How to care yourself and make successful Self nurturing

Rebutting your critical inner voice is an important step, but it is not enough. Since our self-esteem is in part due to how others have treated us in the past, the second step to more healthy self-esteem is to begin to treat yourself as a worthwhile person.

Start to challenge past negative experiences or messages by nurturing and caring for yourself in ways that show that you are valuable, competent, deserving and lovable, as you learned in previous lessons about Positive affirmations. There are several components to self-nurturing:

First and foremost, practice basic self-care. Get enough sleep, eat in a healthy fashion, get regular exercise, practice good hygiene, and so forth. A healthy mind is dependent on a healthy body. When you take care of the outside, it is natural that taking care of the inside will follow.

You should plan fun and relaxing things for yourself. You could go to a movie, take a nap, get a massage, plant a garden, buy a pet, or learn to meditate-whatever you enjoy. Try new things to help you pamper yourself. This author has delved into self-hypnosis through online, downloadable sessions available online, They work wonders for me! You may want to look at it yourself!

Reward yourself for your accomplishments, big and small! You could take the night off to celebrate good grades, spend time with a friend, or compliment yourself for making that hard phone call. It doesn't matter how small the accomplishment might seem, you deserve to celebrate every single little step. Try a little chocolate ice cream, or allowing yourself to relax and just do nothing. It doesn't matter as long as it’s a reward for YOU!

You should always remind yourself of your strengths and achievements. This may seem daunting – especially when you have a low self-image. How do you find those strengths?

One way is to make a list of things you like about yourself. Or keep a 'success' file of awards, certificates and positive letters or citations. Keep mementos of accomplishments you are proud of where you can see them. Focus on anything and everything. No matter how small it may seem, if you succeeded and are proud of it, focus on it and celebrate!

A huge step you can take is to forgive yourself when you don’t do all that you hoped to do. Self-nurturing can be surprisingly hard if you are not used to doing it. Don't be critical of yourself-remember that inner voice -when you don't do it just right. Reward yourself for trying in the first place. That’s a huge step towards the positive YOU that you want to be!


There will be times when you don’t feel you deserve to nurture yourself. This is when you need it the most! "Fake it" until you can "make it." When you treat yourself like you deserve to feel good and be nurtured, slowly you'll come to believe it. You’ll be amazed at how you’ll feel when you let go of the trash and embrace the jewels.

You may find yourself a bit lost during this process. It is also important to enlist the help of others in this process.
CALLING OUT “THE TROOPS”, this is my next discussion....follow me.

10 Inner Voices in Healthy self-esteem Vs low self-esteem

THE INNER VOICE: Our past experiences, even the things we don't usually think about, are all alive and active in our daily life in the form of an inner voice. Although most people do not "hear" this voice in the same way they would a spoken one, in many ways it acts in a similar way, constantly repeating those original messages to us.

For people with healthy self-esteem the messages of the inner voice are positive and reassuring. For people with low self-esteem , the inner voice becomes a harsh inner critic, constantly criticizing, punishing, and belittling their accomplishments.

"take this quiz"
Do you ever find yourself berating yourself for something that you've done? Have you ever found yourself struggling with something that you know you should do but keep talking yourself out of? That’s your inner voice.

Your inner voice will say things like, “You can’t do this”, “There’s no way you can succeed”, and “Why bother trying, you’ll just fail”. Your inner voice is your harshest critic and the one who will lower your self-esteem the quickest. You need to change that inner voice from a negative influence to a positive one.

We all have an inner voice. You should talk back to it. Combat it. Let it know that YOU are the one in control, not it! Let’s look at some of the dialogue the inner voice will tell you and healthy ways to rebut what it is saying.

When the inner voice is unfairly harsh:"People said they liked my presentation, but it was nowhere near as good as it should have been. I can't believe no-one noticed all the places I messed up. I'm such an impostor."

Counteract by being reassuring yourself:"Wow, they really liked it! Maybe it wasn't perfect, but I worked hard on that presentation and did a good job. I'm proud of myself. This was a great success."

If the inner voice is unrealistically generalizing as in:
"I got an F on the test. I don't understand anything in this class. I'm such an idiot. Who am I fooling? I shouldn't be taking this class. I'm stupid and I don't belong in college."

Tell that inner voice something specific:"I did poorly on this one test, but I've done O.K. on all the homework. There are some things here that I don't understand as well as I thought I did, but I can do the material-I've done fine in other classes that were just as tough.”

The inner voice might also be extremely illogical.
"He is frowning. He didn't say anything, but I know it means that he doesn't like me!"
Tell that voice something that is purely logical.
"O.K., he's frowning, but I don't know why. It could have nothing to do with me. Maybe I should ask."
Finally, the inner voice will take things to extremes.
"She turned me down for a date! I'm so embarrassed and humiliated. No one likes or cares about me. I'll never find a girlfriend. I'll always be alone."

It’s time to tell that inner voice things aren't nearly as bad as they make them out to be.
"Ouch! That hurt. Well, she doesn't want to go out with me. That doesn't mean no one does. I know I'm an attractive and nice person. I'll find someone."

In general, when that inner voice begins putting you down, counteract with a positive statement. Don’t let that voice overtake you and talk you into something that just isn't true. You are in control – not the inner critic. Take charge and begin the journey toward more positive thinking!
One way to do this is through positive affirmations. This isn't new-age anything, it’s simply a way for you to infuse positive self-talk into your life and calm that negative inner voice.

Utilizing positive affirmations can be a very powerful tool for transforming what a person thinks about himself and as a result improve the individual’s self-esteem. Consistent use of positive affirmations will transform the negative beliefs about who a person thinks he is into positive ones, will begin to alter the basis and structure of his self talk or inner voice and produce a transformation from poor self-esteem to positive self-esteem.

While utilized in a various ways, working with positive affirmations will be more effective when delivered through or combined with therapeutic relaxation music. What therapeutic relaxation music does to enhance the effect of positive affirmations is to create a very relaxed audio environment for the individual to become even more open or suggestive to the language of positive affirmations.

When you use music while telling yourself positive affirmations, you will be more relaxed and more open to accepting the positive comments you are telling yourself.

We found a wonderful music CD at Wal-Mart that helps to calm the soul and transform negative thoughts into positive thoughts. These music CD’s are available everywhere, however. Just look for something that has calming music along with some soothing background noise like waves crashing on a shore or water that is flowing.

The key to the effective use of positive affirmation in this or any other type of intervention is consistency. The self-image and the negative thoughts about who a person thinks he is that generates his experience of poor or negative self-esteem is well established in the his belief system. In many cases the development of a negative self-image took years to create and has been reinforced through repetitive behavioral validation.

Because positive self-affirmations are key in developing healthy self-esteem, let’s look at these a bit more closely.

To be continue....

5 must know on what is self esteem before register self confidence courses?

Some people think that self-esteem means confidence - and of course confidence comes into it - but it's rather more than that. 

        The fact is that there are any number of apparently confident people who can do marvelous things but who have poor self-esteem. Many people in the public eye fall into this category. Actors and comedians and singers in particular can seem to glow with assurance 'on stage', and yet off-stage many of them feel desperately insecure.

         Indeed, individuals can be stunningly attractive and world-famous, and seem poised and perfect - yet still, deep down, find it hard to value themselves. Think of the late Princess of Wales and Marilyn Monroe and you'll accept, I think, that public adulation is no guarantee of self-belief.

         So, if self-esteem isn't quite the same thing as confidence, what does confidence means?

         Well, the word 'esteem' comes from a Latin word which means 'to estimate'. So, self-esteem is how you estimate yourself.

To do that you need to ask yourself certain questions:

• Do I like myself?
• Do I think I'm a good human being?
• Am I someone deserving of love?
• Do I deserve happiness?
• Do I really feel - both in my mind and deep in my guts - that I'm an OK person?

People with low self-esteem find it hard to answer 'yes' to these questions. Perhaps you are one of them.  If you’re reading this article, we think you are.  Don’t despair.  Just read on!

The concept of self-esteem can be summed up as:  Confidence in our ability to think and in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life and confidence in our right to be successful and happy, the feelings of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values and enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

We also commonly think that self-esteem is merely about how we feel about ourselves at any particular moment. While seemingly existing in degrees, we tend to believe that we have positive or negative self-esteem and that we make that determination simply by how we feel about ourselves.

However, our feelings or emotions do not exist alone or have an independent existence. We do not just simply feel. Rather, for every feeling or emotion that we have, either positive or negative, there is a corresponding thought that we have about ourselves that generates the experience of self-esteem.

Whether positive or negative, self-esteem is merely how our psyche experiences the thoughts that we have about ourselves. If a person has positive thoughts about himself he will experience positive or good self-esteem. On the other hand, if the individual has negative thoughts about whom he thinks he is then he will experience poor or negative self-esteem.

 Your thoughts is your self estimation.

Therefore, to truly understand what self-esteem is all about and more importantly to be able to alter it when necessary for ones wellness or healing, we must first get it that self-esteem is really about our thinking, and more specifically about the thoughts that we develop or create about ourselves. The thoughts or beliefs that we have about ourselves are crucial in that they determine or create the structure of our experience of self-esteem and the various emotions associated with it. 

We also tend to think of our self-esteem as being something that is shaped by the events that take place in our life, particularly those from our past. We tend to believe that who we think we are and how we feel about ourselves is merely the product, effect or caused by the experiences that we have had in the past – it says that we are who we are by virtue of what has happened to us as human beings.

More specifically, we tend to think that the cause in the matter of whom we think we are and our self-esteem is due to circumstance, situation or others, people, places and things. We do not tend to think that our self-esteem is something we actually developed or created.  Our personal self-esteem is shaped by our past and the experiences we have had in our lives.

 Your Past experiences build your present self-esteem.

We created our thoughts and with it our emotions from the meaning that we gave to the events that took place in our life, especially at an early age. We give meaning to everything in our life including and most importantly to ourselves. At an early age the meaning that we give an event tends to be made out to be all about us. While events do happen it is not the events that are important but rather the meaning that we give them and especially how we made it out to be about our identity.

Living in a state of low self esteem can be very damaging to the quality of life you lead on a daily basis. Your self esteem is YOUR opinion of yourself, but far too many people allow others to influence or even make up their opinion for them. It sounds so very silly, but if you think on this you will realize how certain events, comments and encounters helped to "make or break" your self esteem.

Do not ask people their opinion in yourself.

Let’s look at some indicators that you might have low self-esteem.