Self Esteem

Feel good about who you are

How to Recover from a Critical Parent

Having one or more critical parents can put a sledgehammer through your childhood confidence and leave effects lasting long into adulthood. If your father or mother responded with criticism and judgment instead of joy and delight when you did what came naturally, you may have felt as if there was something wrong with you and internalized their critical voice inside your head. You learned to hold back and now every time you step out of line or go to express yourself naturally, you rebuke yourself first instead. This will seriously undermine your self-confidence and your relationships with other people… especially women.

But there is hope. Here’s How to Recover From a Critical Parent:

Understand That Criticism Is About Projection and Loneliness

Critical people are stuck in a perpetual vicious cycle of projection, pain, loneliness and disconnection. They’ve been hurt at some point in the past when they felt vulnerable and they’re still carrying this wound in their psyche. Often they’re afraid of facing the pain they feel around this and don’t know how to deal with the unpleasant emotions involved, or perhaps they aren’t even consciously aware of it. The criticism that pushes people away further prevents them from experiencing the deep connections with others that would reduce their loneliness and heal the very hurt they are avoiding by criticizing others.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

The Simple Secret to Self-Esteem

Most of my life I’ve struggled with finding self-esteem and although my life is still a work-in-progress, I believe I’ve finally discovered the simple secret to self-esteem. I could write a book on it, but I think the shorter the book the more powerful it would be and I can cover the whole deal in one short article. As a bonus, I’m even going to throw in the cure for loneliness. So here goes:

Self-esteem is really about self-acceptance. This needs to come from within us, because when our self-acceptance is based on external reinforcement we are always at the mercy of circumstances outside our control such as other people’s opinions and random events in our life.

Our deepest, most powerful internal experience of ourselves comes from how we feel. While we aren’t our feelings, they are a true reflection of our core experience in any moment.

We also have a fundamental need as humans to connect with other people, so our ability to connect in general has a huge impact on the way we see ourselves. While we don’t want our self-esteem to be dependent on what other people think or feel about us, connecting with other people fulfills this basic need and gives us a powerful emotional reinforcement.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recover from a Violent or Abusive Childhood

Being abused as a child or being raised in an abusive environment can have a profoundly negative effect on your adult self-esteem. As children we generalize our experiences and assume that the whole world operates the same as our immediate circumstances. If we felt unsafe, unloved, unfairly criticized or hurt as a child by the people who were supposed to take care of us, it can affect our whole perspective on life and be devastating to our self-confidence.

Abuse leaves us feeling isolated from other people, and our true self

Abuse leaves us feeling isolated from other people, and our true self

Domestic violence, verbal, emotional and sexual abuse during childhood are insidious because they destroy our natural sense of trust and color our view of the world and the people in it, making it seem like a dangerous and scary place.

We don’t necessarily need to be the immediate target of abuse in order for it to affect us. I grew up with a critical, dominant mother who was verbally abusive to my relatively [intlink id=”518″ type=”post”]passive and emotionally neutered father[/intlink]. He bottled up his feelings of frustration so they built to the point where he would explode violently.

It was mostly my parents who were on the receiving end of each others abusive treatment, but as a sensitive child I was traumatized by growing up in an environment where I felt unsafe and on edge much of the time.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Overcome Low Self-Esteem

Life is difficult when you don’t feel good about yourself. Low self-esteem can lead to a lack of self-confidence, difficulty in relationships, social anxiety, depression, and a general sense of unhappiness and disillusionment with life.

Self-confidence is the antidote to low self-esteem.
Image courtesy Pixabay

But you don’t have to suffer from low self-esteem. Here are some steps you can take to build high self-esteem and greater self-confidence:

Work Out What Is Important To You

When we know what we stand for and what our basic values are, we’re much less susceptible to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Even when things don’t go our way, we’ve still got our core values to fall back on. Values that are important to us also act as a guiding light to help us make decisions, and recognize when we’re acting out of integrity. The more we act in integrity with our basic values, the more self-esteem we tend to generate.

Spend some time writing down a list of values that are important to you, like happiness, love, respect, success, relationships, family, friends, etc etc. Prioritize the list by asking yourself “Would I give X up for Y?” as you work your way down it.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recognize and Overcome Perfectionism

Perfectionism will undermine your self-confidence like nothing else. Trying to maintain a facade of perfection all the time and holding yourself to unachievable standards is exhausting; I know, I’ve tried. But before you can do anything about perfectionism, you need to be able to recognize it.

Here are some clues that you might be suffering from perfectionism:

  • A deep fear of failure, and sense of devastation when it happens

  • Getting upset when you don’t win all the time

  • Feeling ashamed of your thoughts and emotions

  • Holding back on expressing how you really feel

  • Fear of what others might think of you

  • A sense of self-consciousness

  • Using sarcasm or passive aggression when relating to others

  • Communicating non-assertively

  • Being driven to high achievement all the time-to-time

  • Difficulty relaxing

Any of this sound familiar?

Ok, so now we can see the problem, here are two different ways of looking at it:

  1. You’re not perfect, and never will be. Neither is anyone else. Pretending to be perfect when you’re really not is living a lie. It cuts you off from relating deeply to other people, because they can’t relate to your facade of invulnerability. As a result, you sometimes come across as distant or aloof.
… Continue reading…
By Graham Stoney, ago

Forget About What Your Family Thinks Of You

For many men I know who lack confidence, the seeds of low self-esteem were planted early on during childhood in our family of origin. In an ideal world, our parents create an environment in which we can flourish as a young boy, thrive as an adolescent, and fulfill our potential as a man: confident and self-assured. We feel loved unconditionally, get on brilliantly with our siblings, and learn to deal constructively with conflict that inevitably occurs within any family.

In the real world though, things work a little differently. Unless parents make a conscious effort to deal with their personal issues through some other form of personal growth or therapy, they tend to unconsciously pass on their own insecurities to their children. They can’t help it; as children we are particularly sensitive to what goes on in our environment, and our parents are our natural role models whose behavior we tend to copy. Our parents have a god-like status to us as a young boy, and we can’t help but naively assume that the way they operate in the world is a good way for us to be too. As children we lack the real world experience and insight to notice that the way our parents operate doesn’t necessarily work real well for them either, and we don’t know any better.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

4 New Videos To Help You Build Self-Confidence

I might be down with the ‘flu, but I’ve recently posted 4 new YouTube videos to help you build self-confidence. Click the Watch On YouTube button, and hit the Like button so they go viral:

3 Keys To Building Self-Confidence for Men:

How To Start Conversations with Strangers:

The Easiest Way Ever For Men To Build Confidence With Women:

The Biggest Factor That Undermines Self-Confidence:

Remember to hit Like, and leave a comment to let me know what you think!… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Build Self-Esteem by Becoming Self-Validating

If you grew up in an environment where you felt a sense of unconditional love, you probably developed strong self-worth and confidence by default. And you’re probably not reading this. But if you felt early on that love was tied to acceptance and approval from other people, you may have developed a bad habit of seeking external approval and validation from other people as a way of feeling good about yourself.

The problem with seeking external validation is that our self-worth ends up at the mercy of other people and what we imagine they are thinking of us. This leads to insecurity rather than self-confidence. We may feel good when we get their approval, but we feel terrible when we don’t; or even just if we think we don’t. Seeking external validation can become an addiction that causes an endless cycle of highs and lows and leaves us feeling overly self-conscious.

Build Self-Confidence By Becoming Self-Validating.
Image courtesy Pixabay

I know first hand what this is like, because I lived most of my life that way, and it’s not where you want to be.

The solution is to practise internal validation, so you’re not reliant on other people’s approval to feel good about yourself.

Learn to make choices that are best for you while considering the consequences for yourself. Don’t ignore the impact your choices have on other people, but don’t make it more important than the impact on yourself. Stop worrying what other people will think all the time. Ironically, the more approval you give yourself, the more you end up getting it from other people; and when you don’t, you won’t care so much.

Here’s how to become self-validating: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recover from a Christian Upbringing

I grew up in a conservative Christian church-going family. During years of Sunday school, church services and various fellowship groups, I was fed a diet of deception which helped undermine my fragile self-esteem. My sensitivity and having emotionally disconnected parents who were in constant conflict didn’t help, and it’s difficult to judge exactly how much of the damage was due to religious indoctrination, and how much was simply due to the environment I grew up in. My parents could return from a church service where the minister preached on the theme of “Love”, and have a blazingly abusive argument. Throw in this level of hypocrisy, and you get a boy who grows up into one seriously confused adult.

Were you made to feel small by your childhood religion?

Were you made to feel small by your childhood religion?

Childhood religious teaching has a pervasive effect. For many years into adulthood I continued attending church before I wised up, and even became involved in the church leadership. At the time I believed I was doing the right thing; but looking back I can see how appallingly narrow-minded and naïve I was.

Realising that I had been misled was painful, and didn’t suddenly undo overnight the damage that had been done to my psyche over many years.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert A. Glover

No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The most striking thing I notice that guys who lack confidence and struggle to attract the women they want in their lives have in common is Nice Guy Syndrome. This affliction is characterised by the constant seeking of approval from other people (especially women), an intense fear of rejection, and a misguided belief that we can get our needs met by always being unfailingly “nice” and inoffensive to other people.

Dr. Robert A. Glover is a therapist who works primarily with men who are suffering from Nice Guy Syndrome. As a recovering Nice Guy himself, he has a special insight into Nice Guy Syndrome, and why it is such an ineffective way of getting our needs met as a man. I first heard about his book No More Mr. Nice Guy on one of David DeAngelo’s Interviews With Dating Gurus series, and immediately recognised the Nice Guy traits Dr. Glover described, in myself. One of the most telling things was actually a quote from his ex-wife, who told him: “How do I know that you will stand up for me, if you can’t even stand up to me?”

The basic working paradigm of the typical Nice Guy that Dr.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago