Separate Self-Esteem from Achievement
This time I would like to share with you material Paul Blackburn dealt with on day two of Blockage Buster.
He said that there can never be absolutes in personal development.
Each person develops at their own personal pace.
Tools and strategies need to be generic and flexible, as each person will implement these in their own unique way according to their needs.
Listen to the 6.04 minute AUDIO here.
Skills learnt may take time to become internalized into a new behaviour but they will always multiply on one another and eventual success is assured.
Have a look at the image of the Personal Development Curve below:
The Personal Development Curve appears flat for quite some time, then, all the skills that have multiplied on one another over time suddenly show a dramatic rise.
This is when you need to learn to separate your self-esteem from any achievement.
Your self-esteem is not dependent upon achievements.
Your high, well deserved, innate self-esteem should remain constant, irrespective of what else is happening around you in your life.
Have a look at your Self-esteem Line below; it is always straight, it is a constant; it does not fluctuate.
How many of us are guilty of feeling worthless at times, inadequate; say things such as: “Oh, I am so stupid”, and for that short moment really believe it.
We then say: “I was just joking”; putting yourself down is no joke.
At the moment I am reading a book by Anthony De Mello called ‘” Awareness”. It’s actually my third (and won’t be the last) reading of it – there is so much in it.
He makes some interesting points about bringing up children so that they have this unwavering self-esteem.
He takes the following quote from A. S. Neill’s book, “Summerhill”:
The sign of a sick child is that he is always hovering around his parents. When a child is sure of his mother’s love; he is a curious. He looks for a frog to put in his mouth – that the kind of thing.
When a child is hovering around his mother, it’s a bad sign; he’s insecure. Maybe his mother has been trying to suck love out of him, not give him all the freedom and assurance he wants.
His mother is always being threatening in many subtle ways to abandon him.
I’ll now loosely quote from De Mello’s book:
So we were given a taste of various drug addictions, such as approval, attention, success, making it to the top, prestige, getting your name in the paper, power, being the boss.
Having a taste for these, we dread losing them, and so, when we have ‘peaks’, our self-esteem is riding high, when we have our ‘valleys’, we question our worth.
One of the NLP Presuppositions is that: “People are not their Behavoour”.
Everyone is perfect; it is just their behavior that needs adjustment.
This is true also when bringing up children. Saying something like this will separate the child from his or her behavior:
“You know I love you unconditionally, your behaviour doing (whatever it was) is inappropriate. How do you see what you’ve done?”
There is only love, everything else is an illusion, ie, it is not how it actually looks.
Fascinating stuff, isn’t it.
Certainly, thought provoking.
More next time.
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