Which moments count most for you?

We talk a lot about the stages in grief and finally reaching the stage of acceptance to move on. Whilst one can move on after trauma, there are often triggers that bring up those sad feelings again. For me any song (and in particular 2 songs) by Radiohead remind me of my late brother in-law. My husband and I spent a lot of time with his brother listening to this beautiful music, so every time I hear these songs, I think of this time together. I am drawn to write this article, because as I sit here one of these songs is being played on the radio.

This relationship taught me a lot about how precious life is and how much we can take for granted. Being a Cancerian I have always been a family person. It means more to me than anything. However, I now really try to savour the moments I love with family, friends and loved ones. These are the moments that count.

A friend recently told me she was worried because she was going to miss an important meeting in order to attend a close relative’s funeral overseas. It didn’t take much convincing to help her to realise that the closeness of those you love is more important. Work can always be sorted out. We spend a lot of time worrying about what others will think of us, instead of trusting that we are doing our best and focussing on what is important. At the end of the day, in our final hours will we care about whether or not we made it to an important meeting, or more about all the special times we spent with those we love?

Yes, life demands a balance. As human beings we crave success, health and wellbeing – these all take time. However, the important thing is to ‘be present’ in the moments you have with people you care about. It’s all too easy to waste this time complaining about things that are bothering you. Save these complaints for specific times and have fun with those you love.

Take time out this week to tend to your relationships.

· Email a friend you have been neglecting.

· Skype a relative overseas

· Pop in to visit a family member

· Text a loved one to say you care or miss her

These precious times in your life increase your self-esteem and self-value and serve as wonderful memories throughout life. Yes they take time out of your busy schedule, but they are so...worth it.

To boost your self esteem and self confidence visit www.selfesteemonline.com.au

 

Which moments count most for you?

We talk a lot about the stages in grief and finally reaching the stage of acceptance to move on. Whilst one can move on after trauma, there are often triggers that bring up those sad feelings again. For me any song (and in particular 2 songs) by Radiohead remind me of my late brother in-law. My husband and I spent a lot of time with his brother listening to this beautiful music, so every time I hear these songs, I think of this time together. I am drawn to write this article, because as I sit here one of these songs is being played on the radio.

This relationship taught me a lot about how precious life is and how much we can take for granted. Being a Cancerian I have always been a family person. It means more to me than anything. However, I now really try to savour the moments I love with family, friends and loved ones. These are the moments that count.

A friend recently told me she was worried because she was going to miss an important meeting in order to attend a close relative’s funeral overseas. It didn’t take much convincing to help her to realise that the closeness of those you love is more important. Work can always be sorted out. We spend a lot of time worrying about what others will think of us, instead of trusting that we are doing our best and focussing on what is important. At the end of the day, in our final hours will we care about whether or not we made it to an important meeting, or more about all the special times we spent with those we love?

Yes, life demands a balance. As human beings we crave success, health and wellbeing – these all take time. However, the important thing is to ‘be present’ in the moments you have with people you care about. It’s all too easy to waste this time complaining about things that are bothering you. Save these complaints for specific times and have fun with those you love.

Take time out this week to tend to your relationships.

·         Email a friend you have been neglecting.

·         Skype a relative overseas

·         Pop in to visit a family member

·         Text a loved one to say you care or miss her

These precious times in your life increase your self-esteem and self-value and serve as wonderful memories throughout life. Yes they take time out of your busy schedule, but they are so...worth it.

 

Why it's so important to increase self-esteem

The underlying cause of a lot of unhappiness is low self-esteem (a lack of confidence in your own worth or abilities). Self-esteem is the product of your life history, genes and circumstance. Low self-esteem is usually coupled with insecurity and self-doubt. These negative aspects of the 'self' have a nasty habit of causing self sabotage and reducing confidence. 

It's heartbreaking to witness how low self-esteem debilitates ones life through fear and doubt. The cruelest part of low self-esteem is that no matter how strong your belief is about how much you believe you deserve something, low self-esteem will find a way to ruin any chances of success unless you manage or heal it.

Let's look at the example in relationships. It's a strong desire for most people to attract and maintain a loving, supportive and fun intimate partner. When the relationship is yet to manifest, the desire intensifies until the universe nicely conspires to place you at the right place at the right time to form this potential partnership. If your self-esteem is moderate to high you will be yourself, show your best qualities and allow the relationship to grow organically. However, if your self-esteem is low you will panic at the slightest perception your potential partner has lost interest, behave in ways inconsistent with your true values and sacrifice much more of yourself than is appropriate in order to sustain a relationship that deep down you don't believe you truly deserve.

Similarly, when it comes to changing your career path, if you do not have a high self-esteem you will procrastinate, make poor decisions and avoid taking potential risks due to a very high fear of failure. 

How you feel about yourself directly impacts on your life success and overall happiness.

Thus, before you embark on any life change, it's imperative that you first work on increasing your self-esteem.

Whilst there are short-term quick- fix solutions to increasing your self-esteem, it usually takes a bit of time to firstly find the underlying causes of low self-esteem and then to begin to increase your self worth and self confidence using a variety of techniques. 

Whilst it can take time to fully increase self-esteem, a great way to begin boosting self-esteem is through validation (internal and external). This means acknowledging and welcoming the praise you receive by others and taking the time to regularly give yourself praise for every little job well done - instead of just disqualifying it as another job to tick off your to-do list. These could be as simple as prising yourself for:

- posting a profile on a dating site

- contacting someone you have a crush on

- attending an event that made you feel nervous

- completing a daunting presentation

- applying for that great job

- speaking up about something you feel strongly about

- paying your bills on time

- investing your money

- cleaning your home

- making time to care for a loved one

- spending time with a friend from overseas or interstate

On a daily basis you do a myriad of fantastic things that you either ignore or downplay simply because they are not as important as the tasks you have decided are most important to lead you towards achieving your long term goals. Whilst these tasks are great measures of success, taking time to acknowledge all the other great things you're doing daily will increase your self-esteem. In turn it will increase your confidence in your abilitiy to make your larger desires a reality. 

So praise yourself and others regularly and be proud of all the wonderful things you do for yourself and others on a daily basis.

Be mindful of your self-esteem and seek help if you need assistance to boost your self worth.

For more information or support for low self-esteem visit: http://www.happylife.net.au/self-esteem_online.html

There's a big difference between being nice & being passive

Objectively if you were to look at the human race you could be convinced that there is something wrong with a species that seems to repel and reject nice people on a regular basis. I see countless evidence of 'nice' people being taken advantage of, walked over, ignored, rejected and criticized. However, when you look closely at these examples you invariably find these nice people are in fact engaging in passive behaviour and ignoring their own needs, wants and desires in order to please others. Hence why it's easy to confuse being nice with being passive.

So, what is the difference between niceness and passivity?

Being a nice person goes hand in hand with considering the needs of others, being kind, being generous, helping and supporting those in need. However, when these qualities come at the expense of your own needs, wants and desires on a regular basis they translate into passive behaviour. The major problem with being passive under the guise of niceness is that it often translates into resentment and anger - in turn causing you to no longer want to be nice.

Being passive also tends to bring out the worst in others because people tend to assume that nice person will be more accommodating and be less likely to complain when things don't go their way.
The reason many nice people avoid being assertive is they are driven by a need to please others. Thus, expressing conflicting views can be very frightening for a passively nice person, as it has the potential to upset others and result in negative consequences (eg rejection and criticism).

The most fascinating aspect of passive behaviour is that it ends up leading to the same negative outcomes originally feared. In others words, passively Nice people want to avoid being criticized, but through passive behavior are likely to end up being criticized anyway.

If you are a passively nice person it's really important to make the distinction between being nice and passive and to challenge your underlying fears that drive you to behave in a passive manner. You can still be a nice person, but don't allow your behaviour to be driven predominately by the needs and wants of others. This is particularly important when you commit to doing something with another nice person and are asked to do something at the same time by someone you are scared to say 'no' to. In this case, you're likely to also choose the scary person and assume the nice person will be OK. Behaving in the exact manner you dislike in others.

Whilst there will always be times when it is necessary to put the needs of others in front of yours, during these times it's important to ensure you are being respected and appreciated. For example, placing boundaries around how your children should speak to you (showing their appreciation through words like please and thank-you).

Further, whilst being 'easy going' might be an energy you aspire to have, don't confuse it with being a pushover. It's fine to agree to things if you really don't mind, but if you're happy, at least seek clarification and ask if there is any opportunity to alter things more to your liking.

Aspire to be a nice person, but try not to aspire to be passive.

How to cope when people let you down

One of the difficult parts of the law of attraction and energy is the fact that we are surrounded by competing energies, desires and behaviors. Stuart Wilde - one of the all time Guru's in this area stated back in the early 1980s that even brushing past others with negative energy can (and often does) impact on your mood & hence effects your ability to attract positive things into your life.

It's no wonder then that you can find yourself attracting people into your life who regularly behave in ways that you regularly vocalize you dislike. Further, you are likely to find that when you are feeling negatively, people around you tend to let you down more often or display negative behaviors that really upset you.

In order to cope with negative people and their behaviors it's important to first ask yourself whether your moods and focused attention may be drawing these people closer towards you. If the answer is yes, then it is time to begin to rethink and reframe things in your life to reduce the likelihood of it happening.

You need to be extremely strong willed and determined not to allow the presence of other negative people to infect your life. You must be very mindful of how your energy can be altered and be diligent in your efforts to try to refocus on the positive aspects of life, rather than on the negatives. Of course this is easier said than done, but this is part of your life journey.

When it comes to those close to you hurting you, it's not as easy to refocus and let things go. It takes a bit more time. However, I believe when others hurt you it says more about how you allow others to treat you, than it says about them.

For instance:
1) if your boss is being a bully - do you simply put up with it for fear of bring fired?
2) if you're in an abusive relationship, do you stay there when you know you should leave?
3) if your friends continuously cancel on you or make little effort to attend events that are important to you, do you say little and simply squash your feelings to keep the peace?
4) if your family members are disrespectful, do you voice your confidence in yourself, of allow them to walk all over you?

Whilst the other people in the examples above are behaving negatively, you still have a choice in how you deal with their behaviors and whether or not you are going to allow such negativity to persist in your life.

Jack Canfield - another Guru of the self improvement movement suggest to try to write a list of all the people in your life & then note which ones are positive and negative. If they are all negative, it's time to get new friends!!!

Your life is of value. Don't believe you are second best, or deserve to be treated in a negative manner. Trust your convictions. Stand up for yourself & stay positive. You deserve to live a happy and successful life.

Visit www.happylife.net , or follow Liz O'Halloran on Twitter at: @lohalloran72