Please find below the weekly information with links to the tasks tab which will hold the activities.

Brain Dump

set alarm for 5 minutes and open Brain Dump notebook. Free write whatever is in your head. There are no rules when it comes to the content itself. Just dump it all in a journal and forget about it. Don’t stop writing before the alarm rings. 

You should never read what you have written.

This is a dumpster of all self-deprecating evil, my friend, that you’ve been living with for years! Hence, we won’t keep anything we write.

Consider it a trash can. You dumped all the fear-based thoughts of inadequacy …and it’s all gone for good! Getting rid of that stuff first thing in the morning will work miracles.

Once the alarm sounds rip the pages out and rip them up, put them in the bin and don't think of them again.

Self-Esteem Test

Complete the list of statements dealing with your general feelings about yourself.

Remember, when it comes to personal growth, being honest with yourself is at the crux of it.

Click the Tasks tab in the headers and tally up your score to all the questions.

Your Scores 

Low (10-25): Your answers indicate feelings of incompetence, inadequacy, and difficulty facing life’s challenges. Hang in there, buddy! Diligently complete every lesson with all the tasks involved, pay special attention to the tools and techniques we provide in The First Aid lessons, and you’ll improve your self-esteem dramatically. It is just the beginning of an incredible journey! Hop on!

Medium (26-29): Your answers indicate that you are fluctuating between feelings of approval and rejection. One moment you feel on top of the world, the next – you are tumbling down. Hang in there, buddy! Diligently complete every lesson with all the tasks involved, pay special attention to the tools and techniques we provide in The First Aid lessons, and you’ll build self-esteem that is to keep. It is just the beginning of an incredible journey! Hop on!

High (30-40): Your answers indicate that you have a self-judgement of value, confidence, and competence. We applaud you! However, there is a reason you are here. Perhaps your self-esteem tends to fluctuate, or you’ve just been through a rough patch in life. Or maybe your moto in life is constant and never-ending improvement. Whatever drove you here, it is just the beginning of an incredible journey. Hop on!

What Is Low Self-Esteem?

Having low self-esteem means you do not think of yourself as worthy a person as you actually are. As a result, you might not have high regard for yourself.  

The Symptoms of Low Self-Esteem

- You may not feel capable or confident in your abilities. 
- You may criticize yourself harshly and feel anxious and afraid of making mistakes even while performing the tasks of low importance.
- You may feel unloved, inadequate, or incompetent.
- You may struggle with a fear of letting others down.

The Cost of Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem influences what you think, how you feel, and how you behave. Hence, it produces significant negative ramifications for your success, enjoyment, and happiness in life.

It affects every aspect of your life, from your health, personal relationships, and career to your ability to manage adversities and recover from failure.

Don’t get disheartened though, it is possible to overcome low self-esteem, and we will do it together one small step at a time.

Head to the task to complete today’s step.

What’s Your “Not Enoughness” Story?

How Did You Get Here?

Early childhood experiences and the lack of love and encouragement contribute greatly to the development of low self-esteem. 

Impact of Childhood Experiences

Early life experiences like neglect, abuse, or bullying play a role in causing low self-esteem. As a result, kids develop a sense of worthlessness and form a belief that they are inadequate. Hence, “deserve” the poor behaviour from others. This belief then is carried into adult life. 

Neglect

In childhood, if you were neglected (your needs weren’t met) by your parents or caregivers, you are much more likely to have poor self-esteem.

Disapproving Authoritative Figures

Imagine, you come back from school bringing 9 out of 10 from the math test. Your father looks at you angrily and asks, “9? Why not 10!?”. This is a classic example of disapproval. If you never felt good enough for your parents, you are most likely feeling not up to scratch in your adult years too.

Trauma & Abuse

These have the most profound affect on people’s self-esteem. There is a lot of shame and guilt associated with them. The child takes the blame – develops a feeling that they did something to deserve it, that they are “bad” or “not good enough”.

Comparison

Between the ages of 7 and 12 years, children start to compare themselves to their peers. Cognitive abilities and social factors may determine the child’s worth in comparison to others.

Lack of Love & Encouragement

Even though you might have been lucky enough to not have any adverse experiences, the lack of positive ones, such as love, warmth, encouragement, and appreciation, may have greatly contributed to your low self-esteem.

Today’s task invites you to do some digging to understand what might have had the greatest impact on your self-esteem. Your honest answers will massively aid you on this journey as we move along.

The First Aid #1: Practice Self-Compassion

Have you ever lost your temper at yourself? Blamed, criticised, called names and beat yourself up for doing something you regret? This is called self-condemnation, and we do it oh-so-often. Do you think it adds to our self-esteem or takes away from it? Of course, takes away. It chips at our self-esteem daily. 

There is a better way though. Instead of scolding ourselves for the tiniest mistakes, we can start practicing self-compassion.

What Is Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is a positive attitude we can have toward ourselves. It means being able to relate to ourselves in a way that is forgiving, accepting, and loving when situations might be less than optimal. 

3 Elements of Self-Compassion

Dr. Kristin Neff, an author, and a pioneer of self-compassion has identified three elements of self-compassion.

Mindfulness

Being aware of what is going on in the moment, physically, emotionally, and mentally. In other words, acknowledging the pain.

Self-Kindness

Treating ourselves with kindness, considering our needs. The way we would treat a friend.

Common Humanity

Recognizing that painful experiences are a normal part of being a human. We all make mistakes, fail, and do things we regret later. 

Whenever you catch yourself treating YOU harshly for what you have or haven’t done, bring yourself back to the moment to understand what you feel (hurt, sadness, anger, etc.). Remember, it is only human. Then treat YOU as you would treat a friend.

Head to the task for today to learn how to treat YOU like a friend.

The Avatar of Future You

First things first, before we start journeying any farther, I want you to understand that it is absolutely crucial for you to know where you are going. What is the outcome of this program specifically for you? At the end of it, who are you? What do you look like? What are you capable of?

The Role of Human Identity

One of the greatest human needs is to stay congruent with our identity. If you say, “I am a failure” or “I have nothing to be proud of”, these are strong statements. We’ll work on them in depth further in the program, but for now… 

Anything that comes after “I am” indicates that it is a part of your identity. For as long as you identify yourself with these traits, chances of changing your self-esteem for the better are very slim. Today’s lesson, my friend, is all about creating an inspiring vision of future you (an Avatar if you wish!). One that has no limitations.

The Avatar of Future You

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself couple of months from now: you’ve diligently completed every lesson in this program, used The First Aid tools and techniques in your journey, gave all your oomph...  

Now you are standing confident and proud of yourself, your self-esteem has sky-rocketed, you have found courage to do things you’ve always dreamed of (asked that girl/guy on a date, applied for promotion, etc.). Who are you now?

Head to the task for today to create the avatar of future you!

Use Comparison to Your Benefit

We are constantly being bombarded with images of gorgeous holiday locations, perfect bikini bodies, cute babies, and budding romances. Scrolling down your social media feed may take you to the ugly place of comparison, inferiority, envy, judgement and just a general feeling of something being not quite OK. Drop that like a hot potato!

Remember, to establish your own worth the only person you ever need to compare yourself to is you. 

Food for Thought

- You are uniquely beautiful and talented.
- Comparing yourself to other people is like comparing apples to bananas – pointless to say the least.
- Very little of what you see on social media is the full truth.
- Don’t buy into somebody else’s desires – discover and stay faithful to your own.

Use Comparison to Inspire Action

Yes, my friend, comparison can be used to our benefit. However, it can only be of any value when we use it for the purposes of growth, for the acknowledgement that we are not living our full potential. It should only inspire action, not lead us to feelings of low self-esteem or lack. 

Let’s learn to use comparison to our benefit in today’s task.

Instant Self-Image Shift

We have already established that self-esteem refers to what you think of yourself rather than what others think of you. Often, for people with low self-esteem, there is a great dissonance between the two. 

To realise that others love, value, and appreciate you for who you are (not skinnier, not smarter, and not more achieved!), is to have an instant shift in your self-image. This is the aim for today’s lesson, so (I beg you) don’t skip the task.

Never Lose Again

Keep in mind, that we, humans, aren’t perfect. There will always be things that we are great at, and things that we need to improve. 

Nelson Mandela famously said, “I never lose; I either win or learn”. People with low self-esteem tend to take each failure as a proof that they are unworthy or less capable. It’s time to change that, my friend.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

Growth mindset is built on the belief that everyone can grow, learn, and get better. What a relief! In fact, the growth mindset invites us to approach struggle, pain, and failure with an open mind, accepting and even welcoming the challenges. 

On the other side we have a fixed mindset. It is based on the belief that we are born with a certain amount of intelligence, and aptitude, and that’s all we get. Failure is viewed as doom and gloom. In other words, as something that proves one to be a loser for good. Yikes!

Great news – growth mindset can be cultivated, and it can tremendously change how you feel about yourself. 

The Importance of Feedback

Feedback is not only an essential tool for cultivating growth mindset as it identifies areas where we need to step up, but it also allows us to feel appreciated for things we are great at already. It’s a double-way street. 

Start asking for feedback and remember, we are always fishing for good stuff as well as for areas of improvement.

Today’s task provides you with your first opportunity!

Happy Easter

Stop Fuelling Your Low Self-Esteem 

Going through life, we establish certain habits that fuel our low self-esteem, closing us in the loop of helplessness and disappointment.

Getting Stuck in Victimhood

Do you ever feel like life is happening to you rather than for you? We have a choice in life to either play a role of a hero or of a victim. When we play the latter, we feel helpless to change anything. Being a hero simply means taking responsibility for our own life (it’s up to us to change it).

Aiming for Perfection

Perfection doesn’t exist. It’s an arduous aim that sets us up for failure before we even begin. Wouldn’t it be better to just aim for progress?

Inward Focus

It is a constant focus on how bad we feel as opposed to focusing outwardly and seeing other people. The best antidote to that is helping someone who is in bigger trouble than we are. I started volunteering when I was going through a rough patch in my life, it totally changed the way I felt. 

Lack of Boundaries

If we say “yes” to people despite feeling used by them, it further adds to our low self-esteem. 

Staying Within Your Comfort Zone

Staying comfortable means that we don’t have to overcome our limitations, we don’t improve, grow, or evolve. We need the smallest victories to rebuild our self-esteem brick by brick.

Focusing On the Negatives

In fact, this is a big one. So big that today’s task is designed to help you shift it. We are also going to work on it tomorrow. 

When we are focusing on the negatives (things we can’t afford, mistakes we’ve made in the past, etc.), we feel bad, and our self-esteem takes a hit. When we are focusing on things that we appreciate or are excited about, we feel great. Great news, my friend - our focus determines how we feel, and we have the power to direct it!

Let’s train ourselves to look for positives with today’s task.

The First Aid #3: Play the Appreciation Game

According to the research conducted by Berkeley University, gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions. We cannot feel appreciative and fearful, angry, resentful, or lacking at the same time. When we shift our focus from what is wrong in our lives to what we can appreciate, the way we feel changes instantaneously. 

Gratitude & Self-Esteem

The studies have also shown that long-term playing the appreciation game increases our determination, attention, enthusiasm, and energy levels. Our self-esteem goes up too! The long-term benefits of the “game” might take time to kick in but don’t let it discourage you. It is like building a muscle. We exercise several times a week to get fit. Of course, we feel great after every work-out, but more obvious results are visible in time. 

Is It Worth Trying?

What Will Happen to My Goals?!