You Can be Great If You Really Want To

Copyright (c) 2010 Willie Horton

In chatting recently to a client who was on the brink of making a major upward career move, I was told that, whilst he was totally relaxed in almost a carefree way about everything that seemed to be just effortlessly happening around him, in his odd quiet moment he still heard a little voice inside him whisper “No you can’t!” We all have voices in our head, some that egg us on, some that put us down, some that put us under such pressure that we are paralysed when it comes to our moment to perform. Many of my clients talk of those niggling voices that won’t leave them alone, despite an adult lifetime’s journey to distance themselves from these voices. Some of my clients can actually put a name to the voices that they hear – Dad telling me that I’m bloody stupid… I’m lazy… I’ll never be anything, Mum telling me that I’ll never get on in life… Mum asking my why can’t I be more like my sister. All of us have these inner voices.

And it is these inner voices that skew our self-image. More often than not, it is these inner voices that are at the root of what people blithely define as “low self-esteem”. But what is “low self-esteem”? Indeed, what is self-esteem at all? I am aware of the definition of the words – valuing your own attributes and talents. But who is doing the valuing and who is being valued? Are there two of you – one trying its best to do better, the other constantly critical? Have you a split personality that, despite your best efforts, will always make sure that you fall on your face? After all, why would I put myself down, why would I countenance entertaining the idea that I might be suffering from low self-esteem, why would I want to self-destruct?

Well, when you think about the “voices”, the answer to these questions kind of becomes blindingly obvious! You’re not trying to self-destruct, the people who made those remarks that struck a chord or stuck in your throat all those years ago are the ones that started this “self-destruction” process. Perhaps they said what they said with the very best of intentions – to try to give you a bit of “get up and go”, to inspire you, to motivate you to achieve great things – or perhaps they were going through the motions as parents or teachers. Whatever their motivation, you’re stuck with their voices rattling around inside your head – and there’s nothing you can do about it, they’re part of who you are.

Or are they? Perhaps, instead, they are part of who you think you are. Perhaps, after all, there is some form of split personality within – one being judged, the other bringing all the prejudices of those who made an impression on you during your formative years to bear in criticizing you and putting you down. There’s no perhaps about it – we are all involved in an internal battle of sorts. There is our personality – from the Latin persona, meaning a mask – which is the accumulation of all the self-beliefs that you picked up during your childhood. Your personality is comprised of the things, people and events that impressed you when your mind was open and sponge-like, including those voices that we’ve talked about. Your personality thinks it’s you – it thinks that you have all these perceived inadequacies that are, in fact, nothing more than the throw-away remarks or prejudices of those we encountered during our formative years. This is who all normal people think they are – their personality, a mask concealing the real you.

The real you lies within, beneath that formative years “programming” that has falsely led us to the conclusion that we’re suffering from low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence. The real you doesn’t have the flaws that others told you that you have. The real you is, to quote Nelson Mandela, “powerful beyond reason” – the real you can change your life. Or, more correctly, the real you can enable you start living, because hiding behind a deformed mask thinking that it’s you could not be described as living at all. And the great news is that the real you is only one step beyond the normal person’s grasp – a simple step that is well worth taking.

As I said, those “inner voices” will always be with you – they will never go away. But you, as a responsible adult can decide to not listen to those voices because, as a responsible adult, you can choose as to where you will devote your attention. And the choice is a simple one. You have two simple options – and the right choice is obvious. Here are your options: you can choose to waste your attention on people and events long past that make you feel bad about yourself or you can choose to pay attention to what’s actually happening now. Take the first option and you’ll believe that your suffering from low self-esteem – you really will! Take the second option and you will by-pass your programming and discover that your free to live your life without those voice-shackles – that you’ve given yourself permission to unleash your inner power. And your inner power, if correctly focused, can lead you to places your mask-personality cannot take you (but that’s for another article).

How do you pay attention to the present moment? Well, it’s not as if you’ve never done it before – we were all experts at it as children – where we explored each new now with all of our five senses. You’ve got to become again like a little child to enter the life that’s waiting for you here and now – you’ve got to lose your perceived life to find the real one.

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In this culture self esteem issues are often more apparent in women.

I would never belittle the importance of these issues in men as well, but as a woman I am better equipped to discuss self esteem issues in women. So this article does lean towards that perspective.

Your Inner Voice: I think much of our conflicting inner dialog is lodged painfully in our own recollection of how we were valued at an impressionable age. Isn’t it true that you really are your own worst critic? That critical negative voice, nagging you thorughout the day, undermining your self esteem? It’s kind of hard to believe that we would willingly create this form of self-torture, but the fact is…we do!

Why? Well,any series of happenstance or painful past events, parents, friends, history, what have you, could have caused this… I could rant endlessly against all the wrongs and causes in my life. But ultimately I had a freeing thought: not to be unsympathetic, but does the cause really matter? The past cannot be changed, but we are here now. I have gone that route myself as I have a sob story I can and did blame everything on.I spent years ranting and raving at the injustice of my childhood circumstances all to no avail. A particularly large chip on my shoulder concerning self esteem issues in women came from the old-world cheauvenistic degradation of my environment. Finally I realized, why waste another moment of my precious life energy entertaining anything that has to do with those people? After all, it never got me anywhere but back to square one in my own mind.

I was unaware of the role I was playing for a long time, then I went through the process of re-writng my inner responses to my history. Now if you know my life story or have read the book, then you already know I was raised in a super cheauvenistic cult environment and have had to overcome a lot (to say the least) of negative implanted thinking and feeling, most of which led me to believe what I was told from a very early age, which is that I did not have the ability to make decisions for my own life…that is my past. “The fact of the matter is”, many people say, that “you can’t change it”…or can you? I’m not talking about jumping into a time machine and rewinding history, but about rewiring our experience of and therefore responses to history!

So we got hooked up a certain way, we are trained how to feel, react and interpret our world from a very young age by forces outside of our control at the time…so I say, why shouldn’t we roll up our sleeves now, dive in and give ourselves an overhaul to our own specifications? After all, would you let your grand mother pick out your clothes every day for the rest of your life? Well I don’t know about you, but personally…well…let’s just say it wouldn’t work for me! So, where do you begin? Don’t you have to study a problem before you can fix it? Well that sounds obvious, but isn’t it rather difficult to study your own subconscious? After all that is why they call it the “SUB Conscious.” It is primarily hidden beneath the surface. Hence the age old industry of psychology, psychotherapy, counseling etc. (and I am in no way disparaging them, and would ever claim to replace them, they are a wonderful asset to the life-distressed, myself included.) this is just an approach, an addition if you will, that worked for me that I wish to share, and it may or may not be right for you.

So now what? Quite frankly “self esteem issues in women” sounds like an overwhelming issue to tackle. How do you fix a problem you cannot see? Well, frankly, you don’t. Just start to ponder the idea, don’t worry about that right now. The first thing you do is make the invisible…visible. “How” you might ask? This is where what I call “The Healing Author Course” Begins…who knows you better than yourself? I mean your deep subconscious self? We are led to believe that we are helpless to understand our own minds and hearts “leave that to the professionals” they say “you don’t have the skills.” Yet I believe we all have that vision within us. How do you access your sub conscious without editing it? Unfiltered, un-edited by judgments or condemnation? Have you ever heard of free form expression? Basically brainstorming your subconscious. This can be done through the process of journaling. What is the most powerful tool of expression and reinforcement? Language! The spoken and written word. You use it every day to communicate to other people in your life. Well now it is time to communicate with yourself. “That’s silly!” you may say. Rest easy, I don’t mean roaming the streets mumbling like a crazy person, but you do think about things all day long right? The only problem with this is that we have a constant filter in place that prevents us from seeing the raw input, once again that inner voice.

Through journaling you will be free form writing to reveal yourself to yourself. This can be a very scary process, who doesn’t fear the thought of discovering something they don’t like about themselves? It is not about judgment, but discovery, that is the first step. It is actually quite simple, you will set aside time alone to pour yourself out onto paper. This is only for you and a first step in learning more about yourself. What does this accomplish? You are just exploring the environment that was created so that you can choose how to re-create it.