Imagine you are building a house. The first and most important step is to start with a strong foundation. A good foundation will support the structure of the house; a bad foundation will cause endless problems with the stability of the structure. The same thing applies to our own foundations. If we do not have a healthy strong foundation, everything that we try to build on top of it is going to topple down.

Self-Esteem, Self-Confidence, and Self-Image make up the foundation of self. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence or negative self-image can weaken and destroy our foundation. A fragile foundation hinders self-improvement and goal obtainment because as we try and try we see our efforts collapse. The connection between the amount of success that we see in our lives is in proportion to how healthy or unhealthy our sense of self is.

Self- Esteem is the sense of one’s worth or value. It is the opinion or judgment of yourself and the measure of self-respect and pride that you have for yourself. People that have low self-esteem do not hold themselves a high regard. They are often people pleasers that neglect their own needs for the needs of others. Low self-esteem prevents a person from accomplishing goals in their lives because on either a conscious or an subconscious level they do not really believe they are worthy. Individuals that have low self-esteem might engage in acts of self-sabotage to make their belief that they are not worthy of success a reality, not only in their own minds, but in their physical reality as well.

Self-confidence is the belief in yourself and your abilities. Low self-confidence often keeps people from going after their goals because they do not believe they have the skills or abilities to succeed. This often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you don’t think you can then you won’t, no matter what steps you employ. Lack of belief in your abilities will prevent most people from even attempting to go after their goals or to give up too quickly.

Self-Image is the overall concept or metal image of yourself and your assessment of your qualities. This is simply what you think of yourself, do you consider yourself as a good person or a bad person. How do you define yourself? When you think about your traits do only see the bad? How do you describe yourself to others? These are all questions to consider when figuring out if your self-image is positive or negative. An unhealthy self-image impacts your overall feelings of worth which inhibits self-improvement and growth.

These three foundation blocks are interconnected. A low self-esteem is usually going to result in low self-confidence and poor self-image. In turn, having a negative self-image contributes to your low self-esteem and lack of self-confidence. The three work together to form the foundation of self, a trouble in one area leads to issues in the remaining two; making the urgency to work on the areas that need improvement even more critical.

The best way to keep your foundation strong is to first and foremost realize your worth, know that you are a good person and that you deserve success in your life. If you really do not believe that, you start with changing the way you think. Daily affirmations are an effective way to change negative thoughts connected with your image, esteem, and confidence. By telling yourself positives, you are through repetition retraining yourself to think differently about yourself.

Changing the way that you talk to yourself is another way to strengthen your foundation. Most people with low sense of self, engage in negative self talk and are very critical of themselves. Being aware of how you talk to yourself and making the switch from negative to positive can really change the way you think and feel about yourself. It also improves the relationship that you have with yourself, promoting self-love and better insights into yourself.

By thinking of yourself as being worthy and deserving of success in all areas of your life, you are removing limiting thinking. Our thoughts help create the realities in our lives. By believing in yourself, you are creating and maintaining the healthy sense of self that is going to help you flourish.

The first step is to take action. It is important not to keep yourself from falling down into a black hole, resulting in feelings of hopelessness and despair. Evaluate your esteem, confidence, and image. Start implementing ways to improve them, one step at a time. If you do not think that you can do it on your own, then seek help! There is no shame in asking for help, the shame is depriving yourself of a life of prosperity and success.

By: Tonya Ramsey

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When starting out the the area of self development and growth, one of the most important and basic skills to learn is the skill to deal with issues in your life.

Many sources often overlook the process of how to change. The process is long and hard, and often you will lose motivation and forget your goals for self improvement. While you may yearn for instant gratification and instant change, the reality is that it just wont happen overnight. Habits take a long time to form and break; deeper psychological issues that a long time to resolve.

Often when people deal with their issues, they’re dealing with it in a LOGICAL manner. This doesn’t motivate you because motivation is EMOTIONAL. When you feel emotionally affected towards the issue, you will have the drive to resolve the emotions. This is the basis for my model of dealing with issues.

Without further ado, here it is: Dealing with issues, the 4 steps.

1. Figure out what the issue is.

This first point is ridiculously obvious, but incredibly important and oftentimes looked over. In many instances, we believe that we’re dealing with one problem when in reality we’re actually facing problems with a deeper inner issue.

For example, in the world of dating and relationships, the actual act of meeting members of the opposite *** can be quite daunting. The possibility of rejection, the fear that they will dislike you is present. No one likes to think that they are incompetent with the opposite sex, and this is the issue that may arise and challenge them if they approach and get rejected. So they sit at the back of the bar with their friends talking about how they’re ‘pimps’ and ‘could pick up anyone in this bar’ but ‘they don’t want to’ because ‘no one here is worth it’.

What is happening here is an avoidance of the real issue: they depend on other’s approval and reactions to feel good about themselves. An issue of low self esteem and low self confidence.

This issue would not be realised without some serious hard thinking and the ability to see things for what they really are. Your mind and ego will throw up a million different cognitions to throw you off the real issue because the truth hurts your sense of self.

This first point is ridiculously simple yet hard to realize.

2. Experience the issue.

This is different. I swear by this technique 100%.

When you figure out what the issue is, it’s going to try and hide. It’s going to throw up excuses as to why you have those cognitions. You’re going to want to avoid the issue. Yeah that’s right, you know what I’m talking about. This is the nerd realising that they **** with women but rationalising it as due to their studies or the fact that they “don’t have time”, then using that as a constant excuse not to GO OUT and MEET women. Or the woman who has emotional issues that affect her relationships but blames her relationship problems on her looks.

By experience the issue I mean to feel it fully. You KNOW it’s there, you aren’t going to avoid it. You just broke up with your partner? It feels crap. Don’t avoid having the feelings. You’re scared of chatting up that cutie? Don’t avoid the issue. Immerse yourself in the experience of feeling like that.

Only then do you have a solid base for your motivation to get the problem fixed.

3. Act on resolving the issue

After experiencing the feelings that you don’t want to feel, make a decision to ACT upon the issues. After all, just pointlessly making yourself feel bad is… pointless. So what did you do? Make a commitment to take steps forward in solve the issue. If you’re afraid that people will ‘reject’ you then approach people until you emotionally realise that ‘rejection’ by a stranger means nothing more than the fact that you approached them in the wrong way. If you’re avoiding exercise because of an underlying issue of laziness, get out there and exercise! Do you actually WANT to be unhealthy? How does being unhealthy feel?

Experiencing the issue should give you the MOTIVATION to ACT on the issue. If you don’t act, you’ll just stay the same. Do you really want to feel the way you felt when you were experiencing the issue? I doubt it.

4. Figure out your other issues

In self improvement, it is critical to remember that your problems will NEVER end and you will ALWAYS have issues to deal with. Reality is harsh.

If you’re serious about improving yourself, keeping this in mind will help you a lot. You will always have something to fix. Take a break once in a while, moderate how much you work on yourself, but never forget that you always have something to improve. Read “The way of the superior man” by David Deida. It gives a good description of this point.

By: Solace Swanson

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Marketing Strategy