Our brains evolved so that we would have an instantaneous response to danger and that is how our species survived. But how often have you actually been in a life-threatening situation? Isn’t stress a more prevalent experience for you?
Attract and Sustain Loving Relationships
In our culture, we are conditioned to believe that if we didn’t get the unconditional love we deserved as children we can have a “do over” and get it in a romantic relationship. I believe that every behavior has a positive intent no matter what the outcome is. The positive intent in this hypnotic message was to give you the hope that you could feel lovable and worthy even if your parents didn’t create these feelings and you. Your parents didn’t have the ability to give you unconditional love because they didn’t have it either as is the case with the vast majority of the people you know.
How to Enhance Your Self Esteem
There is no gene for self-esteem-your sense of worthiness is largely based on how you were treated when you were very young. If you had been given primarily loving, supportive messages you would have internalized those messages and that would be your self-talk now. If your self talk is negative then you may have been overtly criticized, or ignored or your opinions were diminished or you had a lot of trauma in your life. Your lack of self-esteem, your self- critical behavior is due to your conditioning and doesn’t reflect who you are at your core and how you want to be.
How to Transform Emotional Dyslexia and Become Empowered
My life and work have been devoted to helping myself and others transform any thoughts, behaviors and emotions that are causing pain or discomfort. Early in my career I was impressed with how motivated and well intentioned my clients were. And yet, I had seen so many people spend years in therapy without fulfilling their true desire to live a more fulfilled and liberated life. I never doubted that people’s intentions were pure and yet I could understand their frustration at not being able to attain or maintain desired changes. My approach to creating change is based on the belief that all living organisms have one innate desire and that is for growth. I have dedicated myself to both identifying and removing any interferences to this innate drive for mastery.
How to Achieve Wisdom and Overcome Faulty Learning
The second interference to full empowerment is what I call “faulty learning.” Stop and think for a moment. If this survival reflex is active in every person you meet? Your parents had it, so did your teachers and your politicians. Too often the adults in our lives and our culture as a whole gave us information that was distorted by a brain that was wired to react with fear. They were not able to give us the information and tools we needed because they were limited by their own fear-based reactions, causing much pain and suffering. The well-intentioned adults in our life did not mean for us to feel inadequate or ashamed. We had no way of knowing that many of our beliefs and our emotional reactions were the result of conditioning by important people in our lives who were themselves being triggered into fear responses.
How to Deal with Anxiety in a New Way
Unfortunately, you grew up in a judgmental and critical culture is by definition creates anxiety. How could you not be anxious if every time you make a mistake or you overreact you anticipate being criticized or diminished. As a result you are probably self-critical and critical of others even if you don’t voice your criticism out loud you have been conditioned to see other people’s imperfections in a diminishing way.