Whats your self esteeme like

There are so many things that contribute to a person's self esteem. One of the biggest things that effects us is our body image.
Body image is the mental picture a person has of his or her body. It includes associated feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Body image is learned. It is affected by a person's environment, the people in that environment, and social attitudes about size and appearance. Body image is what our eyes see when they look in the mirror - Self esteem is how we feel about what we see when we look in the mirror.

Do you have an accurate reflection of yourself?

What are some things that influence our self esteem
• The way body image/self esteem has been modeled by our Mothers/Sisters
• Social attitudes
• Cultural beliefs
• Media
• Our emotional health/physical health
• Wanting to fit in
• Physical activity
• Relationships with family and friends

Be gentle on yourself - You are perfect just as you are!

* Don’t punish yourself emotionally or physically
* Be patient and kind to yourself
* Celebrate other people’s beauty and achievements
* Allow others to encourage you
* Believe you are valuable at all times
* Most of all be GLAD YOU ARE YOU!

You can never be too kind

It's so easy to view people through our filters or to project our beliefs on to them. Wouldn't it be nicer if we tried to view others through a filter of empathy or grace. How about looking past other peoples unpleasant behaviours and try to deliver kindness and see what happens.

What causes us to change?

Change is what happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing. It is often much easier to stay in a state of denial or procrastinate in regards to getting help, because we all know that work is involved in order to change. We often struggle to reach out for help until we are at breaking point. Wouldn't it be easier if we decided that prevention was better than cure taking our mental health more seriously. If we address things early on they don't have time to grow into big issues, therefore they are much easier to address. I encourage you if you have any small issues to get help now. Don't put it off for another day.

What creates our moods?

Feelings are rich when they are responding to the truth, however it's all to common for them to be contaminated, connected to poor interpretation because of trauma's or bad experiences. It's understandable to think, 'I feel it, therefore it must be true'. The feeling is real but it's not necessarily true. Things are not as they are, they are as we are, how we interpreted what we feel about them. How we interpret things eventually becomes what we believe about them. Understanding that it's our beliefs that determine this is very important. www.truthtalk.co.nz

So what is passive aggression?

A person who uses passive-aggressive methods to cope with stresses does this by others through passive means. Often the 'attacking' passive aggressive person agrees easily at the time (peace at any price), however they then bottle all their feelings up to unravel them on you at a later date. (dump on you shall we say). Thus the aggressive intent is cloaked by the passive method. These people are often lovely, but can actually be harder to deal with than a strong minded person who just says it like it is. Can any of you relate to this?

Hurt can be part of your healing

This is very true. As you may have heard me say before 'Its not what happens to you, but your response to it that is important" When you view your past experiences including hurts, as part of your learning, you can then draw on them as lessons. Some of the most powerful counselling sessions I have facilitated, are ones where I have disclosed something vulnerable to my client. This allows them to connect with me, knowing that I too have had hurts. They now trust that I do understand their pain because of this. When we use our own hurts to help others the power of the pain is taken away and replaced with a new understanding of why you had to go through the lesson yourself.

Our reaction is our responsibility

This is such a true statement and also quite challenging. Learning to be more proactive in our responses to people is really important. 'proactive' rather than 'reactive'. Remember no one else has the power to make you angry. "Your response is your responsibility"

http://www.truthtalk.co.nz