How to Boost Your Self-Esteem and Enhance Your Ego

Your Ego is Your Opinion of Yourself

In the last Mind Tip, we revealed that the power of your Mind could help you lose more weight than any diets available out in the market. Today, you will learn how to boost your Self-Esteem and Enhance Your Ego using all by yourself!

What is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is a confident feeling you have about yourself. You might say that self-esteem is that part of your ego that assesses who you are. What do you think of yourself? Do you have a high opinion of yourself, a good regard for you? Then you have a good, strong ego.

If you have a poor opinion of yourself, and little regard for yourself, then you have a weak ego. It is possible, of course, to have different opinions of yourself in different areas of your life.

You may have a good, strong opinion of yourself in one area, and think rather poorly about yourself in another. Unfortunately, the poor opinion is generally the one that is focused 0n-the old homily of the squeaking wheel getting the grease. Here is how you correct that situation. The first step is to understand that self-esteem is your opinion of yourself.

Once you appreciate this, you are well on the road to strengthening that self-esteem. Next, ask yourself why would you have a poor opinion of yourself in any area of your life? One reason might be that you have compared yourself with other people. If you come up short in that comparison, your opinion of yourself is diminished and problems arise.

What you must do now is to enhance your opinion of yourself. When you compare yourself with another person-whether that person is an artist, attorney, plumber, secretary, senator, nuclear physicist, musician, sportsman, or whatever-if you feel that he or she is better than you in any particular area, your general opinion of yourself will be diminished.

The correct way to look at other people so that you have an accurate feeling about yourself is to see those people in the most general way, a way that puts everyone on equal footing.

We All Have Different Resources

Not everyone is a man, not everyone is a woman. Everyone is not tall or short. Everyone is not rich or poor. But everyone is a human being, and in that regard you are equal to every other human being.

You are not equal to a horse. A horse is much stronger than you. But you do not feel diminished when you acknowledge a horse's superior strength. A dog is faster than you, but you do not feel diminished because the animal can outrun you. An elephant is larger than you are but you do not feel diminished by that.

The horse, the dog, and the elephant are outside the realm of the generalization of what you are, a human being.

Some people see other human beings as having attributes they lack and feel shortchanged. This feeling of deficiency, even in one area, shows up in your overall ego, in your general opinion of yourself.

However when everyone is seen as a human being, then everyone becomes equal. Tall, short, rich, poor, knowledgeable, ignorant, overweight, underweight, or average-these characteristics are irrelevant. We are all human beings, and seen in that light there is no competition.

There can be no competition. You cannot enhance your position as a human being, nor can you diminish your position as a human being. You are, have been, and always will be a human being, and you know that for a fact. When you see other people as human beings, you begin to realize that every human being on earth can do things that you cannot.

The converse is true as well. You can do things that no other human being on earth can do. That does not make other people greater than or lesser than you. It simply makes them different in particular aspects of their lives. Are they better for it? Perhaps from their point of view they are. From your point of view they are no better but simply different.

Take a look at two trees. Say that one is a thousand-year-old redwood, a great stately tree. You look at it and than look at a small, stunted pine tree trying to grow through a crevice in a mountain rock. Do you see the redwood tree as better than the pine tree? Of course not. All you see are two trees, and that's all you should see because that's all they are.

One is larger, the other smaller; better doesn't enter into it at all. When you see two people, whether one has an outstanding talent or not, what you're looking at and what you should be seeing are simply two people.

When you are indeed able to see two people, and there is no competitive urge to be better than either one, then you have reached a high level of self-esteem and can see yourself for what you are-a human being-equal to every other human being.

What Can You Do That No One Else Can Do?

Everyone has something. Think about that. There is something you can do that no one you know can do. Does that make you better, or does itsimply mean that you can do something better than anyone else?

Is there anyone in your life you look up to, anyone you feel is better than you? Then you should work on enhancing your self-esteem. Is there anyone in your life you look down upon, anyone you believe is less than you? Then again, your self-esteem needs work.

When you see everyone, from those you formerly looked at as the lowest of the low to those you viewed as the highest of the high, as-doing things differently perhaps, but all equal as human beings-then you find yourself with a healthy level of self-esteem.

When you have high self-esteem, you are in constant competition with the only person it makes sense to compete with-yourself. Life then becomes a game, and all the things in life that were bothersome become challenges and part of the game.

Self-Competition

The story of Charlie Zuniga serves as a good example of the benefits of competing with oneself. Charlie, a carpet installer who attended our seminar, was constantly striving to do better and be faster at his job than anyone else, without success. After the seminar he decided to compete with himself. His job at the time was laying carpet in a new development of tract houses.

For the first time in his life he brought a stopwatch with him. He timed the installation of carpet in every room. The bedroom took him one hour, the hallway two hours. The living room an hour and ten minutes, the stairway two hours and thirty minutes.

He finished the job, noted all the times, and carefully placed his notebook in a pocket.

The next day he felt more enthusiasm for his work than he had in some time. He pulled out his notebook and stopwatch and began.

His goal now different from what it was before. Now his goal was to install the bedroom in less than one hour, to install the hallway in less than two hours, to install the living room on less than an hour and ten minutes, and to install the stairway in less than two hours and thirty minutes.

Before he knew it, the day was over and he had cut thirty minutes off his previous time. He fairly bristled with anticipation of the next day.

It wasn't long before Charlie was the fastest carpet layer in his shop. Then he decided to go for the perfect job. He would attempt to make seams invisible and perimeters perfect. After he achieved his new goal he sought out the more difficult jobs. Charlie became the top mechanic in the shop, and decided to open his own shop.

He started a modest establishment and solicited a few accounts. He continued competing with himself. When he got an account, he determined to get a better one the next week, and a bigger one the week after.

Within two years Charlie had the largest carpet installation shop in the country. Needless to say his self-esteem grew along with his business-mainly because Charlie decided to compete with himself.

Self-Competitive Goals Are Easily Attained

When you set a goal and accomplish that goal, your opinion of yourself is enhanced. This is true whether it is a long-range goal, an intermediate goal, or a daily goal.

Goals that are self-competitive are easily attained, since all you are striving for is to do something a bit better or faster than you did the last time. The accomplishment brings about a satisfying feeling and an immediate ego enhancement. You can accomplish many tasks working with a stopwatch to compete with time and yourself.

Other tasks would call for a different measure of competition, challenging you to improve your level of relaxation, or the number of charitable acts you do each week, or your compliance with goals you've set, and so on. You're okay just the way you are. Understand that all you have to be is the best you that you know how to be.

Do your best at all times, even though there will be times when your best is a one, and other times when your best is a ten. To be human is to be affected by the swinging pendulum of rhythm. There is nothing to feel guilty about when you can't quite put forth your best possible effort; the best at that time is good enough.

Realize that forces are always affecting you - forces beyond your control, from past experiences to the weather. What you can control are things like attitude, viewpoint, and emotions. Nothing on earth strengthens self-esteem more than winning.

Winners invariably have a strong sense of self-esteem. This ego strength varies in different aspects of your life. You may have a strong ego in one area, like business, and a poor opinion of yourself in another, like public speaking. Hence it is misleading to conclude that a person's self-esteem reflects an overall picture.

In what aspects of your life do you feel you have the strongest self-esteem?

What can you do better than almost anyone else?

What is it in your life that you feel you can be most successful at?

If you were to become even better at something you already do well, you'd find yourself feeling like a winner, your self-esteem improved enough in that place to strengthen your ego in all areas.

How To Improve Your Self-Esteem

The first step in our technique for improving self-esteem is to pick something in your life that you are good at and want to improve. It could be cooking an omelet, playing the stock market, running a business, throwing a football, or choosing the right clothes for yourself; there is something you excel at.

Once you have decided what that is, go to your meditative alpha level and examine it in all its aspects.

Create a visualization, an image of yourself doing this activity, and then enhance the mental picture. Make the image brighter; make it larger and more colorful. Give it depth, three-dimensionally. Bring in other senses.

After examining your talent thoroughly, come out of level and consider how you can compete with yourself so that you will be even better at it. It is helpful if you have chosen something that you can improve either by quality, quantity, or time.

A Simple Technique For Self-Competition

To compete with yourself to improve your talent, start by setting the improvement as a goal. First, set a base line: determine how you do at present. Then determine in what way you wish to do it better-to do it more or less, faster or slower, larger or smaller, whatever applies. Now go to your level and see yourself doing this activity better.

Go through the same enhancement you used when you examined the talent before, but see yourself doing it better. Finally, set your goal to actually do it that way. When you come to an outer conscious level, hold on to that image, work, toward that goal, and keep at it until you are successful.

You will compete with yourself and you will be successful. Soon you will develop the habit of success, of winning, and your self-esteem will grow.

Turning Your Hobby into Business

What is your hobby? How can you enhance it? What do you enjoy most? How could you turn it into a business?

The Goldman Method Field Kit will cover this in detail. For now, go to level, enhance your images, and imagine that you have developed a new use for the things that you do best. You may come up with the next hula-hoop, pet rock, or Apple computer.

Even if you do not, the knowledge that you can will help to enhance your self-esteem.

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