What is Womens self-esteem? Definition: A woman's experience of being capable of meeting life's challenges and the feeling of being worthy of happiness. Women who have healthy or authentic self-esteem trust their own being to be constructive, responsible, and trustworthy. It is an inner state that can be nurtured and cultivated. A Womans Self-esteem is the level that you respect and value yourself as a lovable, worthwhile woman. Where Does Self-Esteem Come From? Our self-esteem develops and evolves throughout our lives as we build an image of ourselves through our experiences with different people and activities. Experiences during our childhood play a particularly large role in the shaping of our basic self-esteem. When we were growing up, our successes (and failures) and how we were treated by the members of our immediate family, by our teachers, coaches, religious authorities, and by our peers, all contributed to the creation of our basic self-esteem.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Worry...what a waste of time~

Have you ever noticed how much time is spent worrying or thinking you are just not good enough? When you allow ourselves to dwell on any negative form of thinking such as you are not good enough...you then become your own abuser. You are the only person responsible for allowing yourself to be brought down. Why would you want to be a self-abuser...give that some thought as it will help motivate you away from those thoughts of seeing yourself as being less than.
If you do not think highly of who you are, how can you expect anyone else to think highly of you?
Initially, it is what you allow to affect you, that steers your thinking towards the negative side of the road. It takes nothing more than being a bit tired or sick to lower the strong hold of your self-acceptance. So keep in check with that, meaning when you feel like your self is beating your self up.
No one person feels good about who they are all of the time. A balance is vital in how you feel throughout the day when thinking about who you are. Without balance you can either fall down, meaning a low self-esteem or fly up high, meaning an ego so bright that it blinds others, either way you are not in a healthy frame of mind. When a negative thought does take over in making you feel down about who you are, simplify it by breaking it down to small issues that you can handle. Also remember that tomorrow is a new day. Everything always looks different tomorrow because there is still hope for a better day. To worry about what is or what you cannot change wastes time again. Realize who you are and don't put more expectations on yourself than you can handle about who you are or what you can give. 

~Keep in mind that ..
Worry is like a rocking chair...
It gives you something to do...
But it gets you no where~

Oh...and don't forget to just ~BE AWESOME~

~D~


Saturday, May 7, 2011

Imagine that.....


Imagine never having to feel that you are less than, just because you have already compared yourself down so low that you become paranoid even before your day begins.
Women...we spend way too much time worrying about if our appearance will be acceptable. We underestimate the power of our own confidence and how it affects how others see us.
When a person walks in a room...the second she smiles, is when others begin to see her clearly and accept her for her self. To walk into a room already feeling defeated creates a huge cloud of smoke that no one can see through. All they are left with is their own thoughts and imagination of who you are.
Confidence is your best friend. There is not one person on this earth that is completely happy with what they look like on the outside. This is how is is meant to be as there is no one person created in the perfect image. The only perfect image is the one that you compare yourself to. That image is gaged by how you feel about yourself. You are in a sense the creator of your own comparisons.
Instead of starting your day worrying about the things you do not like about the way you look....try challenging yourself with a little game of thought...by taking every second day in all fairness to you and pick out what you do like about the way you look.

You will be amazed at just how much you will realize how much you have to offer in just that little game.
I dare you~

~D~

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Self-Esteem & it's 15 Styles of Distorted Thinking


Self-esteem is very much controlled by how one thinks, interprets, internalizes and allows others thoughts about them, to affect them.....otherwise know as, 'cognitive distortions'~

I ran across this list of different styles of exactly that. I felt compelled to share this list with you for the reason that, I believe self-awareness is a key to unlocking so many of those doors in which you find yourself either locked behind or locked out of.
To know thyself, is something that I highly recommend to everyone in order to be able maintain a healthy balance of self-esteem.

The list below is very informative and extremely thorough in helping you understand, even identify how your mind thinks, which in turn can be very beneficial to the health of your own self-esteem and balance.

~In short...I could not have compiled a better list myself ~

1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes colored by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.

2. Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices...eg- Things are black or white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example-You have to be perfect or you're a failure.

3. Over-generalization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.

4. Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.

5. Catastrophicizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.

6. Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue to your worth and value.

7. Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and that every decision affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).

8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.

9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.

10. Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.

11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.

12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.

13. Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgment. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.

14. Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.

15. Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You fell bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.

*From Thoughts & Feelings by McKay, Davis, & Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981.


~D~

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

~Believe Quotes~


“Love comes to those who still hope even though they've been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they've been betrayed, to those who still love even though they've been hurt before.”

“Run your fingers through my soul. For once, just once, feel exactly what I feel, believe what I believe, perceive as I perceive, look, experience, examine, and for once; just once, understand.”

“This is the true measure of love: When we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us”

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right...Believe in you at all costs"

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”

“One will without a doubt believe whatever one repeats to oneselfenough times, whether the statement be true of false. It will become a dominating thought in one's mind...So think wisely”

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