Thoughts For The Day

Think for yourself here. Pull out whatever is useful to you and leave the rest behind. What follows is food for thought, drawn from what I've learned and lived through, nothing more. You get to reach your own conclusions.

Self-esteem isn't locked in place. Hypnosis, for one, can lift it, which tells you it can move. So how do you raise it on your own, without a hypnotist? Start with the person who deserves your love and your affection most, and that's you. Pay attention to what your inner voice keeps saying. If the running commentary in your head is a stream of criticism and knocks, notice that. Plenty of people hold themselves to a standard they'd never impose on anyone else. Ask yourself how kindly you actually treat you, because the way you handle yourself tends to shape how others handle you. And the way you treat other people says a lot about how you see yourself.

Years ago someone asked me to run research with adults who were mentally handicapped, and I turned it down. I ended up working with them regardless. My real obstacle wasn't the work; it was the idea I carried in that I assumed they had fewer skills and fewer good qualities than anyone else. I even found myself wondering whether they were somehow mistakes on God's part, and I couldn't square the thought of God making mistakes like that. In time I settled on something different: we're all equal in God's eyes, whether or not the reason is visible to us, and anyone with a handicap deserves the same respect and consideration as any other person.

When a person has no real confidence in themselves, bullying can become the workaround. Pushing someone else down becomes a way of reassuring yourself that you rank above them. But a person with genuine self-confidence and solid self-esteem has no need to prove any of this, to anyone, including themselves. People who feel secure in who they are aren't on the hunt for someone to feel superior to, and they don't broadcast that superiority through the judgments they pin on others. More often than not, the flaws they go after in other people are exactly the flaws they're afraid someone will spot in them.

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