Tag Archives: London

Your Self-Esteem Explained!

Morris Rosenberg states that self-esteem is formulated in 3 ways (1) reflected appraisals, (2) social comparison, (3) self-attribution.

The reflected appraisal comes from Mead and Cooley’s idea that if others respect us and look up to us in some way, we are likely to have higher self-esteem than if they are degrading us.

‘Social comparison’ is the process by which we compare ourselves to others in either a positive, neutral or negative way. Poor children (as a generalisation) will often do less well at school than their wealthier classmates as the comparison of lifestyles may develop negative self-esteem, making it less likely that the poorer child will perform well in school and the low level of achievement will then further damage the self-esteem (see below).

Self-attribution is when there is a failure to observe the internal psychological processes and instead, form an opinion of the self-based on external behaviours or reactions. Bem gives us the example that a man who eats an enormous dinner could conclude “I guess I was hungrier than I thought” making a conclusion about his external experience in seeing the empty plate instead of getting in touch with his internal feelings whilst eating or after finishing the food to establish if he was full up earlier or is now feeling overfilled. Therefore a child whose teacher tells them “You’re not very good at concentrating.” Could conclude that this outside information is the truth about their ability to concentrate and develop low self-esteem, instead of challenging the statement internally (“When am I good at concentrating? What do I concentrate really well at? Am I concentrating now?) and using his own internal conclusions to improve the self-esteem and the level of concentration.

By far the most reliable means of improving one’s own self-esteem is to find it from within, as relying on an outside source to verify your identity can be at times unreliable. If your self-esteem comes from knowing that you are a good daughter to your parents, what will happen to that self-esteem when those parents pass away? Or if your self-esteem is verified by knowing that you are good at your job, do you then lose your self-esteem if you lose your job?

If we must compare ourselves to others, then surely looking at what others have and what we do not, is best serving us if that helps us to establish new goals for the future to help us achieve that which others have. Comparing ourselves to those who have less than us should encourage us to feel thankful and to develop a more grateful attitude for what we have already.

The idea of challenging the labels we are given (or give to ourselves) is not a new one. All NLP techniques are really based on the idea of reframing a problem (that is “seeing it in a different and more resourceful way).

Psychologist, Dr Clare Graves said “It’s not that you get rid of problems. You evolve into a person who the problem doesn’t matter to.” This implies that overcoming a problem is simply a case of changing the way in which you think about that problem or seeing yourself in a more resourceful way. Using the techniques of NLP this change in thinking can be created at the unconscious automatic level. When a person believes that they can be and do more, they tend to feel better about themselves and therefore have a better experience in life. They achieve greater results which propel their self-esteem to an even greater level.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Resilience

I think a lot of people think resilience is your ability to stay strong in the face of uncertainty or in difficult circumstances. For me, resilience is how quickly and easily you get back up once you’ve been pushed down. When I think about resilience in the context of my own experiences in life, resilience had come about from having some quite negative things happening in my life previously. I have learnt how to survive and come out the other end and I have learnt how to cope with certain situations through developing methods and coping strategies. When things get tough I now know how to deal with it better through previous hardships and how I proceed in a more positive direction.

Therefore, speaking of things that may contribute towards becoming a resilient person here’s what I think you need: I think you need confidence because if you lack confidence then you’re going to find it very difficult to put into action and employ any sorts of strategies. You might feel like hiding under the duvet and that is not going to be the ideal solution. You need to have enough confidence to get out there and face the world. You’ve got to have the confidence there in the first place to be able to push through difficulty. You also need hope! Hope is super important. You need to believe that you have something worth fighting for so that you don’t get completely overwhelmed by the negative experiences that happen in life. You’ve got to hope that you’ll be okay and you’ve got to have hope that things will turn out all right in the end.

Overall, I would say you’ve got to just have a quite positive state of mind because the more positive you are the easier it is for you to be creative and resourceful and to think about alternative ways of reframing your circumstances. The more easier it is for you to problem-solve your way through a situation.

What’s important in developing resilience is not being shy about putting yourself in situations where you might get knocked down and not holding back from situations where you might get knocked back because those knockbacks are you developing a thick skin which will help you to become more resilient and emotionally more tougher.

While I worked as a manager in a large private day nursery, there was a staff member called Charlotte. Charlotte’s social status was different from mine, I grew up on a council estate, I worked hard to get my diploma to be able to work with children. Charlotte came from a wealthy family and had been given some of the finer things in life which I had to work hard towards i.e first car was a new car and a deposit was put down on her house. I was her manager and I was grafting away to be able to afford my monthly car payments just to get myself to work. I felt resentful not just because of her social status but also because she had a good relationship with her parents.

One day I noticed that she had developed a skin condition called dermatitis. It was on both of our hands and it looked like her skin was falling off and it looked look pretty uncomfortable, to be honest and it was stress related. It took me a while to reframe the beliefs that I was carrying around “she’s got it easier than I have and it’s not fair and I wish I had it that easy”. What I realised was something that for me might be by comparison to all the other stuff quite a low-level problem, for her, it was really significant because it seemed like she’d missed out on the benefits of having tough stuff happen in life. From having tough things happen in your life, you can learn so much and build up your resilience through time and experiences.

When going through tough times, you might feel that the best thing in the world is if you had no problems but if you are a person who can see a silver lining then you can really start to enjoy life a lot more and get a lot more benefits from living it even when it’s really difficult.

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

A Good Day!

This article is all about finding power in the ordinary. This is something I’ve said before but I’m going to quote it again:

“Lower your expectations of a good day if you can, reduce what you expect a good day to be what the criteria is of a good day in order for you to feel that sense of goodness fulfilled in your system. If you can reduce those criteria and shrink it and make it smaller, it makes it much easier for you to achieve it.”

Let me give you an example, if you were to say “in order for me to have a good day – I need to wake up on time, get ready for work without any hitches or interruptions that would cause me to be late. I need to get everything done on my to-do list and feel like I have completed all of my work for the day and I need to eat a healthy meal and get to bed on time and have a really decent night’s sleep. There is my definition of a good day.”

I’d be sat there, as your NLP therapist thinking “Well, in reality, how likely is it that going to happen?” If that’s possible for you then you go right ahead but I know for me in the context of the way that my life is structured and the likelihood of me being able to fulfil all of those things is slim to none! Therefore I need to reduce my level of expectation.

If you can find good in seeing a butterfly that day, if that can tick a good psychological box for you then it’s easy to make today a good day – because you saw a butterfly. If you can feel a sense of fascination and wonder in the dog that comes to greet you when you’re walking through the park (who isn’t your dog but is acting like you guys have been friends for years). If that, can give you a sense of loveliness inside and you can use that as your criteria for a good day. For the rest of that day achieving a good day is so much easier.

The real purpose of this article is to talk about the ordinary, not just having good days but actually the value in the ordinary. Sometimes in the work that I do in North London as an NLP practitioner as someone who is working in the world of personal development. I find that there is this sense of obligation or an expectation of how I should have complete and absolute positivity in my daily life. It’s kind of a big ask! I think that to have an expectation of complete positivity in all given situations is unrealistic. It’s almost like you put too much pressure on yourself. I put too much pressure on myself to be able to achieve that level in that sort of consistent form of positivity and I would like to suggest to you that having just normal mundane boring ordinary stuff is actually alright. In fact, it’s pretty good. NLP therapy has taught me to appreciate the ordinary.

In fact, I was talking to a client about this the other day, he attends sessions at my hypnotherapy and NLP clinic in Hertfordshire. This client experiences high levels of anxiety. I mean really high levels of anxiety such that it is not only affecting his psychological state but it’s having a very strong physiological impact on him and it is now causing his health to be at risk. In the past, I may have been inclined to suggest that in stressful situations the client should be aiming for confidence, he should be aiming for happiness, he should be aiming for peace and these are all beautiful big abstract ideas and sensations. To go from where he was to where I may have in the past suggested he should be is a huge jump and actually, to get out of anxiety-like crippling fear would it be okay to just be a bit bored.

I mean if you are used to or if you become accustomed to crippling fear; boredom is probably quite a nice option! It’s a relatively safe option.

It isn’t as good as, you know beaming confidence. but it also gives us the message that movement is possible, that change is possible on this basis we can get from crippling fear to boredom.

My challenge to you is for you to show gratitude and appreciation and a sense of comfortable acceptance of the boring mundane dullness that life has to offer you because in those moments we can in all of its beauty take a moment to be really mindful and present in that state. To take a moment perhaps to just organise some boring thoughts and know that we’ve got that done off of our to-do list, enjoy the ordinary, make the most of it and appreciate those moments when they’re there but for now, that is everything I wanted to share with you for today. If you need some help, visit me for a therapy session using NLP in North London.

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By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk