kristin Springfield decided she was tried of being depressed and not having as much joy in her life.

She was an overachiever and overworker. She could never stop thinking negatively. She was never good enough for herself and didn’t feel like a good mom.

“I just couldn’t keep the pace up anymore,” she said.

Springfield changed her attitude and continually and consciously decided to keep positive. She began to give herself credit for what she was doing right. Her husband, Ron Saunders, noticed a new inner peace and happiness.

“It really started to make a huge difference,” she said. “I liked me a lot more. The loving people in my life really liked me a lot more.”

Springfield also wanted her daughter, Mackenzie Blair, now 14, to think positive during her time developing into a woman. Two years ago, she asked Mackenzie what she thought it meant to be a woman.

Mackenzie listed words like — mystery, love, freedom and femininity. The mom and daughter evaluated them and their meanings. They bought charms from a craft store and made bracelets to remind them of the words and what really matters.

Springfield and Mackenzie eventually hosted a bracelet-making party with her friends and soon Springfield was regularly crafting the jewelry. Initially, she thought just young girls and teenagers would be most interested in them.

Eventually, more adult women wanted the bracelets.

So, even though Springfield works full-time as an occupational therapist, she decided to officially launch her Womanly Journey business in January. She designed a higher-end bracelet and an assortment of charms.

The bracelets came in June. Each starter bracelet comes with a butterfly-shaped book on a stand with messages and meanings related to the charms. As the customer continues to add charms to the bracelet, those charms come with another page for the book.

The “butterfly woman” logo and correlating “Believe” charm that comes on the bracelet represents the metamorphosis into a self-actualized woman.”

“The goal — if I can show or help a woman remember who she is, no matter what she does, it’s worth it,” Springfield said.

The bracelets will be a continual reminder of that.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/aQOyfO

• Bozick is a staff writer for the Danville Register & Bee.

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How can we use this to help us grow?
Well, it is clear from the article that Kristin Springfield was regularly depressed because of her habit of constantly using negative thought patterns. Once she started to think positively, it changed her life and things started to happen for her. As a result, she started to make bracelets with her daughter to sell locally and that has become a new business for her. Below, you can read my article on reducing stress and this includes thinking positively.

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Becoming Stress Free

If you are stressed, there are three thought patterns in particular that you are likely to have that create stress. If you want to enjoy a stress-free life, then you need to pay attention to them so that you can reduce or eliminate them. Simply recognizing these thought patterns can be a great first step toward getting rid of the problems that go with feeling over-stressed.

Negativity

If your thinking is negative, then you have a tendency to think negatively about people, places, situations and experiences in your life.

You might, for example, find yourself saying things like, “I can’t do this” or, “No one understands me” or perhaps, “Nothing ever works”. It is very likely that you are doing this unconsciously, that is, without being aware that you are, but essentially you have the attitude that life is difficult, the world is generally against you, you have to work hard to do anything and that nothing much is easy or joyful. This attitude holds you back from knowing what it’s like to view life from a positive perspective and so enjoy the beauty in yourself and in the people and things around you. With positive thinking, there’s a whole happy world out there for you.

Perfectionism

You may think that being a perfectionist is a good thing. After all, it beats being sloppy in what you do. You have a pride in your work and want to make sure that it’s the best it can be. Certainly there is nothing wrong with those ideals. Yet when you attempt to make everything perfect, you are focused on making everything “just so”. This can easily push you into anxiety because as you improve something, it gets harder and harder to make it even better. You may find yourself making statements such as, “I have to do this right, or I’ll be a failure!” or “If I am not precise, people will complain at me!” Once again, this thought pattern may be totally under the threshold of your awareness, but it can greatly interfere with your ability to enjoy life without feeling “uptight” and “stressed out.” In reality, a job is never perfect. There will always be improvements that you can make and so a job can only complete when further work on it doesn’t make a significant improvement. You may be aware of a saying that says, “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing it well” and this is effectively saying that you should always do a good job, or perhaps that you should always do your best. While I will not argue with that, you ought to know that there is another saying that says, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it badly”. What? The point here is that if a job is worth doing, then it is best to do it even if you can’t manage to do it well. The reason is simple – some people will procrastinate and delay because they do not know how to do a perfect job and in the end it does not get done at all and that is worse than doing a bad job. The solution to this is to do it anyway because it is only by doing it that you can learn how to do it better.

Analysis

When you are obsessed with analysing things, you will very likely find yourself wanting to change a task or job over and over again. For instance, you might find yourself saying, “I need to look this over and study it, so I know it inside out, otherwise I won’t be able to relax”. Or you might say, “If I relax and let this work go without checking it a few times, then something might go wrong”.

Although analytical thinking is an extremely useful ability, its is possible to overdo it. The result is that you become over stressed because you’re too busy trying to analyse everything and everyone around you. As you learn to understand this type of thinking pattern, it becomes one of the most important keys to letting go of stress and getting rid of your anxiety. The way to deal with this is to analyse something useful. That is, if you are doing a job of work, ask yourself whether it meets the specification, does it do what it needs to do. If it does, then it is unlikely to need further work.

What Can You Do?

If you find yourself engaging in any of the above thought patterns, there are a couple of things you can do to help yourself. First of all, find somebody that you know, love and trust and ask them, “Am I negative about things?”, “Do I complain a lot?”, or “Am I difficult to live with?”

Although you might find the answers rather hard to listen to, because the truth sometimes hurts, you may well find that the insight you gain are invaluable. They will give you a good idea of how others see you, so accept their comments as useful and helpful and know that you will gain amazing insights from what they tell you.

The second thing you can do is keep a journal or diary and write down every time you notice that you are using one of these thought patterns. This will show up the times or places when you use them or if they are associated with any behaviour or event. Even if you are not exactly thrilled at the idea of writing a journal, you can still make small entries into a note every day. The great part is that you’ll begin to see patterns in your behaviour that reveal exactly what you’re doing to produce the stress in your life. Once you have seen these patterns, it becomes much easier to change whatever you want and so reduce your anxiety.

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If there was one thing that would turn your life around, what would it be? I will do my best to help you in this newsletter or in my blog. The simplest way for you to leave feedback is to go to my blog and leave a comment. You can do that at:

http://raisingyourselfesteem.com/blog/

Near the top of the page you will see the words, “How are we doing?” Click on “Leave your comment” and tell me about your biggest life challenge.

As ever, I hope you really found this useful.

To your success,

Bill Webb

www.rasingyourselfesteem.com

I want to re-state that it is my intention for this newsletter to be as useful as possible for you. In recent weeks, I have included a news item on the subject of self-esteem and an article on self-esteem or confidence. But there is much more that I could include. I want this to be your newsletter. that’s the reason I always ask for your feedback and ideas. If you have a question or any kind of problem in your life simply reply to this e-mail or leave a comment on my blog.

The news item is normally fairly long and so starting with next week I will include only the highlights plus my comment on the news item as usual. I will include a link to the full item should you want to check it out as I have done this week. Let me know whether you prefer the highlights or the full item or even if you would prefer something else.

This week the news takes the form of a letter to the editor. After this I have information about how you can always be stress free. Many people will pay a great deal for this information, but you have it without cost. Enjoy.

Here is the letter to the editor:

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Education key to self-esteem: letter

Published: Monday, July 19, 2010, 6:20 AM

Letters to the Editor/The Jersey Journal

Read more:

http://www.nj.com/hudson/voices/index.ssf/2010/07/education_key_to_self-esteem_l.html

A few days ago, an article appeared in your newspaper regarding a boy who came to school with a gun intending to kill his teacher. In another part of the article, it quoted a young girl who had participated in the slaying of the young engaged couple as saying she always wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone. Yet the article was about gun control.

Aren’t we missing something here?

While I’m not in favor of guns on our streets, it seems to me that we are overlooking the main and more serious problem in our society; namely how our young people, judging from the articles I read daily in your newspaper, have come to the belief that it’s okay to kill other people, either as a way to solve their problems or just for the thrill of it.

So much of a child’s life is governed by his experiences from home, neighborhood, school and society in general. While we can’t solve all of these problems, there are some we can do something about. We could take that a step further if we look at the HSPA results in our Jersey City schools. A large part of that problem has to do with not only what is taught but HOW it is taught. In other words, what methods are we using and are we meeting students at the correct level of instruction and individual learning styles and bringing them up from there? By and large, I know that’s not happening in the way that would be most successful. But that is a subject of another letter or an article in the near future. However, in this instance the problem also has to do with the attitudes of some of the students in our district. They have failed to succeed with the basics and have now adopted the attitude that it’s better to look tough than to look stupid.

None of this has to do with race or ethnicity; it has to do with the human condition. One of the things to consider is the connection between failure in school whether socially, emotionally or academically and the extreme belief that it is “cool” to kill.

How much responsibility is there on the part of their families, the community, the schools and the society in which they live. Having been an educator for more than 40 years, I know I can’t solve all of those problems, but I know that some of them will improve if we can solve the problems in just one area, namely education. Knowing helps a person to gain the confidence necessary to have hope and the will to succeed, but they need the skills that will provide the self-esteem to enable them to go forward. This is one great area where we do a disservice to our children. Some people may disagree, but we’ll never know unless we determine that we must talk openly and come up with plans to do something valid about what is happening to our youth. If anyone else would like to discuss what can be done, I’d like to hear from you.

FORMER COUNCILWOMAN MARYLIN ROMAN
JERSEY CITY

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How can this help us grow?

The writer of this letter makes a valid point. Where children can carry guns and have little respect for the lives of others, they also have little regard for their own life. It’s not only important what they know, but how they learn because that will set their attitude. As I have said before, only those with a low self-esteem can want to hurt others. Even though you may not agree with this, ask yourself why are they doing it. When you find the answer you will see that it is because of how they feel about themselves.

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How To Be Stress Free

Stress Is Normal

Stress is a normal part of life and so we all must deal with it throughout our lives. If we have a problem in life and we have no solution available, we feel stress. Yet when we do have answers available, we still might not take the best action and so we need to learn from our mistakes. We all have our own skills for coping with life and we all see things differently – what may work for one person may not work for someone else. This means that we might have to work out which is the best stress management scheme for us. Even so, I can help you to become stress free in almost any situation

Stressed Client

Recently, I was telling a client of mine how to handle stress. I don’t have the time to go through the whole technique here, but it involves getting relaxed first and then from your relaxed state, imagining that somebody is angry with you and shouting at you. It is important to continue to relax as you imagine this and take on the part of an observer. Instead of interacting with the person who you are imagining is shouting at you, pay attention to why they are doing it. Notice that whatever they are angry about, it cannot have anything to do with you because you are just sitting there and relaxing.

Their anger has nothing to do with you

It is important to realise that their anger has noting to do with you, but it has everything to do with them. Even though they may be shouting at you and blaming you, they are not really talking that way because of you, they are talking and reacting that way because of how they feel – and right now they do not feel good. Pay attention to what I am saying here because this is important, they are shouting because they feel angry. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. Although they are blaming you for how they feel, you need to realise that you have no control over how they feel. How could you? Only they control their thoughts, only they control their body and only they have control over how they feel. And even though that’s obvious when you think about it, they just don’t know it and they are blaming you , either because you did something that they were not expecting, or you did not do something that they were expecting.

When they blame you, you will probably feel attacked or hurt by their remarks or you might feel guilty and so you want to defend yourself. You do this by ‘attacking’ back or by challenging what they have said – and so begins an argument. The important thing to notice is that what you say and how you react is not dependant upon what the other person says, but upon how you feel about what they say. This is a subtle, but important difference. it’s important because I want to to be aware that both of you are driven by what you feel and so what you say is all about you and not about the other person at all, even though you blame them for how you feel.

Observe others to see the truth

If you watch people who are arguing – so long as you don’t take sides – you will be able to see this in action. You will see that each person is defending their own position and ‘attacking’ the other person because they feel attacked or upset by what the other person has said. Each person is dealing with their own feelings and so what they say is all about them and not really about what they are saying – even though they think it is.

Am I telling lies?

If this perspective is new to you, then you may not accept what I am saying because you think that in an argument the other person really has hurt you, but they haven’t. What has hurt you is how you reacted to what they have said. If you start to look for this, you will discover that it is true.

Once you recognise that you can choose how you process what goes on around you, you can start to take control of your life. think about it like this, if you had just a fortune one the lottery then not much would upset you. Yet if instead you had just lost your wallet or purse, you might get upset by the smallest thing. The situation has not changed, but your attitude has and that has changed the way you process what is happening to you. With practice, you will find that you can be happy or peaceful whenever you want to be. Even if someone is shouting at you, you can be completely unmoved by it, recognising that they are shouting because of how they feel and not because of you.

Thus, if you have followed what I have said, you will realise that stress must be self-generated, because nobody but you can control what you think. You might be influenced by others, but only you can change your mind. So when you are in what you previously considered to be a stressful environment, relax and take on the role of observer. Observe yourself and watch how you react and then ask yourself if that was the best way for you to react or if there might be another way. Pay attention to the answer. and above all, keep practising. as you do over time, you will notice a major reduction in your stress levels.

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If there was one thing that would turn your life around, what would it be? I will do my best to help you in this newsletter or in my blog. The simplest way for you to leave feedback is to go to my blog and leave a comment. You can do that at:

http://raisingyourselfesteem.com/blog/

Near the top of the page you will see the words, “How are we

doing?” Click on “Leave your comment” and tell me about

your biggest life challenge.

As ever, I hope you really found this useful.

To your success,

Bill Webb

www.rasingyourselfesteem.com

www.raisingyourselfesteem.com/blog

Last week I included sections from a story in the Chicago Tribune, which spoke about a downside to high self-esteem. In my comment at the end of the article I said I would write more on this subject and I have done so under the heading ‘What Is Self-esteem, Confidence Or Conceit?’ I think that this is an important question and the distinction between the two often gets confused, particularly when talking about self-esteem and the consequences of high self-esteem or of low self-esteem.

But before that, I have another up-to-the-minute news item for you.

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World Cup casts flattering light

on South Africa

What’s more, the country once known mostly for its racial strife got boost in collective self-esteem.

By Celia W. Dugger

New York Times, Posted: Monday, July. 12, 2010

CAPE TOWN, South Africa As host of the most-watched sporting event on earth, South Africa set out to reinvent itself in the eyes of the world, casting off its reputation as a place defined by violent crime, poverty and AIDS.

To a remarkable degree, it succeeded. But as the World Cup ended Sunday, what most surprised South Africans was how much the month-long sporting extravaganza had changed the way they see themselves.

“This World Cup brought out South Africa’s better angels,” said Shaun Johnson, a writer who leads a charitable foundation that Nelson Mandela helped establish. “In this country, so riven racially, it’s unbelievable how much this World Cup has brought us together.”

A fledgling democracy that has struggled to address its profound social ills proudly discovered it could deliver a mega-event that required years of careful investment and planning. A country whose politics have been damaged recently by bitter, racially tinged invective offered hundreds of thousands of visitors an affectionate welcome.

And a body politic fractured by race and inequality caught glimpses of what it would mean to overcome those barriers. A black waiter and a white college student shared a cigarette as they gabbed about soccer in the square, where southern Africa’s first white settlement was established during the 1650s and Mandela first spoke when he was freed after 27 years in prison.

A mixed-race theater worker, ordinarily fearful of crime, took his first nighttime ride on a public train along with vuvuzela-blowing, Xhosa-singing South Africans.

“This experience will stay with me,” said the worker, Ricardo Abrahams, 35, a production manager at the Artscape Theater. “It’s something unique.”

In Cape Town, the police were not posted just to the city’s Giorgio Armani of a World Cup stadium – spare, elegant and lovely – but also in free fan parks, along streets where people went club-hopping and on public transportation. That included the train line that ran through the colored township where Abrahams, the theater worker, lives and Langa, a black township, before reaching downtown.

Abrahams said the extra contingent of policemen helped him overcome his fear of muggers.

“I didn’t have to be scared,” he said. “I didn’t have to think about terrible things happening.”

Indeed, the World Cup brought a kind of normalcy to South African life.

“There’s a sense this World Cup hasn’t been about the legacy of apartheid, but about how good the roads are, how safe the streets are, how great the game parks are,” said historian Bill Nasson.

Many South Africans wish the rollicking ride did not have to end and already are asking whether the nation can muster the same unity and can-do spirit to tackle its far more intractable problems. But for now, they are savoring sweet victory for the country.

“What A Show!” exclaimed The Sunday Times, while The Sunday Independent proclaimed it “Africa’s Greatest Moment.”

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How can we use this to help us grow?
Well, this is something that many people do not consider; it is that an entire country also values itself and so countries also have self-esteem. In this case, the world cup has caused South Africa to think differently about itself. Notice that your self-esteem also has an element based upon your environment, whether that is the town you live in, where you work and the country. How much is your self-esteem affected by your environment?

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What Is Self-esteem, Confidence

Or Conceit?

Dictionary Definition Of Self-esteem

If I look in my dictionary, I read the following two definitions of self esteem:

1 a good opinion of oneself, self-confidence, self-assurance, self-respect, self-reliance, secure

2 an unduly high regard for oneself, conceit, vanity, egotism, self-admiration, self-importance

As I consider these two definitions, I think the first one is generally positive and the second one is rather negative. So it is important that when you read about self-esteem, and perhaps especially if you read about raising your self-esteem, that you know which definition the author is using. I want to make it absolutely clear that in my writings I always mean the first definition.

The problem with the second definition

The problem is that many authors always mean the second definition and so they say that high self-esteem ‘is bad’ and therefore your self-esteem can be ‘too high’. If we use this definition, we are always attempting to achieve a moderate self-esteem because if it is too low we don’t value ourselves sufficiently and if it is too high we are conceited or arrogant. Yet how can we be sure that our self-esteem is ‘moderate’? If we use this definition, we may always be in conflict and we might keep our self-esteem on the low side rather than risk being thought of as arrogant or self-important.

Why I always use the first definition

Notice that the first definition is all about self-confidence, self-reliance and feeling secure and it has no connection to our opinion of others. Yet the second definition implies that if we have high self-esteem we think we are somehow worth more, more significant or more important than others.

I believe that every human being is just as valuable as every other and I attempt to live my life using this principal. I could never ask that anybody increases their conceit, vanity, self-importance and so on, but I definitely would suggest you increase or improve your self-confidence, self-respect and self-reliance.

We are all equally valuable

Now that we have got that out of the way, what are the consequences of raising our self-esteem? Well, a very significant consequence of realising that we all have equal value is the elimination of the belief that anybody else can be ‘better’ than you. We tend to grow up believing that our parents, teachers, the boss, perhaps rich people and probably a whole list of others are somehow ‘better’ than us and that we will never be as ‘good’ or as ‘valuable’ as them. This can even cause resentment of our ‘betters’ because we think they have what we want but don’t have. We might easily end up hating ‘rich people’, which is very common, yet it is a seriously bad idea if we ever want to be rich ourselves.

If instead, we consider ourselves of equal value to all those other people, we can recognise that although they are the same as us, they possesses different things or have different attitudes to us, which is the same as saying that we possess different things or have different attitudes to them. Yet it is our different attitudes that cause us to have different things. If we really wanted to, we could have pretty much the same as they do because we are the same as them and of equal value.

Once you recognise that your value is the same as everybody else’s, then raising your self-esteem is really about recognising that you already have high value – just like everyone else! There is nothing for you to do to become more valuable because you cannot change your intrinsic value. The only thing you can do is to recognise how valuable you already are. Then, your new-found good opinion of yourself will come with an equally good opinion of other people. Your resulting self-confidence will come from self-knowledge. It won’t come from a belief that you are somehow better or worse than other people, it will come from a knowledge that you are amazing just the way you are. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so ”. He was right. Remember also that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. What is good or beautiful to one person can be bad or ugly to another. This means that whether something is good or bad, beautiful or ugly is only in the mind of the person who thinks it. It is an opinion. But an opinion cannot affect the truth or the reality.

You value yourself only as much as you

value others

By this definition, those who are conceited or arrogant really have low self-esteem because they put a low value on others. If they think other people have a low value, they must also believe that they have a low value too – even if they do not realise it. Those who attempt to build themselves up by pushing other people down would only want to do that because of self-doubt. They do it to gain ‘social proof’ that they are more valuable or important and thus they do not take kindly to criticism. Yet if you know you already have a high value, then you do not need build yourself up and so will not feel the need to push others down. Criticism will not affect you because you know that it only an opinion and does not affect the truth. Thus you are self-confident, self-assured and secure. You have self-respect because you respect others. You have high self-esteem.

For further information, please see my video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2MbhxJO5E

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If there was one thing that would turn your life around, what would it be? I will do my best to help you in this newsletter or in my blog. The simplest way for you to leave feedback is to go to my blog and leave a comment. You can do that at:

http://raisingyourselfesteem.com/blog/

Near the top of the page you will see the words, “How are we

doing?” Click on “Leave your comment” and tell me about

your biggest life challenge.

As ever, I hope you really found this useful.

To your success,

Bill Webb

www.rasingyourselfesteem.com

main account: www.youtube.com

There is something magical about self-identity, about self-image. Reverend Ike explains his Science of Mind teaching that, “Whatever you call yourself, you will become.” Or as the Bible states it “As a man thinks, so he is.” Visit Rev. Ike at www.scienceoflivingonline.com, request his free Thinkonomics e-book, and learn how to create a positive self-image and self-esteem.

www.mysandragraves.com Learn to love yourself so that others can learn how to love you… ************************************* ************************************* Love yourself without being vain, egotistic and selfish. Written and narrated by Sandra Graves, author and motivational speaker. To learn more about Sandra Graves, visit www.mysandragraves.com