Self-Esteem Journaling Prompt #3

It feels like forever! I stepped away from civilisation for a few weeks. Okay, maybe not away from all the good stuff, just anything digital. That's the same thing, isn't it?

Now, where were we up to in our adventure? Oh, that's right! We are hunting for your self-esteem or at least laying down some trails, so if it ever goes missing, you can find it easily.

Would you like me to show you a shortcut? Heck, I'm willing to give you the direct route if you're ready to take it.

Close your eyes now if you prefer to take a long way around.

Your self-esteem is with you all the time. You can't leave it, and it can't leave you. You are bound together as one, from here to eternity.

The less politically correct term for self-esteem is 'ego'.

An insane number of people (not a number of insane people' although the result may be the same) have tried to explain the workings of the human mind. Freud is a famous human from that cohort. He identified three levels of the psyche as Id, Ego, and Super-ego. Ego is the Latin word for I, which is why Freud chose it to describe the part of the psyche that defines the boundaries and existence of the 'self'. How we feel about ourselves is 'self-esteem'.

A healthy ego empowers us to take risks, make decisions, move beyond the pack and be creative. Our capacity for individual thought is why we don't just swim around in circles all day like a school of fish.

Of course, the ego can be unhealthy. When it dominates the other levels of our psyche, we can lose consciousness of 'other' and forget that, ultimately, we are social creatures who need social interaction to survive and thrive.

Much of our sense of self-esteem exists in our unconscious minds; that is, we're not usually aware that we are thinking it. We have some conscious thoughts around self-esteem. For example, I'm smart (or not), I'm good at x,y z (or not), I love the shape of my pinky toes (over-share?). You get the drift.

Most of our self-esteem resides deep in our unconscious and communicates with us through feelings. For example, when we feel joyous, confident, mournful, shameful and guilty, it is often memories in our unconscious triggering feelings that we then try to rationalise and tell ourselves stories about why we are feeling it.

Another clever human, Dr David Hawkins, has dedicated his life to creating a nifty chart that helps us understand the hierarchy of emotions.

From his worldview, there are low vibration emotions (when we feel bad about ourselves, these emotions are disempowering) and high vibration emotions.

I have added an image to this post to give you a glimpse of the hierarchy. If the interest bites, delve into Dr Hawkins work. Some people love him, and others, well, they vibrate at very a low level when they think of him.

The shortcut to healthy self-esteem is learning how to swap out the low vibration emotions for high ones.

Let's step through an example. Then I am going to leave you to do one by yourself.

I usually love to go for a run. Eighteen months ago, I injured myself while riding my mountain bike and running became a pain in the butt and general pelvic region.

For a long while, I caused myself more pain every time I ran because of the conversation in my head. I focused on the sharp pain, lamented the loss of my freedom of movement, and cursed my stupidity. The pain got worse because I tensed against it and mentally waged war on it. I got stuck in a low emotion wash cycle.

But then I woke up to myself.

I let go of what used to be and focused on what is. I focused on the fact I was out of bed and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my skin. I challenged myself to see more detail in my environment and listened to some very cool audiobooks. My smile and patience returned, as did my energy and enthusiasm. The only thing that left me was the pain. My body healed and I'm running free again, which led to my extended period away from civilisation recently.

Okay, your turn. Below is your journaling activity for this week.

Pick a moment recently where you experienced those lower-level emotions on Dr Hawkins' chart, i.e. below 'courage'. Stay away from big traumas. Just go for simpler moments for now, and you can move up to more advanced work later. Perhaps you were in a grumpy mood, had a moment of annoying fear, or negative self-talk cut in.

Write about that moment in technicolour detail in your journal. Try to remember what happened before that moment, what it felt like going through it, and what occurred afterwards.

Now randomly pick an emotion from higher in the chart, for example, neutrality. Write in your journal how you may have responded differently at that moment to achieve neutrality. If I was in a grumpy mood because my boss just dumped more work on my desk, perhaps I could achieve a feeling of neutrality by simply accepting that we all get ourselves in a tight corner at times. A day or two later, I could chat with her about better processes for managing workload.

That's it for today. Post any questions or thoughts in the comments, and I will see you a little further down the track.