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.

Pearls Among Gravel

My client Marcia has been struggling with LoSE (low self-esteem) ever since she can remember. She’s periodically so pessimistic in fact, she isn’t really convinced life will ever reward her. Slowly but surely we chip away at the symptoms of LoSE, and Marcia gets closer and closer to recovering her inherent self-esteem (RISE-ing).

Every now and then she has glimpses of her natural inner perfection and strives to connect more. I remember a teacher from long ago citing the same process, and describing it like having your hand in a bucket of gravel and feeling — just for a moment — a pearl within it. Suddenly you become aware of something that can feel better than the roughness of the gravel, which up until that point felt normal because there was nothing to indicate it wasn’t. Though having lost touch with the pearl, you’re inspired to keep searching because now you understand the contrast, and you never forget how smooth and beautiful that touchstone could be.

I like to use this example with my LoSEr clients, who, like Marcia, have existed so long with a constant, low-grade malaise that they don’t even recognize or believe that life could feel sweeter. Having even a momentary grasp of that pearl, having even a momentary understanding of what RISE feels like, is vital in pursuing confident self-expression because the LoSEr now has a reference point and can say “I know what it feels like to just be happily me.”

In a recent session with Marcia, we discussed her LoSEr drive to please, especially those she deemed authority figures. She said, “I strive for perfection with these people, even if I don’t like them or I disagree with them! For some reason I need their approval; I need them to think I’m the best person ever to work for them. Of course this perfection doesn’t exist, and anyway nothing I do could ever measure up to the standards in my head or the standards I seem to think I achieved in my past.”

Marcia described her knee-jerk reaction to authority; “I find myself nodding and saying ‘yes’ even before I know what they’re talking about. Even if I don’t agree with it!” Then she admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she even did this with me.

“When we first started working together you were asking me to consider my inner spark of perfection, and I was nodding along like I knew what you were talking about. All the while inside I’m thinking, ‘No, she’s completely wrong. There is absolutely nothing perfect about me.’ But you saw right through that!”

I said, “Well, it helps to be psychic when you’re coaching someone.”

But all joking aside, we discussed how much time a LoSEr can waste, how many lost opportunities to learn, when we automatically say ‘Yes’ when we aren’t actually in agreement. When you’re suffering from LoSE you might also say ‘Yes, I understand, I’m following you,’ when you’re not clear on what you’re being asked to do. Then, feeling left behind or perceiving that he is too dumb to truly understand, the LoSEr never feels quite caught-up. Remember those dreams of showing up in the classroom with no idea what everyone was talking about? I sometimes dream, during particularly stressful periods, that I can’t even find my first period class room or that if I do I’m woefully unprepared. LoSErs who are authority figure pleasers feel that way frequently in their daily lives.

I remember when I was a LoSEr myself, working at one of my first jobs out of college. The man who was my boss would probably be sued for sexual harassment if he tried some of his “moves” these days; at the very least he was a mean-spirited misogynist. Yet he held sway over me because of my own “always please the authority figure” training. Much of this indoctrination happens in childhood, when the parent or other authority figure requires a kid to respect and obey the adult at all times, regardless of what the adult is asking. I learned that the adult was always right, simply because he or she was older than I. My own viewpoint or opinion was immaterial and routinely dismissed or ignored. It’s no wonder I and other LoSErs get caught in situations like workplace bullying or harassment. The strong inner message that the boss is always right and you, the underling, always wrong often appears completely irrational to someone outside the situation. I remember my husband was incredulous that I didn’t just tell my boss to back off with the sexy-talk. My husband wasn’t a LoSEr; he couldn’t imagine the internal conflict I experienced.

Yet I was compelled inside to please this boss by laughing along with him when he made inappropriate “jokes,” by staying silent when he made off-color comments or critiqued other women in the office. I was disgusted by this man, but because I was LoSEr I kept on agreeing with him, and I kept working twice as hard as everyone else in the office so he would like me!

RISErs have overcome this particular early message or inner conflict. I can honestly say that I have, too. I no longer feel the need to be “nice” to a person who has been rude to me. As a RISEr, that doesn’t mean I lash out right back to him or her; it means that I’m confident enough to know that even if that person is somehow above me on a hierarchy, I’m not a “lesser” person. If that authority figure is rude or unkind or just plain awful to me, I understand now that his behavior is that of a LoSEr, and while I may have to be civil, I by no means have to be warm, polite, or try to win his affection back or gain his approval. In a sense, I’m able (mostly) to separate the LoSEr behavior from the person within.

I learned this one day years ago when I overheard one clearly RISEn woman talking to a friend, relating an interaction from the night before. I didn’t hear any of the details of what had happened, but I heard her say clearly and calmly, “I told him, ‘I don’t allow anyone to speak to me like that’ and I walked away.”

Wow! That became my rallying cry to myself first, and once or twice in later conversations with (LoSEr) authority figures who tried to use their status inappropriately. I once even said it to a police officer who had pulled me over for turning without using my directional (I was. He was just showing off to his partner). He was berating me loudly, asking me questions and not letting me answer, and generally being an aggressive and hostile jerk. When he rolled his eyes and snarled, “I’m not going to argue with you Ma’am!” I calmly told him I didn’t allow anyone to talk to me the way he was, least of all a peace officer. That stopped him short and we worked it out.

When I overheard that stranger’s remark, I knew I was on the right path to RISE. A person who has recovered her inherent self-esteem is often inspired by seemingly random events or information. RISErs see the environmental feedback of their thoughts and desires; RISErs see synchronicity and allow themselves to learn from coincidence and to acknowledge the Law of Attraction. That’s because a RISEr is self-confident and recognizes that the inner spark is always lighting the way, saying “Look here!” and rewarding self-awareness with more of the same.

A LoSEr might not see the genuine reflection of her true inherently perfect Self, but what she perceives to be true instead. If a LoSEr overhears a remark she is more likely to trigger into a self-conscious rapid review of whether the comment was directed towards her, to make a snap judgment about the speaker, or to consciously dismiss it as not applicable to her life. For example, if I’d been a LoSEr when I overheard that stranger’s remark I might feel jealous of her strength, judge her as an angry bitch* or think to myself (especially if I was entrenched in an authority-pleasing phase) “I feel sorry for the guy she’s dating.” Additionally, a LoSEr is habitually tuned-out to the world around her and less likely than a RISEr to overhear, see at a glance, or intuit the guidance abounding in every moment.

A RISEr recognizes that the world around her is a mirror, and allows what she interprets to benefit and guide her, and to validate her natural right to existence and expression.

Many years ago I offered to help Cindy, a much younger acquaintance, move her office from one location to another, which took about a week. She shared the small office with her boss, a handsome, divorced man who was my age. During the move he and I found much in common and chatted frequently. I was following Cindy’s direction in this move and everything began well. A day or two in however, it was clear she was envious of or uncomfortable with the rapport her boss and I enjoyed, and began exercising her “authority” over me in classic LoSEr fashion.

She found fault with whatever I did, even when I followed her directions to a T. She reprimanded me for being late one morning, when I was the first to arrive. Nothing I did suited her, and she’d sigh loudly while mumbling how she had to redo what I’d already done.

At the same time, she bent over backwards to please her boss who didn’t seem in my interactions with him to be a LoSEr at all; in fact he was pretty low key. Cindy practically quaked in her shoes when dealing with him, saying ‘Yes,’ nodding her head fervently while saying, ‘Got it!’ even before he finished speaking. After taking direction from him she’d try to convey his “orders” to me, but because she was so unsure of herself, so eager to please, because she wasn’t able to listen to him, she truly had no idea what he was asking.

Because Cindy was a LoSEr, she totally missed the mark with her authority figure and was a horrible “authority figure” to me. She saw “signs” (where there were none) that I was threatening her position because her boss and I had a number of things in common. She must have overheard part of a conversation where we’d been talking about how much it costs to maintain our houses, because she commented later in the day that she would only ever rent and how foolish it was for a woman alone to buy a home.

Having recovered most of my own self-esteem by then, I could see Cindy’s LoSE predicament and let her act however she needed to to feel good about herself. I corrected her on a couple of occasions (like the arriving late complaint), but otherwise let it all go. Believe me when I say it was challenging on some days — having a young 20-something boss me around like I was a kid got aggravating, but I regularly considered the source of criticism and let it roll off.

I’m glad I did, because it was during that very odd week that I overheard something new that changed my life. Because I was able to let Cindy just be herself and not let my old LoSEr stuff be triggered, my inherent self-esteem allowed me to be present, alert, and to see clearly the reflection of my inner world projected onto my environment.

Cindy had just finished barking at me for something, and I’d let it roll off. I turned around to unpack another box when I overheard her on the phone giving advice to friend of hers in her usual know-it-all way. The advice was brilliant: I recognized a pearl in the gravel and  grabbed it, and an entire prosperous area of my life opened up.

Had I been triggered by Cindy’s own LoSE and responded with the LoSEr’s usual resentment, I might have dismissed what she was saying. If I were a LoSEr who resented this particular authority figure (Cindy) instead of trying to please her, I might even say, “Yeah, but that wouldn’t work for me,” because the LoSEr both tries to appease and also resents the authority figure. But the RISEr in me was able to separate the inner perfect spark of Cindy from her LoSEr authority issues — at least for a moment (heck, nobody’s on top of this 100% of the time).

The idea of “authority” is a scale on which LoSErs scrabble for position, always anxious about those above, and routinely dismissive of those below. It’s no surprise, really. When your value has been measured solely on the scale of your achievements, acquiring a position in the elusive hierarchy of Whatever can truly feel like a life or death struggle. Unable to stop pleasing those above, the LoSEr is always hoping for acceptance, validation, and even the slightest elevation in position. Holding on to this position for dear life, the LoSEr is compelled to keep down whoever is below them in authority.

Even as the LoSEr scratches and claws his way up the authority ladder, relaxation is impossible because at the core of this drive is low self-esteem. RISErs are able to separate their self-worth from their position in a workplace, a community organization, even in a family structure. RISErs know their value has nothing whatsoever to do with what position they achieve in the hierarchies that are part of every human gathering. That’s why RISErs tend to listen rather than speak over or shout down someone else. In the serenity of self-confidence, the RISEr often discovers the value — the pearl — hidden in the most casual comment or the most grating encounter.

Because the RISEr has no need to blindly please whoever is “above,” nor push around whoever is “below” him, he is rewarded with more opportunity, self-awareness, and insight. Not to mention peace of mind, freedom from stress, worry, and tense interpersonal relationships. He is away of how unpleasant the gravel of LoSE feels, and how smooth and brilliant the pearl of RISE feels in contrast to it.

Marcia and I worked together using hypnosis to help her identify what her moments of RISE felt like and clearly distinguished those from her LoSEr response. Using techniques to anchor the “pearl” feeling, Marcia was able to interrupt the LoSEr “gravel” pattern and familiarize herself more and more with her healthy self-esteem. The more she enjoyed the pearl, the less she tolerated the gravel.

If you experience self-evaluation on the authority scale and it causes you to say ‘Yes’ when you don’t mean it or you don’t understand, or to tolerate inappropriate behavior from someone above you on the scale; or if you notice that you sometimes bully others “below” you a bit, try this anchoring exercise.

• Create time and place without distraction for about 10 minutes.
• Close your eyes and focus on your breathing for a bit. Inhale and exhale mindfully a few times.
• Recall a time in your life when you felt confident or happy, just by being you. If this is too difficult to find, pretend right now that you are exactly who you wish you were, living the life and dream you’ve always wanted. Don’t worry about how you got there, just pretend.
• Let all of your senses fill out this memory or vision. Imagine you can hear the kind of comments or sounds that add to your confidence (applause? congratulations? “I love you?”). Imagine you can see loved ones smiling at you, or the perfect environment. If there are smells and tastes, add those in, too. Most of all, let yourself feel the sense of oneness, joy, fulfillment, or profound satisfaction. Expand all of these sensations until you find yourself smiling from within.
• Now very gently touch together the thumb and forefinger of your left hand (if you’re a righty) or vice versa, as if you were holding a small, smooth pearl.
• Become aware of the gentle pressure between your finger and thumb while simultaneously aware of the feeling of well-being from your memory or vision.
• You’re anchoring this physical and emotional state in the gesture of touching together your thumb and finger tip and creating a conditioned response.
• Practice this daily for a few weeks. Whenever you need to feel this good again, face an authority figure, or any other time you need an antidote to LoSEr patters just take a deep breath, close your eyes if you can (if you can’t, no big deal), and touch together your thumb and forefinger. Your emotions and thoughts respond to this condition (the gesture) by triggering the feelings of well-being when you use the anchor.

You don’t need to climb up the authority ladder to truly RISE. When you recover your inherent self-esteem you’ll know that authority is only ever a moving target, but the perfect spark of your own inherent divine Self is constant, eternal, and a treasure that only increases in value.


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* I truly believe LoSE is at the core of the otherwise unfathomable way some women shame and judge other women. A RISEr would never consider a woman who stands up for herself to be a bitch, or an assertive woman to be a ball-breaker, or one who is comfortable in her sexuality a slut. If you ever encounter women treating other women this way, look closer: you’ll see many of the hallmarks of low self-esteem.

RISE to Your Rightful Place

One of the unsettling feelings of low self-esteem (LoSE) is a sense of being alone, untethered in the reality everyone else seems to be enjoying. LoSErs often tried very hard to follow the “script:” they did their best to manage Mommy or Daddy’s feelings, to anticipate when and why an adult would be mad at them and stay ahead of that, to do and feel as they’re told.

Even after all of that, LoSErs don’t feel as they “should.” Instead they feel as though they don’t know what they want. They’re angry, envious of others, or acting out behaviors they wish they didn’t have, like drinking, smoking, or overeating. Relationships are fraught with the same old conflicts, the same argument over and over.

LoSErs look around and find themselves “behind” everyone else. They commonly compare themselves to others as a measurement of their success and sometimes even their place in the world, but because one can never truly assess another’s success, LoSErs repeat the usual message to themselves, which is: “I’m not as good as….”

This creates (and reveals) a deep conflict within: I did as I was told, but didn’t receive the reward I was promised.

In other words, “I believed you when you taught me that if I managed everyone else’s feelings, reactions, and perceptions of me, I would be accepted and earn a place in the world.”

When a LoSEr is faced with this conflict, because he has low self-esteem his first reaction is “I must have screwed up somewhere.” The LoSEr who feels empty-handed automatically blames himself, reinforcing the poor self-worth — which is further cemented by feelings of shame. Drinking this cocktail of misery reminds the LoSEr that he is alone, that the lovely reality out there is not for him.

My client Joe struggled with this conflict. He came to me for hypnosis because he has a vague feeling of being unsatisfied and unfulfilled, but he’s ashamed to admit it. It took him years to admit it to himself.

As he looks back on his life, Joe tells me “I did everything that was expected of me; I always thought I would be happy but I still feel like I’ve done something wrong because I’m not happy. I look at everyone else with their families, jobs, and homes and I think: ‘They look happy, why aren’t I?’” Joe is quick to remind me that he has a good job, healthy-enough marriage, and good kids, so something must be wrong with him if he doesn’t feel excited about his life.

“It must be me. What’s wrong with me that I can’t fully appreciate this great life I have and just feel content? The worst part is I’m embarrassed to admit this to anyone because I sound so selfish. It seems like I’m alone outside the bubble of the real world, where people are genuinely happy. I want to be in that world, too!” Joe struggled to articulate how he felt: expressing his frustration but then quickly invalidating it by telling me how blessed he knows he is.

When I asked Joe what he felt passionate about, he couldn’t pinpoint anything. I asked him to recall instead the last time he felt deeply satisfied. He told me this story:

“Ten years ago I was on the Town Board. Before a meeting, one of the guys in the Highway Department told us about a very small grant he’d managed to get — this was outside his normal scope of work. A couple of the other Board members jokingly said, ‘If you can get another million, we’d be impressed!’ The Highway guy laughed along with them, but it bothered me that no one really said ‘Thanks.’ At the very end of the meeting later that night, when it was clear nobody else was going to mention it, I thanked this guy publicly for going ‘above and beyond.’

“Every once in a while I see this guy — he still works for the Highway Department — and to this day he thanks me for thanking him on TV. Nobody else ever did, and he’s never forgotten it. It was years ago, but I have the sense he would do anything for me. I wouldn’t take advantage of that, but this minor interaction made a huge impact on a person. All I did was acknowledge him, and the feeling of satisfaction I got from it still impacts me and warms my heart.

“That made me feel deeply satisfied. I would feel passionate about interactions that gave me that feeling more often.”

I asked Joe (a practicing Catholic) to consider this event a kind of calling from God. We touched on the spiritual mechanics in the Prayer of St. Francis (“…It is in giving that we receive”) and how benefits of giving bounce back to us because in the sixth sense we are all connected.

It’s not surprising that the Highway worker and Joe both were so moved. Acknowledgment is the greatest gift you can give a person with any degree of low self-esteem (LoSE). It sets them on their way to RISE-ing (recovering inherent self-esteem) because suddenly they’re no longer “outside the bubble of reality” that others seem entitled to enjoy. Acknowledgement, saying thanks, is a way that the perfect spirit in one person recognizes the perfect spirit in another. In that moment the LoSEr feels the sixth sense connection; we feel the mechanics of “in giving I receive,” we feel here, present, real, valid, and deserving. It’s like we’ve been given permission to exist, finally. No wonder that amazing feeling lasts for years and years!

I have another client named Theresa, who came to me to connect with her loved ones in the Afterlife. Like many, Theresa feels just shy of true contentment. Like Joe, she recognizes that she has so much to be grateful for and is reluctant to complain; she just wants to feel that she is not wasting her Self by not finding and exercising the passion she imagines everyone else experiences. Theresa believes she’s not in the “reality” that everyone around her seems to enjoy.

The first spirit to come through was a woman who sang in Theresa’s church choir. After identifying her through all the evidence she gave, the spirit began to sing, telling us she was adding her voice to all the lovely sounds in the world that praise the Lord. She told us in praising the Lord, she’s serving the Lord. In serving the Lord, she’s bringing the Godly spark within her out into the world — serving her Self and enjoying the experience of being fully present, alive, and fulfilled.

Her spirit then asked Theresa, “Do you praise God? If you do, you’re serving God. The reward is itself, because the expression of praise makes it more beautiful; praise is a self-recreating, self-beautifying, self-fulfilling process.”

As we discussed these clear action steps to that elusive contentment, Theresa reflected on her own devout Methodist practice, and in particular a women’s group she’d hosted in her community. She said, “When I’m bringing our group together at the church, everything seems easy. It’s easier to write and speak; I don’t feel so self-conscious or like I’m a total imposter. Any other time I have to direct a group at my job, I feel sick to my stomach. Who am I to direct all these “higher-ups” in a discussion? But that never happens with this group.”

Theresa, thanks to insight from her spirit friend, understood that her women’s group was focusing on God, and were gathered to support each other in living lives that praised God. Because of that, Theresa said, “I can see that because of the topic or act of praising God, I get myself out of the process. I bypass my natural self-consciousness and somehow the beauty of God’s word comes through more easily. My ego gets out of the way.”

In other words, Theresa’s LoSEr voice is drowned out by the RISEr voice within — the voice of God Himself that speaks to and through each one of us.

With her goal to be praising the Creator, the process and product of her women’s group becomes more praiseworthy, and the yearning to continue there becomes greater and more fulfilling as it’s expressed.

Her spirit left us with one more insight before our session was over: The voice of praise brings so much beauty to the world, that it changes the people it reaches and informs the work that lies ahead of us. Think of it as your ministry: using your voice to show what God is like. You must speak God’s beauty for the spirit people, so that the living people know themselves to be perfect,  safe, and beloved.”

These clients brought their own views on God to our sessions, but that doesn’t mean you must conform to a traditional belief system to recover your own inherent self-esteem (RISE), understand how you feel a profound connection to others and your Creator, and become convinced that you are indeed living a deeply personal expression of life — never alone, never outside the bubble of “reality.” You deserve to comprehend eternally that you are as real, as vital, as miraculous as those the b within compares you to. It’s normal to feel that, although you have the trappings and relationships that should bring you lasting contentment, something is missing.

That’s where these stories come in. Call it connection, passion, or praise; couch it in cerebral, New Age, or religious language — the resulting soul satisfaction is the same.

Countless theories have been explored and articles written showing that for anyone to be psychologically and physically healthy their core needs have to be fulfilled. Being clear about what you need and making efforts to meet those needs constructively means you'll naturally have better self esteem as a by-product of living well.

For LoSErs who followed the “script” (unfailingly given by other LoSErs), the reason they don’t feel psychologically and/or physically healthy is because they haven’t identified their core needs, let alone set about fulfilling them. That is the source of the discontent, the feeling of being different from everyone else in the world, despite having a good job, a nice home, and other markers of “success.”

A “core need” differs from the surface needs of money to pay bills, a robust salary to support ones family, a comfortable home to live in. A core need — something LoSErs may never have been familiar with — is:

• being recognized, seen, heard, and having ones presence validated (sometimes by others)
• feeling safe to speak out in self-advocacy without retaliation
• giving oneself full permission to seek out a lifestyle and vocation that is rewarding
• a sense of being equally deserving of society’s or God’s graces
• believing oneself to be as worthy as everyone else to take up space in the world
• knowing one can live for ones own reasons, not compelled to live out another person’s dream
• understanding that bad decisions or actions doesn’t make one a bad person

What do you do if your LoSEr mindset prevents you from embracing, affirming, and owning these core needs? You’re following the cultural or familial script that says “Do as I direct (it’s your duty/role/within your limits) and you’ll be happy” — yet although you may have earned the material, worldly rewards, your core needs have not been met and of course you’re not content!

To begin RISE-ing, consider exploring a passion, even in a daydream. Let your imagination play with ideas as you envision yourself directing that passion. Pay attention to your feelings as you do so, and take your time. You’ll notice a common thread between them as the evidence of an archetype recurs in each daydream. In your imagination, are you frequently a teacher? Rescuing someone? Standing up for underserved people? Stewarding the environment or animals? Healing? Creating? Praying? The more you let your imagination roll out potential expressions of your “best” self, the clearer your path to soul-satisfying expression and contentment will be.

If you have a belief in God or Creator, consider how you can praise Him or Her. If you’re having trouble loving yourself, introduce or become reacquainted with the idea of God. If you think about God and love God and all that God creates, in time you must accept that God is in you and is you (all religions agree on this), and you can’t help but come to love yourself. One can’t praise, love, and appreciate a Creator and not praise, love, and appreciate oneself.

Either way, you’ll discover your core needs and in the daydream of passion or the praising of God, the roadmap to fulfilling those needs will be made clear. You’ll recover the natural voice or Self within you that will inform the next steps to profound contentment. Like Joe, you’ll discover the lasting and never-diminishing fire of acknowledgement and connection; once you experience that feeling, you’ll know what to do next to continue experiencing it.

If, like Theresa your work involves praising God (however you conceptualize that), it will be effortless and rewarding, and will inform you how and what to do to sustain that soul satisfaction.

NOW is a great time to rethink your concept of “reality” and where you stand in relation to it. Turn your attention away from others and material rewards just for now, and turn it inwards. You’ll discover your perfectly valid core needs, the voice of passion or God within you, and the steps you can take to begin living a truly rewarding life.

Well-Being is Dependent On Being

What if your life isn’t what you thought it would be? What if YOU weren’t who you thought you’d be?

That’s the issue facing a friend and client of mine who came in for a self-esteem booster shot. Claire is the mother of a child facing developmental and social challenges. Her husband is about as checked-out as a man can be: when he comes home from work he puts headphones on and listens to music, effectively ignoring his wife and daughter.

Claire’s troubles don’t begin and end in her own home, either. Her parents are both alcoholics who still play favorites with their children, pitting them against each other for the parents’ love. To this day Claire and her brothers don’t really trust each other, thanks to their parents provoking suspicions between them.

Partly in order to escape her household growing up, and partly because she believed nobody else would want her, Claire married Gordon and immediately became pregnant.

“It’s like I blinked and I’m the boring stay-at-home mom of a very difficult 10-year-old. I traded one cruddy household for another; my marriage sucks! And it’s not like I actually escaped my dysfunctional family — my parents STILL push my buttons and I STILL fall for it. Every day I ask myself, ‘How the hell did I get here?’ Then I feel guilty because I made these choices and I should suck it up.”

Claire is slowly but surely Recovering her Inherent Self-Esteem (RISE-ing). She and her brothers grew up in cauldron of Low Self-Esteem (LoSE) because their unhealthy parents couldn’t teach them to love themselves. How COULD Claire learn to value herself when her parents used her as a bargaining chip to one-up each other? How could she possibly esteem herself in a healthy way if she had to compete with her brothers in a game where the rules kept changing?

At nineteen she dropped out of college to marry Gordon who she knew even then was not right for her. But Claire felt that if she didn’t attach herself to the first man to come along who showed any interest in her, she’d be alone forever.

“It’s not like I even really wanted to be a wife and mother,” Claire shared with me. “I just thought that if I follow the rules, I will feel like everyone else seems to feel: like they’re normal, people love them, and that they fit in. That has to be the way life works, right? You do what everyone tells you or shows you is right, and in return you get the happiness as advertised. Eat this food, weigh this much, have these healthy habits, marry this kind of man, have the kids… and you’ll be living the storybook life.”

It’s no wonder Claire’s self-esteem was a rock-bottom. She followed all the rules for a happy life as she was told, yet she was profoundly unhappy and unfulfilled — which inevitably led to the conclusion that something ADDITIONAL was wrong with her.

Claire and I were sitting in my office when I asked her what would add value to her life. She blurted out a number of things she could eliminate:

• I could lose 30 lbs
• I could let go of the hurt from my parents
• I could cut my hateful brothers out of my life
• I could eliminate toxins from my diet
• I could give up trying to fit in with these social cliques at the gym
• I could give up this old idea to finish college, which I don’t even want to do anyway but can’t let go of…
• That’s it: I could learn to LET GO

Claire told me everything she could get rid of. For a LoSEr, the act of giving something up can be either easily done, fraught with peril, or both. LoSErs often feel they aren’t deserving of happiness or having their needs met, so anything associated with either isn’t hard to surrender. However, losses, wounds, and righteous anger CAN be hard to surrender because for LoSErs its often the only attention they received from a parent. It also may be the only evidence they have that they’re actually here, alive. LoSErs frequently feel invisible or invalidated, dismissed or minimized. They fact that they bear emotional injury or anger validates their feelings, and therefore their existence. Some LoSErs resort to cutting in order to ground their pain in reality.

I asked Claire once again to consider what she could ADD to her life that would increase her sense of value. She was unable to answer me.

Instead she said, “I look around at everyone in real life and on social media. They all look so happy. THEY followed the rules: they have their houses and jobs and kids and husbands. They’re at the gym together in kick-boxing class; they go out for drinks together. They got the reward, I didn’t. When I look at them I see mirrors reflecting how different I am because I’m NOT happy.”

Even when she looked at her daughter Claire saw a reflection of herself. In every challenging day with her daughter, every call from a teacher after another tantrum and meltdown, every missing invitation to a classmate’s party, Claire saw her ineffectuality as a parent, a woman, a human being. She said, “My well-being depends on her well-being.”

According to Claire, the evidence in all the world around her was a message of her worthlessness. She knew rationally that not every smiling person on Facebook was genuinely 100% happy. She knew logically that the women in her kick-boxing class weren’t rejecting or making fun of her. And Claire was deeply conflicted by a desire to belong and a need to reject those others before they had a chance to reject her. She said, “My day-to-day good feeling about myself depends on how the people around me act. If I perceive that they’re dismissing me, I feel ashamed of myself. It’s proof that I’m worth dismissing. If it seems someone is happy to see me, it just makes my day. I feel worthwhile.”

By suggesting that Claire ADD value to her life, I was hoping to shift her focus away from these “mirrors” around her. Because her LoSE affected her ability to see all goodness inherent in her own being, this exercise was an important beginning.

(For those of you who struggle to lose weight, keep in mind the idea of ADDING valuable foods to your diet. Forget eliminating certain foods or food groups; forget “giving up” and simply add healthy foods in. In addition to the junk food or carbs, be sure to add something good for you: an organic apple, lean protein, fresh vegetables. When your body is satisfied with nutritious foods, you will lose your appetite for junk; your cravings will slowly but surely turn over from the carbs, sweets, and processed foods to healthier snacks and meals).

To help her get started, I gave a few examples. Claire could add a hobby; she could add a practice or discipline such as meditation or prayer; she could add a green shake to her daily meal planning. She could add 15 minutes a day of total disconnect from technology so she could daydream about other possibilities. Regardless of what she chose to add that was valuable to her, Claire was to keep it a secret, just for herself.

The reason for this was not to encourage deception, but because Claire was at this point incapable of enjoying something of her own unless those around her approved or gave supportive feedback. Also, if it was just for her she couldn’t feel judged by others for it, nor could she compare her “progress” with anyone else’s.

After some thought Claire decided she would buy a hard cover sketch book which she could stash in her bag and write or draw in whenever she felt like it. She loved to doodle and draw patterns (early on in her life she considered textile design), and remembered that she could get lost in the simple act of drawing from her imagination.

We talked a bit more about the importance of this exercise as a value Claire was adding to her life. Therefore, she was not to criticize her drawings or edit her writing. I reminded her that WHO she is was not dependent on WHAT she did, even if it was something enjoyable just for herself.

A few weeks later we met again, and Claire was bursting at the seams to tell me all the changes in her life. For one thing, she quit the gym. She knew that to continually expose her shaky self-esteem to cliques (real or imagined) was a recipe for even lower self-esteem. Instead, she worked out at home when she had the house to herself. Next, she discontinued her social media accounts. In her conscious mind Claire knew she was seeing only the carefully edited versions of other lives, but she was also aware enough to know that subconsciously she couldn’t help contrasting her life with those edited profiles.

Claire also was reacquainting herself with how much fun she had making patterns in her sketch book. It reawakened her earlier desire to study textiles again, starting by doing her own exploring online.

Most importantly, Claire discovered that she could more easily identify OTHERS’ insecurities. In the past, comments from her brothers or parents, her husband, teachers at her daughter’s school, or other women she encountered could send her into a tailspin, triggering her own LoSE. Now Claire could see that by allowing other people to affect her self-esteem, she was totally surrendering control over her own well-being.

Now when she felt those old triggers Claire chose to listen more closely to those comments, and study more closely the source. In doing so, Claire could clearly see that most often those other people were covering for or acting out of their OWN low self-esteem. For example, one teacher at her daughter’s school was very cool and dismissive to Claire even though she regularly helped out in the classroom. In the past Claire felt that this teacher was judging her; now she could see that the teacher was likely envious of Claire’s easy way with the kids and how they all flocked to her to hear her read stories and help them with their art projects. Claire was a natural in the classroom and it showed. The LoSEr teacher compared herself to Claire, found herself wanting, and projected her own insecurities onto her.

And while Claire wouldn’t show me what was in her sketchbook she did show me what she’d written on the cover: Who I Am ≠ What I Do.

Is it possible that you, too, could add something of value into your life? Could YOU use your resources (time, energy, joy, dedication, commitment, money) on something that could actually effect a positive change in your life?

If so, start by using the power of your mind to change your thoughts. Meditate on the idea of a perfect spark within. Call it your Spirit, your Eternal Self, your Higher Mind, Life Force, or any other name that resonates with you. Consider that this continually self-fueled spark needs nothing from you to exist. It was YOU before you were born into this life, and will continue to be YOU after you shuffle off your mortal coil.

It doesn’t need you to behave perfectly, have a good marriage, be in optimal health, or have worldly successes. It is the most beautifully neutral expression of who you are. Your Spirit is completely separate from, independent of, and  indifferent to whatever is going on in your environment. And while your Spirit doesn’t need you to achieve any particular goals, it IS yearning to express itself, to evolve and expand in its own way.

Make some time when you won’t be disturbed. Turn off technology and tell yourself the next several minutes are devoted to your Spirit. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths. This activity slows the brain waves down to an Alpha state, allowing your conscious mind to relax it’s high standards of criticism, and allowing your imagination to surface more easily.

You can do this next part in the quiet of your mind or actually do it with paper and pencils.

Imagine (or place) a big blank sheet of white paper in front of you. If you’re actually doing this, have some colored pencils, markers, pastels, or even paint nearby.

Imagine all your thoughts, cares, worries, and judgements drifting away for now.

Pretend that all the things you thought you knew about other people in the world just fall away.

Continue looking at the blank white paper in your mind’s eye or in front of you.

Imagine you can feel it with your fingers or let your fingers now touch the smooth surface of the paper, and let all the ways you’ve loathed, punished, or criticized yourself fall away.

You’re just face-to-face with the pure potential of this white paper.

Your body and mind continue to relax as you breathe deeply and turn your full attention to this clean slate.

Now consider: What is the first color you would add to this paper? What is your daydream blissful feeling telling you to put on it? A fine line, a broad stroke, splattered on like Jackson Pollack? What comes to mind? In your mind or in your hand, pick up a pencil or brush and add that color, line, splash, or shape onto the paper.

Give yourself permission to do whatever you want on this blank paper surface. There’s nothing between you and this expression. There’s nothing between your imagination and what you feel like putting on this paper right now.

This exercise is intentionally irrational and nonsensical. What color do you feel like? What shape? What medium? Just put it there. You’re widening that channel between your most creative inner self and its expression; your imagination and the world which is your canvas.

When you feel finished, just open your eyes or put down the pencil, marker, or brush.

—————

Facing that blank sheet with open-minded and open-hearted playfulness, without any expectations or drive to reproduce some worldly still life with your artistic skills, you’re reconnecting with your Spirit at the moment you come into human life. What will I create here? What will it look like? There is no WRONG way to exercise the joy of pure potential.

You are perfect inside, and the desire your Spirit has to express itself perfectly doesn’t mean it must take perfect action and do things in the perfect right time, every time. It just means most perfectly, rightly, EXPRESSED.

Your Spirit’s well-being is between you and this paper. It is created between you and how you express yourself. As you practice expressing your Spirit it gets easier to trust that what you have inside is breathtakingly gorgeous. The journey of your life to express this gorgeousness is actually delightful and fun.

Every day that you let a little bit of yourself out you’re giving yourself permission to be who you are.Sometimes it won’t be pretty, sometimes it will be so sublime that no one will get it but you. Keep your eyes on that prize, not comparing what you’re creating to what someone else is creating. You’re after the perfect expression of YOUR Spirit.

Every day you’ll grow in confidence that your expression of who you are is exactly as its supposed to be. You’ll become aware of what your Spirit is calling you to do (your mission) and how it is most easily expressed. 

It will be easy to identify and set goals in the service of that mission. You’ll identify the best opportunities for you because you’ll see clearly whether they move your mission (the natural joyous expression of your Spirit) forward. if the answer is yes, you can jump into those opportunities confidently with ease and focus. The clear impetus will be the best expression of YOUR being.

Your well-being is tied up in just one thing: the expression of your being. Nothing more, nothing less. You might have been taught that it’s tied up in that of your children or parents or community groups, but that’s a false promise. Your well-being is tied up in YOUR BEING.

Drawing From A Spiritual Well

Margaret was struggling in her marriage; her husband Ryan had retired from his job due to a physical disability incurred while working. He’d begun consulting part time, but couldn’t seem to land and keep clients. He displayed his unhappiness with extreme irritability, withdrawing from his role as husband and father, and criticizing Margaret and the children over the smallest things. Margaret defined herself as essentially a single mother, and had become completely turned off by Ryan’s behavior.

As a devout Catholic, Margaret was opposed to divorce, yet she didn’t want to live alone in her marriage, subject to her husband’s increasing irrational outbursts.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Ryan’s self-esteem had plummeted as he saw his consulting business, and therefore himself, as a failure. Margaret felt like a LoSEr too, as she couldn’t seem to uplift her husband no matter what she did, and now she felt guilty because all she wanted to do was shut him out.

We began with a brief hypnosis session, in which I suggested Margaret release the guilt feelings; in this case it was appropriate to cope with an emotionally abusive person by putting up an emotional wall. That is effective when interacting with another, but emotional walls are a problem when we have to intra-act. In other words, putting up walls around our own distressing emotions is not a healthy long-term strategy.

We followed up with a number of coaching session so Margaret could differentiate her husband’s personal responsibilities from her own. As long as she felt it was her job to make his life better (which he reinforced by blaming her when things went wrong), she was sacrificing control over what was actually in her domain to manage, in order to manage Ryan’s feelings.

“But how do I get these frustrating emotions about Ryan out?” Margaret asked. “Whenever I start a conversation he gets defensive and angry and he storms off. He won’t talk to me. I know I should be more compassionate and empathetic, but it’s hard when he’s so nasty to me. I want to do the right thing in God’s eyes, too; I am trying to be patient and loving as He instructs, but it’s getting very difficult.”

We discussed Jesus’s suggestion in His Sermon on the Mount that we seek first the Kingdom of God, and the rest will be given to us. (Matt. 6:33)

We agreed that the Kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21), and if Margaret could connect with that perfect Divinity inside her heart, she would feel serene, safe, guided, and purposeful. She would find there the Divine compassion for Ryan that her emotional mind seemed too exhausted to drum up.

Through a series of practice exercises at home between our sessions, Margaret was learning to reacquaint herself with the God within in heart. She began to do this on a regular basis first so she could smoothly transition her thoughts there when Ryan was at his most unpleasant. As she reconnected with the true source of peace within her, compassion, empathy and patience flowed naturally from a spiritual well that is never diminished.

If we ever hear ourselves saying “I should be more compassionate,” we’re drawing from the emotional well. Our minds usually draw energy from the more shallow pool of our emotions, which is why we might “run out” of patience, tolerance, and sympathy. By using our will (in the conscious mind) we’re able to bring about a feeling that doesn’t spontaneously arise; we use our will to remind ourselves to feel compassion for someone who is berating us, for example. We might think to ourselves, “We’ll he’s having a really hard day” and we’ll manufacture some extra patience or raise our tolerance level.

You’ll also see the results of inability to create an emotion when you’re tired or stressed, and you snap at a loved one. If your emotional well is pouring out anger or stress (at anything), it’s impossible to create a compassionate flow alongside it.

When we use our will to create an emotional response, we’re drawing from a limited energy source which doesn’t spontaneously regenerate. With continual drawn-down, that source is exhausted and we lose patience or become resentful. When emotions supply our feeling response to another person (or ourselves), it’s manufactured by the ego or personality, which in most of us is built on faulty judgments, cultural beliefs, and our naturally-limited scope of comprehension.

If a person lives in a relationship for a long enough period of time where she perceives her emotional well isn’t replenished, it’s completely natural to feel as Margaret did: she stopped caring about her husband. On top of that, she felt guilty, ashamed and inadequate for her desire to shut him out. Her emotional well had run dry because it isn’t meant to support us for years of conflict or emotional abuse — of course her patience and sympathy ran out.

When we use our minds to draw from the spirit, those lovely and unconditional good-will feelings follow boundlessly. Spirit, or the Kingdom of God, even the Higher Mind — whatever your belief or philosophy — is the inexhaustible, superhuman provider of all that is balanced and good in the world. Whatever arises spontaneously comes from this inexhaustible well, but we forget that we can go there and draw from it.

Margaret began to study the Holy Spirit within her by reading her Bible and praying for communion with God. She didn’t try to correct her behavior or force her will to create emotion for her husband. At first she was concerned that this wasn’t action enough to bring about peace in her home, but I assured her that her peace began and ended right in her own heart. It was Ryan’s job to correct his own upset; he could take advantage of counselors’ guidance or medication, but only he could say, “I cannot live in this inner misery anymore” and begin to recover his own inherent self-esteem (RISE). When he does, his peace will be sustaining.

In the meantime, Margaret’s desire to be a loving and supportive wife despite Ryan’s treatment of her needed to be fed by an inexhaustible spiritual spring. Even though she might still feel resentment or lose her patience, by staying connected to the Kingdom of God within her those unpleasant emotions would flow through her and not impact her own self-esteem.

Margaret began to feel empowered to live her life joyfully and serenely. I assured her that if she didn’t do anything else from this point on but to look within, to meditate or pray, not in asking but just to connect with the Holy Spirit, all that she needed would be provided. She’d be equipped with the right words to speak, the appropriate compassion for her husband, patience with her children and others, and would free her own body from the weaknesses that allow disease to enter and flourish. Margaret could help Ryan and her family best by helping herself achieve peace of mind.

We ended our course of work together with a final hypnosis session. I suggested Margaret envision diving into a deep, deep well, and as she traveled down into the depths of her own sacred self, she would find that her well was connected to others. I reminded her that every single person must find his own well to draw from, and when he does, everything expands; energy is continuous and effortless. From her own spiritual well, the genuine expression of the loving emotions is ready to articulate, and need not be manufactured by the ego.

If you’re feeling emotionally exhausted, try the following meditation. Read through it first, or read it into your smart phone or other recording device:

Find a few minutes of quiet and get comfortable. Pay attention to your breathing for a minute or two to quiet your mind and concentrate on your imagination.

Imagine in whatever way feels safe and pleasant that you are diving deep within yourself. Travel in your mind into the earliest or most original part of you, and let yourself discover a small glowing spark.

This is the same spark of life that is in every other person in this world. It is simply waiting for the fuel to flare into a huge sun, to light you from within. This particular spark you imagine now is all yours.

It is a self-sustaining, beautiful spark, regenerating itself; it was never created and can never die. This is the engine of who you are. Look at it, feel it… this part of you can never be dimmed.

Imagine you can hold it in your hand, and know that this unique perfection that is yours doesn’t need to prove itself, it doesn’t need a reason to be here, or to rationalize or defend it’s existence. This part of you simply is.

It represents the I Am within you, and why you yourself are here, alive and breathing. It’s a miracle and it’s yours. Maybe others tried to make you believe that yours isn’t as important as theirs, or that yours is smaller or less significant or doesn’t deserve as much time out to play, but it’s not true. Maybe someone tried to make you believe that you should ignore yours and take care of theirs, and that if you didn’t, it would die.

Remind yourself that it’s simply not true. Everyone is the guardian of their own spark, and the extent to which you draw it out and experience it, the more it grows. Imagine you can feel the heat from it, or the cool; the vibration, the light, the very fact of it. It requires nothing except to be. And that is enough. You require nothing except to be. You are enough. This is the engine that moves you through the world. It’s the source of your motivation, inspiration, and intuition; your compassion, patience and love. All of the holy things come from here.

All you have to do is recognize, acknowledge, and pay attention to it. That’s how to fuel this spark. You don’t have to do anything else, and as you recognize that it is you and is in you, it begins to grow naturally. By giving it your attention, you’re giving it the fuel it needs to grow within you, and as it grows, your esteem, your natural sense of yourself begins to grow too.

Imagine now that in the time you’ve been considering this sacred light, it has grown to shine in you and around you. It grows in size, and your way forward is more clear. From within you know you’re making the right decisions about your life. You know you’re operating from clarity and the part of you that is immortal. This sun, because it shines as a multi-directional light source, also shines in back of you, so as you look back on your life and recall memories, you see them in the holy light of your spiritual perfection. You disengage those emotional hooks, they fall away: memories are less painful, thoughts of who you were or relationships that have extended from the past into the present are much clearer for you.

The only action necessary to bring peace and spontaneous unconditional love is to contemplate the sacredness within you. The more you bring your attention to this the more you are refreshed and the higher your RISE.

Let yourself drift off to sleep now, or slowly begin to wiggle your fingers and toes, hands and feet, and when you’re ready, open your eyes.

As you go about your day, remember that drawing from the spiritual well is not exhausting, but life-giving. Make the contemplation of your sacred self or the Holy Spirit within you a part of your regular practice, and all else will be given to you (Matt. 6:33).