Don’t Be So Heavenly You’re No Earthly Good

I sat with a new client recently for a reading. After Jane’s elderly father, a Baptist minister, passed away she’d had a very moving dream about him and became curious about the kind of existence her dad-in-spirit might be living.

We began with a contact with her dad, and after validating his identity through the evidence he shared, Jane’s father began to express his simple joy by recalling an old joke about St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Jane had a hard time accepting this part of the contact because “Dad would never joke about God.”

“He loved everything about the Church and he always said serving God as a minister required being in a state of awe and reverence all the time,” she said. “He would never in a million years joke about Heaven or God.”

“He is filled with delight and wants to share that with you, and the best way he can do that now is with laughter,” I replied. Jane was having none of it and we ended our session soon after. As she walked away I could tell that this message had turned her off completely because she couldn’t square a light-hearted, irreverent spirit-father with the solemn and serious earth-father.

My client Kerry came for some psychic coaching. She was following an awakening interest in energy healing and looked for an intuitive action plan that would direct her towards the best modality that could certify her as “qualified.” I gave her an example at one point that was funny and silly, and she drew herself up and suddenly became very serious. “I really don’t think this is a topic to joke about,” she said. “I mean, we’re talking about the GOD FORCE here!”

Kerry watched me intently throughout our session, taking notes and doing her level best to keep the tone of our meeting serious. She was surprised I didn’t actively meditate and told me she had saged her entire home, removed all frivolous decoration, and had hung pictures of Buddha, Jesus, Quan Yin, and angels all around to remind her of the importance of keeping her mind on the GOD FORCE at all times. Whenever she said “GOD FORCE” her voice dropped to a whisper, as if the GOD FORCE might overhear her taking its name in vain.

Erin came in for spiritual coaching in her pursuit of a relationship with God. She’d grown up in a family that didn’t practice any religion and she’d never learned how to pray. She’d set up an area in her home where she lit candles and burned incense and tried to get to know God. It bothered her that her boyfriend ribbed her about her “altar” and made too much noise in the background whenever she was trying to pray. “He doesn’t realize how serious this is for me,” she said.

All three of these wonderful people were plagued by the toxic fog of low self-esteem (LoSE), though they might not consider so at first. I worked with each one a few more times after our initial meetings and and showed them how LoSE was misdirecting all of their earnest efforts. Once understood, Jane, Kerry, and Erin were able to continue pursuing their searches with more satisfaction.

LoSE frequently comes with a set of rigid rules that the LoSEr either rebels against entirely or follows with a gravitas bordering on obsession. Neither response is a surprise. Jane, Kerry, and Erin fell into the second category, toeing the spiritual line in the vain hope that simply by doing so they’d be rewarded.

In the miasma of low self-esteem, we LoSErs (I was one, too) understood that if we followed the rules for success laid out for us by our early Important Adults and Authority Figures, we’d experience happiness or at least feel that we’d earned our place in the world. Simultaneously our uniqueness and self-expression was often suppressed, minimized, or dismissed altogether until the formula for success was hammered home. We learned that following the rules made us good girls and boys, and that above all was the prize. Once we earned — and maintained — good girl/boy status, we could expect to relax just a little bit because for the moment we’d made the cut.

Entire cultures have pressured young people to fit in, from sex-role stereotyping girls away from the sciences in school to expulsion from churches or families for preferring the wrong gender. The message was “Don’t be yourself if you want to be happy. Follow these rules that make sense to us.” To do any different was to be seen as selfish, weird, anarchic, or subversive. To do so came with the classic LoSEr mantle of shame.

When LoSE has your personal sense of value so warped as to feel almost nonexistent, it’s no surprise that you’d take the rules very seriously. The punishment for straying outside of them is too painful or dangerous to contemplate. For me to do so felt like I would disappear. It was only because I was following the rules that I had any sense of being grounded in reality.

When it comes to spiritual matters or other matters that originate in the subconscious mind, such as dreams, emotions, hopes, and other “soft” intangibles, the mind of the LoSEr naturally wants to apply rules or some other observable, measurable process. We’re so ingrained to do it “the right way” if we want any hope of success, we can be our own worst masters.

One of the devastating results of low self-esteem is a pervasive distrust in oneself. And so often, any journey we undertake in the soft, intangible realm is not measurable because it’s wholly subjective. I remember when I was “learning” ESP I was searching for teachers and authors who could explain to me what my ESP felt like and when it was signaling me. Many of the books I read strongly suggested listening to my inner voice and hearing what my guides were telling me. I wasted years in a frustrated haze of failure because I’m not auditory! 

We all have strong learning channels, and some people learn best using visual techniques, others kinesthetic or feeling styles, and some do best when they’re listening. I didn’t learn until much later that my two major learning channels were visual and kinesthetic. When I just listened to an instructor without taking notes or visualizing her ideas, I struggled to digest and comprehend. These are not learning disabilities, just natural channels of input that differ for each person. (If you’re interested in how you learn best, you can do an internet search for V-A-K charts, or type in Learning Channels. There are charts and “tests” that will help you understand whether you’re visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, or some combination of the three).

Yet there I was, trying to “hear” and failing miserably. I was following all the rules as these authors and teachers presented them, and yet the prize of satisfaction and accomplishment eluded me. In my low self-esteem I had one way of going forward: following the rules laid down by Important Adults. When that resulted in failure, I was left with nothing but the evidence of my unworthiness and an amplified low self-esteem.

The bottom line is that LoSE often demands that we take everything — especially seeking — seriously. LoSE demands discipline and chases us on our self-seeking journeys with a stick, its chant echoing in our minds: do it right, do it right, do it right. Breathing down our necks and taunting us with the LoSEr reality that failure and evidence of unworthiness is hot on our heels. LoSErs can be some of the most driven people you’ll meet.

When faced with a subjective journey, LoSErs expect that if they follow the same rules that objective tasks require, they’ll get where they’d like to go. But that misperception coupled with distrust in their own inner sense of themselves confounds even the most dedicated seeker. And it’s those who seek inner peace that need that trust the most!

When you begin to recover your inherent self-esteem (RISE), you accept the more subtle nature of the intangible information and recognize that it will likely not make the kind of sense that tangible data does to the conscious mind. You trust it anyway. RISErs realize that inner guidance and nudges from their intuition come from a place of love and knowing and sometimes — often — fly in the face of convention.

When I decided to leave my corporate job to open an office as a hypnotist, I was following my own counsel. Family and friends did their best to dissuade me because they were concerned I was making a huge mistake (I wasn’t). RISErs follow their hearts and dreams and have the confidence to withstand the pressures outside themselves to conform.

My client Jane wanted to have the feeling belief in Heaven that her dream had suggested, but at first was unable to step outside the rules about Heaven that she’d learned in her church. She had rigid expectations about what it meant to be in spirit, but was curious and open enough to eventually drop those expectations and trust in her dreams and feelings. 

My client Kerry felt a calling to pursue healing but tried to apply the same rules of medical school to her energy healing. She kept asking, “Yeah, but what do I do? What classes should I take?” In time Kerry came to see that the answers were within her and that no matter who “certified” her, energy healing would always be subjective and she’d need to learn to trust herself if she was truly going to thrive in that modality.

Erin wanted to believe and experience God in her life, but her low self-esteem convinced her that there was only one right way to do that, and it was hidden somewhere in the sacred texts of various spiritual traditions. She said to me more than once, “If I can only crack the code….” We discussed an idea in the Jesuit tradition (founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in the 1500s) that suggests talking to God as you’d talk to your best friend, one who loves you without judgment.

If you find that you too take the “rules” very seriously, consider what might be driving that. Especially notice if you’re defensive about your process or rules, or if you argue or feel uncomfortable when someone challenges the rules you follow. You might be trying to seek through the toxic fog of low self-esteem.

There is one aspect in the self-seeking process that I do suggest you take seriously, and that is RISE-ing. If you’ve suffered from low self-esteem you must — and this is hard because you’re already at a deficit in the area you need it most — have the confidence to believe that a part of you is perfect. Not only is that part perfect, but expressing it in your own unique, necessarily different way, is the only way to the peace, contentment, and fulfillment you seek. The rules don’t apply here; throw them all out.

You must pursue your inner light of eternal perfection with the kind of obsessive study you learned to apply in the rational world. The key to this process however, is that there is no wrong way to do it. Remember, this self-revelation is entirely subjective. Nobody knows the one way to accomplish it or how to determine that you have accomplished it. It’s all in your self-perception.

This, more than anything, deserves your serious efforts. If you don’t make RISE-ing a priority, you will always be last in line, hoping for the crumbs of contentment that fall off the table of the rules you obediently serve.

Begin by thinking about your dreams and goals, and your unique expression of them. Give them serious consideration. Consider them to be VIP guests in your home. Make a place of honor for them. Your yearnings are serious business, but the expression of them ought to delight you, challenge you, empower you, and fulfill you.

Take the belief in yourself seriously. It will bring you confidence, balance, and peace of mind.

There’s no giant book in the sky that defines what is the best way for you to be you. The joy of self-discovery is what life is all about! If you suffer from LoSE, the toxic fog of self-misperception tricks you into thinking that life is all about toeing someone else’s line, and the “you” inside can indeed be defined and should/could/ought to fit into a set a rules and expectations someone else put in place. Yet we’re miserable when the rules don’t fit us or when, after a lifetime of following them, the reward of fulfillment eludes us.

RISErs know that their first responsibility is to know and express their own unique ideas, and the most rewarding vocations are those that encourage us to do so. Individual fulfillment can never be defined or measured by outside forces. RISErs know that they must trust themselves and how the spirit guides them; only then will they experience — for themselves — true peace and joy. 

That’s not to say there aren’t good roadmaps out there to help us discover ourselves, but, like roadmaps, they are not the living experience of that journey. They are just guides, and your experience on the road is necessarily going to be unique to you. You can’t turn around and tell anyone else how it’s going to be either; you can only offer your experience and the helpful hints you used to navigate challenging terrain.

For example, I can tell you that I know what low self-esteem feels like because I lived with it for years. I can outline (and I have, in my book “Fix Your Screwed-Up Life. Recover Your Inherent Self-Esteem and Start Living the Life of Your Dreams”) suggested ways to RISE). But your LoSE and your RISE-ing will of course be unique to you.

Try to remember not to take the rules, the outside forces, and/or the Important Adults so seriously. Try not to take the spiritual seeking so seriously. You don’t want to be so heavenly that you’re no earthly good to yourself. Above all, remember that you don’t have to earn spiritual peace, freedom, and fulfillment — it’s your birthright. You inherited the right to creative expression of your SELF, and all the joy inherent in that sovereign Self. 

You don’t have to work hard to be happy or to follow God or explore healing, ESP, mediumship or other intangible modalities. You simply have to trust yourself and respond to the direction from your inner holy light. That might just mean putting down the rule books altogether.

The Power of Words

When you suffer from low self-esteem (LoSE), words can really sting. We learn as young LoSErs that criticism from our Important Adults or Authority Figures indicates faults in our being. LoSErs also learn that if they’re quick to criticize others they might just dodge judgment themselves so they model LoSEr behavior by maligning others who aren’t present or who are out of earshot. 

Everyone likes to dish the dirt; LoSErs do so especially because focusing on someone’s shortcomings or failures deflects attention from the shortcomings they feel in themselves. Some studies have even suggested that so-called “positive gossiping” can be inspiring; other studies have suggested that romantic couples can create a stronger bond when they gossip (positively or negatively) to each other about other couples. For example, a gossipy comment from one sweetheart to another can communicate how “we’re” different from “them,” and the way “we” do things means our love will last: “Those two have a joint bank account and he always spends without asking her, even though it’s also her money. That’s such a bad idea; can you believe it? They’re always fighting because of it. I’m glad we have separate accounts.”

But most studies agree that gossip is destructive. It’s not surprising to be sometimes more interested in what others are doing — and how they’re doing it wrong — than in our own lives. It’s when we criticize or gossip to others that we deepen our own LoSE. Someone with low self-esteem feels unworthy, invisible, or uninteresting, though he may not be consciously aware of it. When he gossips however, he is in a safe place, spinning some juicy narrative from which he is conspicuously absent. He’s not in the spotlight, but he’s controlling it.

I had a potentially disastrous encounter with gossip several years ago. A neighbor who was on a nominating committee for the superintendency in a public school asked me about a mutual colleague who was applying for the job. Her committee hadn’t yet assembled to vet this man, and she wanted — discreetly and confidentially — to gather some anecdotal opinions about his work style. Because I felt conflicted about front-loading his interview with “dirt,” I shared her request with my then-sweetheart. The next day I learned that Then-Sweetheart told the worst busy-body in town that the Applicant was interviewing for a job as Superintendent in Such-and-Such school district, and that Busy-Body wanted the number of my neighbor so she could give said Neighbor every last bit of crap she could think of on Applicant and could call Such-and-Such school district herself to further her rant against this man.

I was furious first with Then-Sweetheart, then with Busy-Body, and I gave both them a new vent through which to expel waste (if you know what I mean). If Busy-Body had contacted Such-and-Such school district, Neighbor would have been fired on the spot for her indiscretion. I had unintentionally started a wave of gossip that could have hurt two innocent people; as it was, it lead to the end of my relationship with Then-Boyfriend and earned me a reputation with Busy-Body as a b_tch.

I wasn’t even gossiping about the Applicant or the Neighbor! I just wanted to check in with a trusted other (Then-Boyfriend) about the inner conflict I felt; I wanted his opinion about whether my reticence was well-placed or no big deal.

Both Then-Boyfriend and Busy-Body are insecure in their own ways (we all are, to some extent), and it’s natural to project our insecurities on others. But when your LoSE convinces you that you’re a solid judge of someone else’s character and other people need to hear your opinion…. well, that’s destructive. Most LoSErs share gossip in order to be liked and accepted: to feel that they’re offering something of value to the world, or at least to the conversation. Gossip may reward the LoSEr with positive attention or a sense of self-importance in the moment: think of Busy-Body dialing up Such-and-Such school district and crowing to an administrator there all the “dirt” she knew on the Applicant. Boy, she’d get their attention then! Feeling as though she’d saved the day and saved Such-and-Such school district from making a terrible decision, and they’d have her to thank for it!

Unfortunately, gossip rarely benefits anyone. People come to recognize the wagging tongues of LoSErs and avoid them; they see that anything they might share with a gossip is very likely going to be spread to others, and will most likely have a negative spin.

There’s an Eleanor Roosevelt quote I see in memes from time to time: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Personally I don’t care much for the judgmental tone of this adage, but I get where the First Lady was going. While it’s not possible to get around discussing events and people, and the pressure to spout “great ideas” might just make you a total boor at the party — it IS possible to take the spirit of her statement and try to stop gossiping about people.

Years before I began to recover my inherent self-esteem (RISE) I indulged quite a bit in the guilty pleasure of gossip. It wasn’t a very attractive quality, and I see now that I gossiped to feel accepted among people I always perceived as more worthy. I felt that if I didn’t bring something interesting to the table, I would be rightfully ignored and dismissed. I distinctly remember joining a conversation at the gym among women who were talking about losing weight — what else? — and I mentioned that another of our acquaintances was considering bariatric surgery. I remember one of the women in this small group, Becky, giving me a mild look I couldn’t quite define, but it triggered what I knew to be an appropriate level of shame. A few weeks later I encountered Becky limping and I asked her what happened. She said very politely, “I’m sorry but I don’t want to tell you, you aren’t discreet.”

Even though I hadn’t really begun to RISE at that time, Becky’s simple comment brought a self-awareness that set my feet on the right path. Her RISEr comment and direct words helped me to see what self-esteem looks like.

Now I’m in the habit of not talking about others, and if I hear someone maligning a person I care about, I make sure to change the subject. I try to imagine how I would feel if the gossiper were talking about me, and without leaping to the subject’s defense or criticizing the gossiper, I simply introduce another topic for discussion as soon as possible. I imagine Becky saying, “You aren’t discreet.” It’s enough to make me listen hard to everything I’m saying and whether my words are adding harmony to the world at large or detracting from it.

As a hypnotist I’m often asked to give talks about the power of the mind and one of my favorite demonstrations illustrates how our words can literally damage or uplift a person. In this demonstration I ask a volunteer to come up to the dais with me and face the audience. I briefly introduce the topic of applied kinesiology (also known as muscle testing), which is a method of diagnosis based on the belief that various muscles are linked to particular organs and glands. Many traditional practitioners think its quackery, and there are strong arguments both for and against it, but for the purposes of my demonstration I explain that our bodies register and respond to the energy of other people, of nature, of thoughts, and of our environment, and AK or muscle testing reveals that response easily.

To show what I mean, I ask the volunteer to make a fist and hold her strongest arm out straight in front of her, as rigid and locked as she can. I then push down on it as hard as I can to show her and the audience her baseline strength, and then have her relax her arm at her side. Now we get to the fun part: I stand behind her and hold a card up above her head (where she can’t see it but the audience can) with the word “BAD” written on it, and I ask the audience not to say the word but to THINK it to the volunteer. Then I perform the muscle test again, and without fail, the volunteer’s arm collapses at the slightest pressure from me. Remember, she has no idea what the audience is thinking.

Then, because it’s always better to leave someone feeling empowered, I repeat the experience but this time have the audience think the word “GOOD” to the volunteer. And her arm when tested is stronger than even the baseline.

Draw your own conclusions about AK; for me, it’s a crystal clear illustration of how though affect other people. Can you imagine how much more power words spoken aloud have on someone? Can you imagine how you think and talk about yourself impacts you?

So how about you? Why not take a day or two to notice if you gravitate towards gossiping people or if you gossip yourself. If so, notice if there is one particular person around whom you like to dish the dirt. Look a little deeper at the subject: what is it about that person or his/her actions that is so gossip-worthy? Is it missing in yourself? Would you do something differently?

The next time you feel tempted to join in or initiate gossip, imagine someone whose opinion you treasure gently and sadly turning you away because “you aren’t discreet.” When you hear information that has the ring of gossip to it, see if you can graciously change the conversation or at least share something you admire about the subject of the gossip.

It will mean changing a habit, and that takes some mental discipline. I guarantee it is worth every effort. You’ll feel honest in your heart and you’ll discover a new kind of appreciation for others. Your discretion will impact your immediate circle and entire communities, even those online. Imagine not chiming in to the scare-mongering and gossiping on social media. I often think of those threads showing people poorly dressed in Walmart, or making silly mistakes, and I recognize that lapping these up and sharing them is a form of gossip too. Focusing on all the ways other people are less than you or more ridiculous than you might be balm for the LoSEr, but it also perpetuates the toxic fog of low self-esteem.

If you can break this habit, your own energy will change. You’ll feel more at peace and you’ll experience a more peaceful world. You’ll begin to notice and care more about what’s worth praising and celebrating. As you notice this in others, you’ll begin to see it more in yourself: you’ll naturally appreciate your own unique expression of the perfect spirit within.

I’ll leave you with this sublime advice from Ephesians 4:29:

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

The Spiritual Solution To Every Problem

Psychologists know that the way we see ourselves develops in early childhood through the way that we are seen by Important Adults. If a parent regularly expresses annoyance when a kid cries for attention or affection, that combined with other factors can create annoyance with our own need for affection as adults.

For example, my client Rick came to me for a psychic reading a few years after his marriage ended because he couldn’t find love again, and not for lack of trying. He was feeling demoralized and as though something was wrong with him as a man, even though he felt he was a good partner. He wanted to know if I could see a significant love for him in his future.

It was clear at the beginning of our appointment that Rick had a terrible headache, but when I suggested we reschedule he growled “No, I’ll be fine.” Rick made it clear has no patience with himself when he’s sick and revealed he has little patience with others who aren’t feeling their healthiest. He said his wife divorced him because of his inability to express sympathy and nurturing. He told me about the ongoing disagreement between them, and the final argument that lead to divorce:

“When we were first dating I broke my arm when I fell off a ladder doing some weekend chores. I didn’t want to go to the hospital but I finally did because the pain was so bad. I went to work on Monday morning and just kind of powered through. What else was I going to do? Sit home? Carolyn (then his girlfriend) tried to get me to take a day off but I wouldn’t. Afterwards she told me she was amazed that I powered through it and kept working; she thought I was just really ambitious and she was happy I wasn’t a slacker. She told me this after we got married.”

“What about when Carolyn was sick?” I asked Rick.

“That’s where our problems really blew up. I know she thinks I’m insensitive — maybe I am — but when someone just has a cold, come on, get over it. The world isn’t going to stop. Take some cold medicine or sleep for ten hours. Do what you need to do.”

“I can see why she might have thought that was insensitive,” I prompted.

“I guess so, but I don’t think I’m insensitive as a person. All of that fuss is just crazy. What is a person supposed to do? I can’t fix it, you just have to wait to get over it.”

The final straw came when his wife had to have dental surgery and Rick didn’t “coddle” her. “She wasn’t even awake! She was so drugged up on painkillers. I asked her what she needed a couple of times, and then I left her alone. We got into a huge argument a couple of days later and that’s when she filed for divorce. I know I have to resolve this somehow. Maybe my karma is broken and I won’t find a partner again.”

When I finished my reading for Rick I suggested he think about low self-esteem (LoSE) as an underlying issue in his self-perception. After all, he saw himself as a pretty good catch, “better than average” yet once things got intimate with his partner it was only a matter of weeks or months before the relationship ended. He brushed off my suggestion and I didn’t hear from him for about six months.

When he came back he wanted to talk about LoSE. “I think I need to get this ‘sympathy thing’ fixed,” he said. “I didn’t think I had low self-esteem, but I couldn’t quite shake the notion that you were onto something with that suggestion.”

With hypnosis and intuitive counseling Rick began to recover his inherent self-esteem (RISE). We did some regression work around events in his very early childhood where he could see his teenaged parents — both so overwhelmed with financial struggles and a new baby — and their inability to give him the attention and nurturing he desired. They did the best they could, but whenever young Rick was fussy, scared, or ill, his exhausted young parents expressed disappointment, frustration, and anger, often dismissing his whines and telling him, “You’re fine, I can’t do anything, get over it.” We all learn to treat ourselves how our early caregivers treat us, so it’s no surprise that Rick internalized impatience and frustration with his own and others’ “whining.”

I have another client named Ben with a similar early childhood story. Ben also internalized his parents’ impatience when he was needy, but he compensated by creating an overly-nurturing response. I met him after I’d been seeing his former girlfriend Cindy, with whom he was still friends. They came together for a life-in-perspective session with me, and both laughed about an example that highlighted Ben’s tendency to smother:

“We had just started dating and I had to move to New York City for a short-term acting job. Ben stayed in Ithaca where he worked and where we both lived. In one of our first phone calls while I was staying with my girlfriend Ben could hear I was getting stuffy. The next day I came back from rehearsal and outside the apartment door was a huge floral arrangement. It looked like a centerpiece at a fancy wedding reception. I mean, it was enormous! I could barely get it through the door.”

The following day more gifts arrived: teddy bears, chicken soup he’d had delivered from a restaurant he looked up in the neighborhood, more flowers. “And the phone calls!” Cindy laughed, “he’d leave me these messages about how worried he was about me. It was a cold! It was over in two days!”

Ben talked about his early childhood, his alcoholic father and emotionally checked-out mother, how little sympathy he received from either when he felt sick or anxious. Unlike Rick however, his brand of LoSE manifested in a desperate need to be present and available, to provide in advance for any small need a sick person might have. Not having been encouraged to talk about what he might need when he felt poorly, Ben assumed others were the same and as Cindy put it, was almost intrusive in his desire to meet her needs.

We see yourselves as we were taught to in childhood by Important Adults or Authority Figures. If other factors are in place, low self-esteem can turn that internalized perception into self-loathing or self-aggrandizement; expressions of underachievement or overachievement, a view of ourselves as unworthy or entitled.

British philosopher Derek Anthony Parfit (1943-2017), widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, wrote “The early Buddhist view is that much or most of the misery of human life resulted from the false view of self.” I’m not a philosopher (of any note ;o) but I think he’s referring to how LoSE creates personal misery.

We experience misery because we’re seeing what someone (usually a LoSEr) taught us to see in ourselves; whatever LoSE they struggled through they projected onto us. That’s how toxic fog spreads… it has no distinguishable edges, it seeps insidiously in and before we know it we’re contending with blurry, indistinct reasons that appear as evidence that we’re unworthy. “How did this idea get here?” we might ask if we were self-aware young children, without the utter reliance on Important Adults.

Adult LoSErs experience the “misery of human life” and the toxic fog of their low self-esteem makes that misery appear normal or deserved. RISErs also experience misery, but it’s less a condition and more a temporary state from which they apply their self-love, their self-awareness, and their rational minds to extricate themselves.

You came into this world a pure and perfect being, a life-affirming eternal energy force with the urge to thrive, express, create, connect, and grow. You came in as God’s thought of himself, individuated into the vehicle made by your biological parents’ DNA. The mind and body that grows from the DNA is a clean slate and ideally a servant of the spirit, following your natural and inherently perfect, deserving, and uniquely valuable urges simply to be. Our parents (or other Important Adults) who all have their own degree of toxic fog to deal with, often impress falsehoods on that clean slate of body and mind. They might teach us poor eating or sleeping habits, or that bodies should be fat, thin, athletic, or soft. We passively receive their teachings even through covert suggestions like “Everyone in our family struggles with weight,” or “Watch out for cholesterol because all the men on your mother’s side had heart disease.”

LoSEr Important Adults might teach us that our deepest desires — originating in our spirit — are the servant of the almighty Rational Mind, so we’d better just stop this silly pipe dream of being an artist and get a real job. We learn to see ourselves in comparison to measures of worldly success through school, career, and income.

The quickest way to escape the “misery of human life” is to shuffle off the false view of the self. If the view you have of yourself makes you feel ugly, small, unworthy, deficient, stupid, or never-able-to-keep-up-with-the-Joneses, you’re seeing yourself through the toxic fog of LoSE.

Why not make a special effort to find that lovely spirit within you. You’ll be able to identify it in those moments of connection you feel with a beloved child, friend, or pet. You’ll find it in those joyful, spontaneous moments when time seems to disappear. That’s your spirit reminding you that you deserve joy and abundance. You’re God’s thought of Himself, so of course you feel like creating, or singing, or walking in nature, or playing. Begin to bring this view of yourself more into your daily life whenever possible.

Focus for a little bit every so often on how you would like to feel. Stay with that feeling for several minutes or as long as you can. You’re re-establishing the connections between your mind and your spirit, and before long your mind will desire to serve that happy spirit. Your powerful mind will begin to show you ways to see yourself that feel TRUE, and will begin to suggest strategies to you that will make those feelings more consistent. You can trust your spirit to give you the authentic view of yourself.

If, like Rick or Ben you seem to be missing the mark with others and you’re consistently getting the same message that you’re not nurturing enough or too nurturing, look at how you see yourself around that issue.

For example, if you hear that you’re not nurturing enough, think about how you feel about being cared for when you’re sick. Think about how you see yourself around sickness, and think about what your early Important Adult caregivers felt about it. Is it an inconvenience? Is it cause for great alarm? Were you made fun of for being weak? Did a parent work through illness because to take a day off would have a negative impact on finances? You were taught to see yourself a certain way around the issue of nurturing. There’s nothing wrong with you; you can’t help what you were taught. But consider whether it conflicts with what your spirit feels about nurturing.

After thinking about these questions, begin feeling what your spirit wants to express around nurturing. When you’re ill do you feel scared or alone? When others are sick do you feel helpless or frightened? There are no wrong answers to this self-exploration, just discovery.

Come to know how you see yourself, and you’ll begin to truly see yourself. You’ll distinguish between the mind’s directives (what we’re taught) and the spirit’s urgings (what we long for). Whenever possible, defer to the spirit. It knows how to fix everything. That’s why you hear statements like “there’s a spiritual solution to every problem.”

I encourage you to seek the perfect spirit within in whatever way makes your heart glad. We have enough misperception out there in the world; it’s practically self-perpetuating. When you see yourself as you truly are — an individual spark of a flawless Creator — everything in life improves.

Do You See What I See?

Christine came to me in a somewhat frantic search for herself because at one normal family dinner she made a casual comment about being easy-going. She didn't mean for it to be funny, but apparently her family had an entirely different experience of their wife and mother, and began a litany of all the ways Christine was anything but easy-going. They continued to make gentle fun of her for some time afterwards, and my client felt a residual sting whenever she thought about it.

This incident caused Christine more distress than just misreading herself. She asked, “What if other ideas I have about myself are completely wrong, too?” When I asked her to be specific, Christine said, “I was really floored that my husband and kids saw me so very differently than I saw myself. What if I’m wrong about the other ways I see myself? What if I’m not fair? What if I’m not tolerant but actually a bigot. God, what if I’m not happy?”

Christine was questioning her whole self-perception, from inconsequential ideas such as being easy-going to ideas with much bigger consequences, like being a racist or being unhappy in her marriage. Since that family dinner a few months before, my client had been unable to think about anything else; she felt like her whole self knowledge base was on shaky ground — potentially crumbling altogether.
Her biggest concern was that the framework she’d built all of her actions and decisions upon was not genuinely representative of who she was. When I asked Christine to tell me a little bit about her beliefs about herself she burst into tears. “I don’t know what I believe!” she wailed. “I used to know, but now I think I must have been completely wrong.”

“Well, let’s start with what you used to know about yourself,” I prompted.

Christine went on to list a number of characteristics but immediately negated each one. “I thought I was easy-going and funny, but it turns out I’m not. I thought I gave everyone a fair shot, but when I look back at myself I think I actually judge people; in fact, I’m probably a snob. I thought money didn’t matter to me, but when I look honestly at myself the truth is it’s really important.”

“Why is this causing you so much distress?” I asked Christine. “Aside from the obvious, what about this self-examination is so upsetting?”

“Because I don’t know who the hell I am!”

What stood out for me most in our conversation was Christine’s throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach. Because her family saw her differently than she saw herself, she was ready to question her entire self-perception. Formerly a fairly confident woman, Christine was now wandering around in the toxic fog of low self-esteem; everything was occluded.

In an excerpt from a book called “No One Understands You and What to Do About It” by psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, the author writes:

The uncomfortable truth is that most of us don’t come across the way we intend. We can’t see ourselves truly objectively, and neither can anyone else. Human beings have a strong tendency to distort other people’s feedback to fit their own views. We know this intellectually, and yet we rarely seem to recognize it as it’s happening.

That others see us differently than we see ourselves is hardly shocking news, especially for a sophisticated and generally self-aware woman like Christine. Yet her extreme response suggested that an old, LoSEr version of herself had hijacked her rational mind. I suggested we begin with ways to align her knowledge of herself with the way she acted and presented herself to the world. While the two versions of herself would never match completely, there are ways to show others a version of herself that would more closely match how she saw herself.

First we had discussed how we all — every one of us — naturally reframe feedback to fit our own views. Whenever I do a psychic reading for a client, we begin when I ask the client to say his or her first name. That’s the signal for me to connect my sixth sense to theirs, and at that moment our session officially begins. Right away I get what I call a psychic snapshot of the person. It’s not a judgment or even assessment of the client’s issues — what I see in that snapshot is the lens through which he or she is perceiving feedback.

For example, in a recent reading the psychic snapshot I saw when my client Greg said his first name was the symbol of an old-fashioned egg timer, the kind that looks like a miniature hour glass. As a clairvoyant, psychic information comes to me in the form of visual symbols and it’s my job to translate that symbol into useful information for the client. So when Greg said his first name, the egg timer popped into my mind’s eye. As I focused on this symbolic timer all the information I needed came right along with it:

• it measures very short periods of time
• if you don’t turn the heat off, the egg is overdone or ruined
• it’s reliable but old-fashioned; there are more modern ways to time things

I told Greg, “For the time being, you’re likely perceiving feedback with an idea that there isn’t much time, or that things have to be done very quickly. You might also be feeling if the object of your attention doesn’t exist in a very specific time period, it might be ruined. You’ve likely been working this way for a long time, maybe since you were a kid, but even so there is a part of you that is longing to get beyond of this out-dated way of perceiving life into something more modern or up-to-date.”
Why is this perception lens important? I always tell my clients two things: first, it’s neither positive nor negative, just neutral. There probably are times when this lens sometimes works for you as well as times when it’s a handicap. The second thing I tell them is that nobody consciously puts these lenses in place; they come into being for whatever reason and usually stay with us for a while before eventually fading away, to be replaced by something different later on.

By the way, Greg could relate to this snapshot completely. He told me he was generally impatient with people, including himself. When he wanted input on a project at work, or creative ideas he had at home, he was often frustrated by how much time people took to get back to him. He often felt stressed that windows of opportunity were closing and that he’d missed chances to do fun things because of timing. Because of this lens, Greg perceived himself as a person who liked to strike while the iron was hot, but I suspect those around him perceived him as a testy, impatient person who often held his coworkers and family to an impossible standard.

I mentioned to Christine that we all have lenses through which we perceive the environments we live in. We’re barely aware of these lenses ourselves, and usually discover them when they're pointed out to us by family members or psychics. I reminded her that we ALL do this. It wasn’t a sign that she was lying or living in a fantasy world.

So how can a person like Christine make sure that how she is perceived by others is aligned as closely as possible with how she perceives herself? How can she be authentic enough that even the most self-involved person can see past their own lenses to who Christine truly is?

I believe it’s important to keep four things in mind when examining this topic:

You must understand that you, too, perceive people through your own lens, so you must be willing to reassess your ideas about others. You must realize that you might have been wrong when you thought Mrs. Smith was being snobby, or that Mr. Jones is taking too long to respond to you.

You must realize that there will always be a difference between how you see yourself and how others see you. It simply cannot be avoided, so forgive people who misinterpret you. Try again. Restate your case. Explain yourself another way if it’s that important.

You must endeavor to live in authentic expression of who you know yourself to be, even if that knowledge changes and evolves. You must recover your inherent self-esteem and trust in your own inner compass to guide you in your self-expression.

You must remember that the desire to exist and express in an authentic way is the purpose and the reward of life itself. Your job is to be you, and to waste as little energy as possible making sure others comprehend and fully accept you as you intend. Attempting to do so is attempting to manage other peoples’ feelings, a futile exercise of the LoSEr.

With these four ideas in mind, Christine began the work of recovering her inherent self-esteem. She trained herself to discreetly touch her eyeglasses frame whenever she caught herself making a critical judgment about someone she worked with or related to. This served to remind her that everyone — everyone! — had different lenses on and interacted with her differently, which helped her to be more present in those interactions and try to see the topic, idea, or situation as they did.

Christine also made an effort to remember that for every time she misunderstood someone, a person would likely misunderstand her. She cultivated patience with herself and practiced speaking deliberately and articulating her thoughts and feelings as calmly and directly as possible. Some of the most exciting benefits of this practice, according to Christine, was that she stopped saying “Yes” when she wanted to say “No,” and that she stopped initiating or getting drawn into unilateral contracts.

Using self-hypnosis, studying her own divine spirit, and contemplating her values and desires, Christine became lovingly aware of her own worthiness. She admitted to herself that she had needs, and taught herself how to meet them. She confronted her repressed and passive pessimisms, and set them free. Christine put her whole heart and soul into discovering who SHE was and wanted to be, and how early family culture had shaped her life up until that point. She took a good, hard look at why she felt, believed, and acted the way she did. Above all, Christine decided it was okay to color inside the lines, as she put it. Her role and her comfort level evolved from the easy-going, carefree escape artist of her younger days, to one who enjoyed punctuality, predictable rhythms, paying bills before they were due, and have a neat and orderly home. That was okay; her sense of self should evolve as she journeyed through her life.

Finally, Christine allowed herself to express her needs and desires, her personality and quirks, with the sole intention of expression. She said to me, “I need to color inside the lines. That is right for me at this time in my life. How other people respond to that is really none of my business. I don’t need to manage how they see me.”

In short, Christine discovered the qualities and characteristics that were hers, today. She decided it was okay to discard characteristics or labels from her earlier years if they no longer fit her. (I know about this; for some reason I was “the flaky one” in my family. Now in my mid-50’s, a very successful business woman, debt-free, healthy, fit and strong, published author, with solid relationships… whenever I go home I get the eye-rolling, wink-and-nudging, and the jokes about getting “real job.”) She was going to define herself, and having done so, express that perfect self.

If you struggle with how you want people to see you, reflect on those four points above. See if any or all can be applied to clear the toxic fog of low self-esteem. You’re here to define youself, to live your life and to let your spirit express itself. When you RISE, every day feels satisfying and fulfilling as you live without apology or self-deception. When you RISE, you don’t waste precious time managing your image because you’re living the authentic realization of your divine, eternal, and perfect Self.

Controlling When & How To Think

My client Pattianne says, “I’m living the perfect dream: I get to stay home with my kids, I don’t worry about money because my husband makes a lot, I have help taking care of the house and I even have time to take care of me. But I can’t seem to stop worrying it will all be taken away. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Pattianne is physically fit (she gets to her high-end gym and personal trainer at least three times a week), she’s engaged in her community (she volunteers at her kids’ elementary school and is on the Community Arts Board of Trustees), and she’s mentally stimulated (she’s able to audit classes free of charge at the university where her husband teaches).

By her own admission, whatever Pattianne wanted has seemed to fall right into her lap, or was achieved with minimal effort. She has the self-awareness to see that her worry is unreasonable, yet feels unable to stop it. She won’t describe herself as anxious because when involved in her daily activities she functions confidently and comfortably. Talk therapy seemed indulgent so she stopped that after six months. Despite all of her chosen activities, Patti says “I feel like I’m in a tiny little dinghy, just bobbing along in calm water. But then I’ll sense a strong wave coming and I realize I have no control over whether I can stay safe. It’s completely out of my hands and it makes me panic; I don’t even control the damn boat!”

She came to me for hypnosis looking for an antidote to her worry. As she explained it, Pattianne said that as long as she is busy and engaged in mothering, volunteering, keeping house, and working out, she feels in control and at ease. Only when she doesn’t have something to do does Patti feel a wave of worry. She told me when she felt it beginning to build she’d quickly get to the next task on her list as a way to hold back the wave. But when she lay down in bed to sleep at night, the wave crashed over her, reminding her that all could be swept away at any random moment. Even now, preparing for our first hypnosis session Pattianne was worried that the moment she relaxed into hypnosis and stopped thinking something on purpose, her worry would drown her.

I asked her, “How in control of your thoughts do you feel?”

“I’m not in control of my thoughts at all,” she answered. “The circumstances of my life control my thoughts; the minute all the circumstances are taken care of, my own personal thoughts fall down on top of me. As long as I’m thinking about what needs taking care of in my life, I’m okay.”

We drilled down on the basics of hypnosis as I assured Patti that achieving the hypnotic state was better described as focused concentration — it actually is controlled thinking — than as letting go of all mental control. Engaging in hypnosis would be controlling her thoughts by causing her to keep her attention on one single new idea while letting go of other distracting thoughts or feelings.

But before we got to the hypnosis part, I wanted to learn more about Pattianne’s self-esteem. On the surface she truly did seem to have it all: good health, a happy family home, fulfilling and purposeful work, a healthy social circle and spiritual group, and an anxiety-free financial situation. Yet I couldn’t forget what she’d said to me on the phone when making her first appointment: “I can’t seem to stop worrying that it will all be taken away.” I brought this up to her and asked her to tell me more about that particular aspect of her worry.

“I can’t really seem to relax with all I have,” she said. “I mean, who am I to have these great things when others work really hard and don’t have half as much? I don’t even have to work for a living!” Pattianne sounded truly distressed.

“Who do you mean by ‘others’?”

“Well, my older sister for one. She had a learning problem growing up that nobody recognized — schools were different back then — so she never made it past her high school GED. She works at an okay job, but she only makes minimum wage. I know she’s smart and she’s so kind and sweet, and she’s married to a guy who is good to her but also makes minimum wage. They have a kid who has hearing problems and all their money goes to trying to keep up with her schooling and therapies.”

“Do you two get along?” I asked.

“Yes, we’re as close as we could be considering our own families now. You know, I was dyslexic too but I’m ten years younger than my sister and by the time it was discovered my parents and the school had better detection and remediation in place. I just can’t believe I got all the good stuff and she was totally robbed, just because I came along later.”

“Is that how you really feel? That you got more than your share because you had better services available to you?”

“Not only that, my parents never let me forget Julianne’s bad luck. They meant well, but they never stopped drilling into my head that I was the recipient of extraordinary good luck, nothing more. They wanted me to be grateful every single minute for all the great things I had and God knows I am.”

“Do you think it was pure luck that you have so much more than your sister does?”

“Absolutely! And luck is completely random. Believe me, it could all be taken away at any minute!”

No wonder Pattianne felt overwhelmed by worry that “it could all be taken away.” When you truly believe you have no agency in your own existence, it makes total sense you’d feel out of control. Furthermore, to have the gift of a generous provider for a husband and all the extras that came with it, Patti couldn’t help but feel she was the random recipient of plain, dumb luck.

As long as she was actively involved in the tasks of her day, Pattianne felt she was appreciating her good fortune. Because she was living with great abundance, she plumbed her own participation in it to the Nth degree. She was so appreciative of her good health, she poured even more resources into it by celebrating it, generously paying and tipping her personal trainer, and doing her best to treat her healthy body with honor and reverence. She immersed herself 150% in everything she did as a way of living her gratitude. She never let herself simply enjoy what she had, hyper-vigilant for the certain moment it would all be taken away.

When all activity stopped and Patti was winding down to sleep, she was intensely aware of how lucky she was. Instead of allowing herself to continue to feel blessed, Patti instead began to worry that:

1. she wasn’t grateful enough
2. it wasn’t fair that she was so lucky and her sister was not
3. she hadn’t done anything to earn this random dose of good luck
4. her sister Julianne was terribly jealous and had every right to be
5. that she was letting down her parents if she stopped actively appreciating, and
6. deep down that ultimately her good luck would turn sour and she’d be living a life like her sister’s, and she knew she wouldn’t have the courage to endure such a low-level, depressing lifestyle.

These worries spun through her mind until finally she drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep.

Instead of applying a hypnotic band-aid as an antidote for her worrying, I asked Patti to work with me instead on her self-esteem. She wasn’t convinced she had a low self-esteem (LoSE) problem, but as I re-framed her sense of deserving and her daily gratitude payment of over-activity, she agreed to look at recovering her inherent self-esteem (RISE).

Many LoSErs feel that they’re hanging onto happiness by a thread that the Fates could cut at any time. I felt the same way when I had low self-esteem; all my blessings came from an external source, even God Himself was outside of me, up there in the sky, judging me. Early parenting taught me that my behavior was more valuable than my being, and even then it was rarely praise-worthy. When I was given a gift it came with reminders that it was expensive, that the giver had to sacrifice to get it for me, and I’d better show extensive gratitude.

Not too long ago a dear friend gave me a rare and beautiful gift, which was a pair of antique pearl earrings she had no use for. She couldn’t remember where they came from but knew she hadn’t purchased them herself as they weren’t her style. She teased me by saying, “You can have these, but never forget that I slaved for years to save the money to purchase them!” Of course she was joking, as she just finished telling me she hadn’t, and that she never wore them because she truly disliked them. But boy-oh-boy, did my inner LoSEr rise up! I was frozen on the spot, my hand extended to receive the earrings. My flashback must have shown on my face also, as my friend immediately began to back-pedal. She scrambled to reassure me she was joking while I strove to control my thoughts. Can you imagine? Thirty-something years later and this shit still kicks me?

RISErs know that we feel first, and think second. Here is where I had to grab the thinking mind’s reins and get that feeling mind under control. It took me several seconds and a few deep breaths to remind myself I was not 15 years old again, being shamed while being given a gift. After a minute I could receive the earrings with appropriate gratitude and explain my reaction to my friend.

This incident came to mind and I shared it with Pattianne. As I explained the difference between the conscious/thinking mind and the subconscious/feeling mind I could see her excitement as she began to nod over and over. “Me, too! I know exactly what you mean!” she kept repeating. We talked about her inherent self-esteem — the part of her own Self that is ageless, creative, and perfect. This wonderful, life-affirming, joyful and curious part of our spirit loves to give and receive. There’s as much joy in saying “Yes, thank you!” as there is in watching someone say it to us.

When the toxic fog of low self-esteem (LoSE) has clouded ones ability to see the perfect, whole, deserving part of our own being, we forget that we don’t need to earn our place here, nor do we need to earn all of the blessings that come our way.

We learn that there are many ways to receive blessings, including ways we can’t imagine, or ways that don’t fit the cultural formula. For example, we might think the only way to have riches is to earn it or marry someone with money. But the Universe has multitudinous ways to prosper us, and we limit ourselves when we believe there are not.

After a few hypnosis sessions helping Pattianne begin to RISE, she began to relax in her good fortune. If you’ve read my book “Fix Your Screwed-Up Life,” you’re familiar with the formal RISErs know: Be—>Feel—>Do. When you recover your inherent self-esteem, you know that your Being is already a miracle and needs no defending, so you can pay attention to what you Feel is the right life for you, at which point you can begin to Do what it takes to make that life a reality. LoSErs have the formula backwards, as my client had: Do—>Feel—>Be. LoSErs Do everything they can to Feel worthy of Being here, taking up valuable earthly resources.

Once Pattianne recognized that she had a perfect, holy Self within we got to work on her sense of control over her life.

I asked her, “Is it now possible to see that your thoughts control the circumstances? Do you have anywhere in your beliefs a system that says you get what you focus on?”

“I don’t know. I want to feel in control my thoughts, though,” she answered me.

I told Patti that the first step to controlling her thoughts is in controlling when she thinks them. Once she could train herself to do that, and as she recovered at least some of her inherent self-esteem, she’d feel less worry about the panicky waves that could sweep away all her good fortune.

I suggested that Patti choose the thoughts she would focus on before falling asleep. She could make a recording to play for herself or simply use her imagination. I reminded her that we have to make believe over and over (with will and discipline) in order to get a belief into the subconscious mind. She had to make believe she could control her thoughts, and with repeated make believe those thoughts become true.

I also suggested that she use the power of her thinking mind more wisely during the day. If she allowed herself to worry for an hour after the kids got on the school bus, then spend the next hour daydreaming without limit, brainstorming, playing, and imagining. I wanted her to consciously spend as much time choosing relaxed and happy thoughts as she did worrying about random destruction of her good fortune.

In time Pattianne began to see the blessings in her life in a more relaxed way. She stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her self-esteem improved which automatically gave her a sense of greater control over her life. She knew that as long as she had a powerful mind over which she had total control and a profound awareness of her own inner perfect Self, that she could enjoy genuine security and peace of mind. When our minds and our spirits work together properly, we understand that nothing can prevent us from enjoying all of the blessings we inherited as children of our Creator.

“Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign...

Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?”

(Five Man Electrical Band, 1970)

My client Mika is helplessly lodged in a rut, lost in the toxic fog of low self-esteem. Of all my clients over the years, Mika exhibits the clearest picture of disempowerment I’ve ever seen. She’s well into her 50s, yet her expectations of herself and others are like those of an adolescent. Before engaging in anything new, Mika looks for signs.

In and of itself, this isn’t really a big deal. Lots of people look for or acknowledge signs to one degree or another. But Mika won’t make a move unless the signs are favorable, and she’s so filled with self-doubt and uncertainty, one sign simply won’t do. There needs to be overwhelming
sign evidence that she is correct before she’ll take the next step. As you can imagine, many opportunities have passed Mika by and it was for this reason that she came to see me.

I usually ask my new clients how they found me, and Mika announced that she’d written my name down months ago but was uncertain whether intuitive guidance was what she needed. It was only after repeated reassuring signs that she called me.

“So how can I help you?” I asked her.

“I feel stuck,” was the reply. (If I had a nickel….)

When I asked her to tell me more, Mika described years of the same boring life. No romantic relationships, no hobbies, no travel, no new furniture, no interesting changes whatsoever. She’d been getting up and going to a job she could do in her sleep five days a week, and attending the occasional social event on the weekends.

As an example Mika showed me her old, outdated flip phone. Years ago she’d thought about purchasing a smart phone, but couldn’t decide between an iPhone and an Android; she didn’t feel savvy enough to decide herself, so she “gave it up to the Universe” to direct her choice and awaited signs indicating the best brand.

However, each positive iPhone indicator was matched by a good sign for the Android, so Mika started collecting and balancing these signs against each other. Years went by with no decision, and now Mika feels silly and embarrassed to go into a smart phone store and admit she has no idea how to use one. She didn’t know what an App was and felt apprehensive about learning a whole new technology at her age.

She recounted similar stories about (not) getting a new roof, (not) adopting a pet, (not) signing up for the Woman’s March on Washington, and a pain in her jaw that once finally diagnosed, was too late to save three back teeth.

We talked about her self-esteem, which she admitted was and had always been paralyzingly low. In fact, that’s why she decided that signs would help her make decisions she otherwise lacked the confidence to make.

Looking for signs can be a healthy way to build trust and confidence in your own intuition, but not if you don’t believe the signs or the system you set up to help you choose. Even after Mika asked the Universe to show her a sign as to which smart phone would suit her best, she didn’t trust the feedback. For example, Mika’s first sign pointed clearly towards the Android, but her belief that she wasn't smart enough to make a technology choice caused her to question the validity of the sign. Now, wary of the deceitful power of tricky signs, Mika asked the Universe for more and more evidence. She gave away all of her decision-making power to random events that she didn’t trust anyway.

Ideally, signs should be the grain that tips the scales for or against, not the sole reason for opting for one choice over another.

Many RISErs (those who have Recovered their Inherent Self-Esteem) use signs for a little boost of validation, and they trust the information in the sign even if it isn’t what they hope to see. I have another client who employs what she calls the Universal Feedback Loop as a double-check in some — not all — of her decisions. She knows what RISErs know: sometimes signs mirror back what the subconscious mind knows to be correct. This client was questioning her romantic relationship and she hoped the nagging feeling inside was wrong. Unable to see clearly between what was true and what her emotions truly hoped for, she prayed for a sign of confirmation. When a sign appeared suggesting her nagging feeling was correct, my client felt validation even though it wasn’t her hope.

My client Mika is paralyzed by the impending future; she has a job review coming up and hopes for a positive one. That review is eight months away, yet she’s already seeking clear signs that she’ll get a promotion and raise. She asked me to tune into her future psychically to let her know the outcome, but when I asked her if a positive word from me would allow her to relax, she said quite honestly, no. It might settle her mind for a day or two, but then she’d start asking for other signs in other places.

At the base of all this worry and perseveration was LoSE (Low Self-Esteem). Mika had forgotten that she had the power to intuitively understand what path was right for her; the power to choose that path without defending or rationalizing her choice; and the power to change her mind if it turned out to be wrong for her. Her fulfillment was entirely dependent upon signs that she just didn’t trust! As a result, Mika made no decisions whatsoever.

I dug a little deeper and asked her to show me how she determined what made a sign, and what it meant. It turned out she had no consistent system for her signs. As she put it, “When I saw something that might be a sign, I thought, ‘Maybe this is a sign,’ and then I tried to see how I felt about it: good or bad.” What a muddle!

I suggested to Mika that if she were going to rely on signs, she first had to determine where her own thoughts and feelings were taking her. We discussed her upcoming (well, almost a year away) job review.

“What do you feel the result will be?” I asked.

“I don’t know. That’s the point.” Mika looked at me like I was simple.

“No, really. You’re being tugged one way or another within you. Try to look at this in a neutral way. Imagine you’re watching a movie and your boss is reviewing you. What first comes to mind?”

“That he likes my work and he says he’ll suggest me for a promotion.”

“Great! Does that feeling of ‘yes” show up somewhere in your body?”

“I just feel solid.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Now choose a sign. The purpose is to confirm or deny your feelings. The purpose of the sign isn’t to say ‘Yes, you’ll be promoted,” but ‘Yes, the feeling that you’ll be promoted is correct.’ Choose something that you are unlikely to see or hear in your normal, every day life.”

“How can a sign be something I’m not likely to see?” Mika asked.

“Because you’ll be more likely to trust it. If you choose something regular like a leaf landing on your windshield (this was Autumn), you’ll dismiss it just like you’ve dismissed all the other signs you asked for.”

After quite a bit of hand-holding, Mike chose a cameo. This was a pretty agonizing process for her because her LoSE prevented her from even trusting that she could choose the right kind of sign! Neither she nor her regular circle of friends or colleagues wore a cameo; I advised her that the cameo might be a literal object in her life, might be on television, or show up on her social media.

Mika called me the next day. “Guess what?! You’ll never believe it, but I just opened my mailbox and a big, colored ad card fell out for a jewelry restorer, and the piece on the front was a cameo!”

“So you have your sign. You can relax now and stop worrying about your job review,” I replied.

“Yeah, but what if something happens? Maybe it’s just, well, maybe could you help me pick another sign, just to be sure? That way I’ll really know.”

It took a few weeks for Mika to trust that her intuition, her natural healthy self-esteem, knew her best options. We practiced on smaller, nearer-term and less important choices to build up her trust.

When we can live in a dialogue with the Universe around us we develop a keen discernment, promoting choices that serve our spirits best. Maybe you don’t believe in signs, that the Universe is responsive to you, or that prayers are answered. Yet even if you just believe in yourself, you probably believe that your subconscious mind has a way of being wiser than your thinking mind. These are the times you might say to yourself, “I knew I shouldn’t have taken this exit. Now I’m stuck in traffic.”

When you say, “I knew I shouldn’t have…,” you’re acknowledging that you received a sign or signal from somewhere that you ignored. If you look at life this way, you probably don’t always notice that the signs are actually signs.

The world around us is always part of our own projections, reflections and feedback loops. Why not try to get comfortable with an exchange of ideas or messages with that Universe, inner mind, Wise Mind, or heck, even pixies! It’s fun, empowering, and ultimately reminds you that you and you alone have the power to create your life as you like it. The more information you have, from within and without, the more confidently you’ll make good decisions or more quickly recover from poor ones.

A couple things to remember if you decide to play with signs:

1. Choose a sign for either Option A or Option B, not both. It will just lead to confusion.
2. Choose a sign to confirm what you already feel inside is how the decision will go
3. Choose a sign that you are unlikely to see, so that you’ll more easily believe it is meant for you
4. Let a sign be the tipping point, not the reason for, choosing one option over another.

In the end your goal, as you RISE, is to be so familiar and comfortable with yourself that even if you get disappointing responses from your experience or others, your self-esteem remains healthy and confident. You still hold the reins of your life in your own hands.

As you work signs into your regular life, you’ll eventually drop the need for signs altogether because you’re really training your intuition to guide your decisions. As your confidence grows, you’ll need fewer and fewer obvious “Okay to go” signs from outside of yourself, and the discernment you acquire will feel second nature.

I’d love to hear about your experience with signs, so drop me a line or comment!

Who's In Charge, Mind or Spirit?

If you suffer from low self-esteem (LoSE) you’re probably frustrated by and tired of hearing simplistic instructions for improving your life. Platitudes like “Just believe in yourself!” or “Think positive!” can be at best patronizing, and at worst invalidating of the LoSEr’s personal struggles and experiences.

These sorts of instructions require a mental model that is antithetical to low self-esteem. They presume the LoSEr knows how to recover her inherent self-esteem (RISE) by using her mind. But if a person knew how to correctly use her mind this way, low self-esteem wouldn’t be an obstacle to begin with.

When you suffer from LoSE, your thoughts have been shaped by other LoSEr adults (if your low self-esteem began in childhood, as much does) and your own experiences. Both of these channels have taught you that you’re actually powerless to change because you are fundamentally flawed and unworthy of the “good life.”

Low self-esteem means you’ve forgotten that deep down inside is the very embodiment of worthiness: the creative spark of Life. Everyone who is walking around on the earth right now has the same spark within. It is an energy that is fully-formed, whole and complete; it’s missing nothing, it is faultless and perfect. It simply is. And when something simply is, it doesn’t need changing, fixing, or journeying-to; all it needs is expression.

When the spark of Life in a person is free to express itself, healthy self-esteem is an obvious byproduct. They are inseparable because they are one and the same. When we recognize our own right to life-expression, we give ourselves permission to have dreams and pursue them, to draw abundance and love and health into our lives, and to live with contentment and peace of mind. Anything is possible when the spirit within—which knows no limits— is allowed to direct our thinking.

You read that right: RISErs (those who have recovered this personal inherent self-esteem) let the unique expression of their being direct their thinking. As I talk about in my book Fix Your Screwed Up Life, RISErs follow the Be —>Feel—>Do model: they let their Being (that spirit) inspire them (give them the feeling) to use their minds to set goals and take action (do).

The RISEr mind becomes a servant of the spirit. When this happens, when the spirit of Life is given free rein, one pursues happiness, seeks out healthy relationships, endeavors to live with a purpose, and treats his own body with respect and reverence. He uses his mind to set and achieve goals in the service of this happy, thriving, fully-expressed and self-realized vital urge within.

Many LoSErs have learned something entirely different. They’ve been lead to believe that their spirit is under the control of the mind, so they suppress their dreams, minimize their needs, act according to “duty” rather than desire, and attempt to cram themselves into Somebody Else’s idea of who they should be and how they should act. If they don’t do so, they’re “bad” and they feel shame and guilt, and perpetuate the message of unworthiness. That Somebody Else could be a culture, a religion, or a family.

LoSErs follow the Do—>Feel—>Be model, which means they try to do whatever it takes or whatever someone says so they can feel worthwhile or of some modest value, which will give them enough reason or validity to be here, alive, taking up space in the world.

The LoSEr continually fails at fitting in, because despite the external and often-internalized message to be who he is not, the model is backwards. The LoSEr mind might try but will never successfully squeeze down the spirit. The spirit - eternal and divine energy - was never created and can never be destroyed. It will find a way to express itself, despite the LoSEr’s greatest efforts to numb it into oblivion. The LoSEr lives in deep conflict and pain because it’s unnatural for the mind to corral the spirit, yet we see it all the time. People live their whole lives working at jobs they hate, staying in marriages that are abusive, or living in the closet. We see the results of this suppression all the time too, in substance abuse, addictions, passive aggressive or outright aggressive behavior, and other self-destructive actions.

The LoSEr’s spirit (actually, everyone’s spirit) says to the mind: Let me thrive in my own unique way of expression! I deserve to be here! Follow me and all will be good in your world! but the LoSEr’s mind says to the spirit: You have no rights here. I’m in charge, and what I learned contradicts what you’re telling me. You follow me, and I’ll keep you small and quiet because that’s the “right” way to be.

When the mind isn’t serving the spirit but serving itself or it’s LoSE message, the mind can’t embrace those platitudes like Think Positive! Even if it could, it’s not sustainable because Think Positive! is a message that originates in the spirit. It’s the spirit’s natural way, to be positive. And when the mind is suppressing the spirit, well, you can see the futility of that particular directive.

I worked with a client who seemed to exist in two parts. Phil had a wonderful imagination, had found it possible to begin dreaming of a more fulfilling life after twenty years in a career his mother thought suited him best, but for which he was distinctly unsuited. His mother, a LoSEr with the best intentions, thought a job in accounting would guarantee respectable income for her son. She’d been a very bossy and domineering parent, though she clearly loved him and wanted what was “best for him.” Even a decade after she passed, her son found it hard to leave her chosen profession to pursue his own dreams.

Because he suffered from low self-esteem, Phil felt guilty every time he let his mind linger on this dream. His mother taught him that he “owed” her a safe livelihood. “She always used to say it was the only way she could sleep at night, knowing she wouldn’t have to worry about my finances. Then, as she was dying, she let me know she could only rest in peace if I stayed with my job and was fiscally responsible.”

Phil’s mind was continually repressing what his spirit knew would be his most fulfilling and soul-satisfying work. He had internalized his mother’s message, which was to shut down that dream and be responsible not only for his own well-being, but for her’s — even in the Afterlife! It’s a perfect example of the mind not serving the spirit.

Phil’s dream was to open a bait and tackle shop. He loved fishing and the simple but rewarding interactions with like-minded nature-lovers. He dreamed of chatting with his neighbors at the shop and greeting new folks who came to town for the fishing. He was a story-teller at heart, and imagined sitting on the porch of his shop comparing fish stories and spinning yarns.

One part of Phil seemed to exist in this dream while another part of him had become the domineering mother and moved into his own psyche. He would berate himself for breaking his promise to his mother by even considering a different occupation for himself. This constant inner tension, his logical mind constantly trying to suppress what his spirit longed to express, was untenable for Phil. Over the years since his mother’s death he’d started drinking more heavily and had gained an enormous amount of weight. His spirit wasn’t going to stop fighting to express itself, and his mind had to reach for increasingly heavy-handed distractions. Numbing that spirit with food and alcohol had become Phil’s mind’s way of suppressing that “dangerous” dream.

When Phil came to see me he was at the end of his rope. We talked for several sessions about this mind/spirit conflict and about Phil’s core needs, one of which was for his inherent life force to find a way to be fully realized. Psychiatrists have long affirmed that in order to be healthy in mind and body, our core needs must be fulfilled. Understanding those needs and making efforts to meet them is honoring the inherent self-esteem, that life force within each of us.

Yet Phil’s mind was so locked into the habit of rigid control that even after studying the Law of Attraction and reading about visualization and affirmations, he struggled to feel safe about relaxing that rigid control. So we sought another route to Phil’s spirit. Rather than a direct confrontation with his mind (Think Positive! was simply not going to work), we decided to slip around his unbending thinking mind by accessing his inherent self-esteem through his physical body.

Within the spirit’s desire for full expression and balanced health is the core human need to look after ones body. In Phil’s attempt to repress his inherent self-esteem his body became a casualty. Even if he couldn’t get his mind to stop suppressing his dream, he could get his body to stop being collateral damage. We knew that once his body was stronger, the message from his spirit would be enhanced. A healthy body that supported a healthy self-expression might just be the trick to changing Phil’s mind.
Using hypnosis and strategic planning, Phil set about changing his diet, his exercise routine, and his food preferences. In time, as he saw the pounds fall off and his strength and vigor return, Phil was empowered to tackle his rebellious mind. He began to take his revitalized body out to those streams upstate where he loved to fish, reacquainting himself with the physical joys of just being.

The human body will respond to consistent care and attention. It will respond positively to quality sleep, food, and exercise. In fact, Phil’s strategic approach to “fix” his health was the perfect task to give a controlling mind such as his. Some people think a strong will is a handicap in hypnosis, but it’s actually a boon. Hypnosis is a state of concentration and focus on a single idea; it’s the powerful conscious mind using itself to change beliefs and habits in the inner mind… where the perfect spark of Life, the Holy Spirit, the inherent self-esteem resides.

While it’s true that using his conscious mind just to think about changing his beliefs didn’t work for Phil, using that same powerful mind to change his body did.

And as his body began to thrive, Phil’s mind naturally began to change. The life force in the cells of the human body, when left to their own natural devices, strive for balance. When we get our interfering minds out of the way and let our bodies do what they are designed to do naturally — thrive — the spirit’s Life force has an avenue for expression, too.

We can’t feel great physically and be in good physical balance, and suppress our spirit’s desire for full realization. We can’t feel revitalized, rejuvenated, and energetic and ignore the other energies our perfect self-esteem wants to express. Simply put, when we feel good and feel like we look good, we tend to stop punishing ourselves.

Phil began to experience the rewards of good health: every part of his life reflected abundance and vitality. He didn’t want to suppress his inherent self-esteem anymore.

We met a few more times, one of which was a spirit communication session with his mother. From the Afterlife she let her son know that she was wrong to ask him to manage her feelings and to sacrifice his dreams so that she would feel secure. With this final “permission” from his mother to live his own life in a way that would bring him joy, fulfillment, and deep contentment, Phil created a plan to retire from his accounting job and open his shop.

The last time I heard from Phil he had his bait and tackle shop in a town in the Adirondacks and had also developed a fitness program for fishermen and -women (who knew?). He was enjoying getting to know his customers and neighbors, networking with other local business owners, and was putting together a book of recipes for local freshwater fish. Phil was happy.

If you, too, suffer from LoSE and find your thinking mind shushing your inner spirit, remember that you can support your inherent self-esteem by going around your mind. Recovering your physical health has the natural side-effect of recovering your inherent self-esteem, and when you can do that - RISE - you can do anything!

When you give free rein to your inherent self-esteem, which is perfect, eternal, always striving towards life-affirming expression, your mind must direct your actions to fulfillment of that expression. You will naturally have the confidence to recognize, acknowledge, and meet your own core needs without guilt or shame. You will no longer suppress your reason to be here on this earth, your own unique purpose, in order to manage Someone Else’s feelings or live Someone Else’s life.