Bad girl blues and self esteem
We don’t have to earn a lot of money, we don’t need long legs and we don’t need a great upbringing or the ideal parents in order to have a high self esteem.
What we do need is the ability to stop telling ourselves that we are worthless, we will fail or we don’t deserve better. We have to stop saying bad things about ourselves, to ourselves.
Have you ever said before going on a date or attending a meeting, “Oh, I will say something stupid”, or “I’m not pretty enough” and let it stop you from speaking out or saying how you feel? This is what I mean by the inner critic.
The inner critic is the judge that tells you, you are bad in some way. It is the inner critic that has to be stopped, or at the very least you have to stop believing that what it says is true.
When you believe your inner critic your emotions will give a strong reaction, such as fear, anxiety or embarrassment. When you feel such strong emotions you are going to avoid speaking out. For example, you might think, “I will say something stupid” and in association with this you feel an overwhelming sense of embarrassment. Expecting to die of embarrassment is going to hold you back, isn’t it?
The thought will limit you because you feel so bad just thinking about it. It is the emotional reaction plus the thought that holds down your self esteem.
For example, recently I worked with a woman who wanted to become confident when speaking in public. She started off by telling me, "I hate public speaking. I am no good at it. I will never be any good at it. I always blush. I guarantee I will go crimson. I'll never change. I'll never like public speaking."
Guess what? She was absolutely right. While she tells herself this, her self esteem will not rise and she will not feel adequate.
Worse still when she thought these bad things about herself she became very anxious. She believed what she said and added anxiety on top. The anxiety associated with her bad thoughts held her self esteem down and stopped her from becoming a confident public speaker.
In contrast, when you don’t take your inner judge so seriously then you are going to have a far weaker emotional reaction. Thus, if you hear yourself say, “I’ll say something stupid and they’ll all laugh at me” and you stay at ease and say, “Who cares?” then your self esteem won’t get such a beating.
Even better, if your inner judge says, “I’ll say something stupid and they’ll all laugh at me”, and you think, “What a relief, I like an audience that laughs”, your self esteem won’t be beaten up. There is no strong negative emotional reaction associated with the thought. (If this sounds strange remember that people such as myself, who speak for a living, try really hard sometimes to get an audience to laugh at them!)
When you think you are bad, then believe you’re bad, you’ll sink into some sort of internal emotional and physical collapse and get the bad girl blues. Down will go your self esteem.
Self esteem is killed when you say bad things to yourself about yourself and you believe what you think. Why believe your thoughts? Sometimes they come up with compete nonsense. If you don’t believe me spend a day writing down every thought you have. (You’ll need to write very quickly, they are speedy little things!)
Then read them all through. Can you really convince me that all your thoughts are very sensible and straightforward? I doubt it. You may well find that your thoughts change from one moment to the next, and they contradict each other. If so, how can they be true? How can you take contradictory thoughts seriously?
Stop saying bad things about yourself. Stop believing the bad things you say. You’re not a bad girl. You deserve a high self-esteem.
What you say to yourself about yourself is your choice. What do you believe about yourself?
Editor
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