Mindflow Radio #121: Create Healthy Self-Esteem

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Mindflow Radio.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Mindflow Radio.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

She's J Lynn. And he's Monty. So buckle your seat belts and get ready to take a trip towards reality.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Reality. Reality.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Reality. The great mystery.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Yeah, I'd say so. We wanted to dive deeper into self-esteem.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Self-esteem. Self-esteem. Yeah, it's it's self-esteem is such an interesting aspect of the human existence. And in my in my work as a therapist, I mean, before I was a therapist, I used to consider self-esteem as the most important aspect of psychological health. Because if we have good self self-esteem or decent self-esteem, again, it's a continuum, you know, from great self-esteem to terrible self-esteem. And but if we're on more of the positive end of things, we just are naturally more resilient, um, more kind, I would say, and less um fearful.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

What goes through my mind is uh how does one define self-esteem in the healthy sense? Because I feel that some people may think they have good self-esteem, but it's uh uh more based in judgment, possibly.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

One way to determine our self-esteem is just listen to your self-talk. Talk to yourself. And if if you have lots and lots and lots of negative self-talk, negative internal dialogue, that tends to really hamper our self-esteem. And that's an interesting component to living in this culture is that we're kind of trained to have lots of negative self-talk in a way where we're we're not supposed to feel complete unless we make so much money, drive this kind of car, have the this kind of clothes, have have this look, right? This be able to, I mean, and the the list kind of goes on and on. Basically, anything they can sell we're supposed to have. Sure. And sure, if we don't have it, the answer, according to the commercials on TV at least, is that we need to make more money so that we can buy it. And then the idea is then then you have the Corvette, and then you have the really great clothes, and you have a really nice haircut, and you're you know, perfect, you know, whatever. Nice nails. Yeah, your nails look great, and you have nice jewelry, and shoes. You have really nice shoes for sure, and also you have like lots and lots and lots of insurances to cover everything, and then you can just relax because you have everything you could possibly need, and you have insurance, and your insurance ensures that everything is gonna be fine, but it doesn't. I'm just kidding on that, you know, it's a ploy, right? To sell another product, and but anyway, we we we I grew up personally, I can say I grew up in this culture that promotes negative self-esteem.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Oh, yeah, essentially, and then I feel that that has been getting worse over the years. I mean, if you remember back, I think it was it was before COVID, if I remember right, and there was a string of young teen girls committing suicide because of uh Instagram something or other, and feeling like they just couldn't compare. And there was this whole issue that happened, and yeah, that was my first alarm system that went off with the social media and how it affects social or self-esteem.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Right. I mean, and there's more to it than that, too, just from the perspective of if we're staring at social media all day long, we just naturally are gonna feel um depressed when we're not on. I mean, it's just like a or agitated or scared. So there's that drain of dopamine. Yeah, there's that added effect to also like looking at, oh, I wish I looked like that, or I wish I had that, I wish I had that, I wish I looked like that. I'm worthless because I don't, right? That's the messaging. If you if you if you don't have this stuff, if you don't have the looks, if you don't have whatever, you're worthless. That's that's the the the media's message to the masses, yeah. And that's that's what I realized when I was, you know, I'm talking in the 90s, when I when I one day it just struck me, it's like, oh, we're all brainwashed. I was like, whoa, we're all brainwashed. It's like that's what it seemed like to me, at least. And I remember just walking down the street in Milwaukee and looking at the tall buildings on both sides of me, all these condos, you know, and thinking, wow, everybody's brainwashed. It's like, whoa. And then for me, it was the search of what created what was the source of the brainwashing. You know, so that was really an interesting, and it ended up being media. Well, well, I knew the media played a huge role in it, but who who runs the media? Oh, you know, who runs the media? That's the question. And then the question is the biggest question that I was unable to answer at that point was well, is it just a self-perpetuating system? Like, are we all just brain are like the leaders of the media just as brainwashed as everybody else, and it just kind of perpetuates? Yeah. Or are there a few elites on the tippy top that have just control the people who control the media who can, you know, and just yeah. So that that was the question in my mind, but it was just really evident that um that was the case that people we were all are, you know, essentially brainwashed through, you know, staring at these screens. And then when you really look at what it's like to stare at a screen, if you'd be an alien coming down into this planet and look watching everybody like just looking at their phones or looking at the TV and just ingesting all this data, you know, and just the nature of it to all the flickering lights and the moving and the sounds, and the it's like this hypnosis machine. I mean, if you look at it from that perspective, it's really quite uh interesting and eye-opening and rather disturbing, especially when I find myself looking at the screen too much, because then I know that I'm actively just participating, actively allowing yourself to be brainwashed. But I want to say though that today is day five for my media fast. So no YouTube, no Facebook, no media, no news, etc.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Good.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

So back to self-esteem. Yes. I am thinking about how we have this rather big obstacle of the media and comparing ourselves to others that has created this difficulty in having self-esteem. And then there's this confusion around uh having so much uh I don't know if self-esteem is the right word, but so much self-centered focus that we're actually harming people around us because we're so focused on the self.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

And that can feel like self-esteem, like, well, I'm just taking care of myself, and that means I have good self-esteem. Right. You know, so I feel like self-esteem in itself is this nuanced thing that I know there's a healthy version, but then there's everything else that people, myself included, have wrestled with well, I have poor self-esteem, and so how do I go about that, you know, and my search for self-esteem has I I'd say step one was is still learning how to not compare myself to others because I have a fairly strong inferiority complex and feel like pretty much everyone is above me or has control over my situation, or um it's hard for me to have the sovereignty necessary probably for self-esteem.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Well, I mean, what I would suggest, and this is what the way I'm able to feel better, basically, is just really recognize that I have like the spark of the divine within me. You know, and then if I can recognize that, and then I see it in everybody else, da da da, and then we're all equal. It's like, oh man, we're all equal. All of us, even that. You see that movie star, you see that sports star on TV over there, you know, with just the ultimate serious complex.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

If somebody's famous, I literally can't speak to them. If if I uh think highly of someone and I'm afraid that they'll think I'm stupid, then I literally sound stupid because I stutter and I can't say a full sentence. And it's so weird because you hear me now. I can I know this is going out to however many people it's going out. I'm not fearful of that. But if you're someone that I look up to, like me meeting my Qigong teacher, I felt like such a dork because I had a hard time acting normal. Yeah, because I looked up to him so much. Yeah, and so it's just this really strange.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Shout out to Tevi Tiger, just saying.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Yeah, I'm grateful for White Tiger Qigong so much. It's changed my life.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

There's a there's a Zen story about a Zen, like um longtime Zen practitioner. He's in a monastery, and they're like, Man, you're enlightened. And then he met like the king or something, and then he came back from that and he goes, I'm going on a retreat for five years. They say, Why? Because because my palms were sweating when I met you know, this guy, and he's just another, you know. So it's that's an age. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's an age-old struggle. Yeah, you know, but it is, it is like according to the Zen master, or he turned into a Zen master after he came back out of the woods after five more years or whatever it was. But it um, it's like a again for him, it was a test. Can I just stay as balanced and centered as I always as I usually am when I meet this uber famous, uber powerful person, and that's that's tough, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

I would and I also feel like the it could be a flip side too, where um it's hard to uh feel equanimity when someone that has hurt you in the past is now in the room with you. Well, sure. And that's that's another one. It's like kind of almost like a famous person where they're famous in your book because you were hurt by them.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah. So then you get naturally get easy more easily triggered. Yeah. Or you're triggered because they're even just around because they've been like abusive or whatever. Right? Or whatever it is, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Whatever it is, but it's just like a phenomena that and and the easiest thing to do is to be like, I'm out, you know, and kind of puff up the chest, like well, and you know, there are so many variables in that particular scenario relative just to the amount of abuse, the type of you know, whatever happened is like it's gonna be different.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And if you have high self-esteem, perhaps the best thing is to is to leave at that point. You know, it it it it just depends on the situation, sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, but if you can maintain your um equanimity, that's like a that'd be a that'd be a tremendous test, certainly. And if we have higher self-esteem, then we kind of feel good about ourselves and we're gonna act accordingly, you know, we're gonna take care of better care of ourselves. Okay, you know, leave if we need to stay, maybe talk it over. Maybe that's the solution of that particular heikwe or just like forgive and forget. I mean, or forgive, not forget, but just forgive. I mean, who knows? There's a lot of different things. Yeah, there's a lot of ways that can go. But the bottom line is if you're if you have good self-esteem, you'll it's you're vastly more likely likely to choose the right behavior than the right action to deal with various situations.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Yeah, I guess I was showing the two sides of the spectrum of challenge for self-esteem. And I think, and I'm not really an one to speak too much on this. It's so definitely a contemplation, but it's not something that I've figured out. And it seems to me kind of like where you were going with the king or the monk get having sweaty palms because the king was there. It's like, yeah, so I would imagine that a sign of self-esteem would be to, you know, when you live in a small town and all these different people have their different uh I I want to say arch enemy, but that's the wrong word. But somebody who's hurt them that they were close with and now they don't want to see them anymore, and you're in a small town and you're you run into them at the grocery store or at a party or at a dance club, or you know, as there's only so many places to hang out. And I know that this is something that a lot of people that I know deal with because we all don't get along, and there's always somebody that hurts somebody, and this is just like a human phenomena of challenge. And how does one maintain healthy self-esteem, notice the palms are sweaty, yeah, notice their own reaction versus go, oh, they're here, you know, and it's like well, you're right.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

If you can f notice yourself, then you could be like you could be regulating your breathing at that time. So you can instead of just pointing fingers and judging and being hateful or whatever, or fearful, or whatever it is, right? We can like take that energy and point it inwards, and what's my posture like? What's my breathing like? You know, I'm gonna try and see the soul in this person, I'm gonna try and see the soul in myself, you know. We can like work the situation a bit.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Is that self-esteem?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Well, it leads to self-esteem. I would say the more empowered you are over your um reactions, yeah. I mean, and we're all we're all gonna freak out from time to time. Sure. I mean, but we'll if we're able to come back to balance quicker, you know, and if we're able to judge less, then I would say people with higher self-esteem, yeah, would most likely be able to recover quicker from challenging situations and just deal with difficult situations more effectively, perhaps.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

And so would you say that higher self-esteem leads to equanimity?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Uh both. I would say it's you know, if you have equanimity, you're just naturally gonna have higher self-esteem, I think. And if you have higher self-esteem, you probably probably will have better equanimity. You know, but equanimity is something we can all train on, you know, train, you know, how to self-regulate. Yeah, that's what equanimity is, being able to regulate, have having that resilience. That's a big word in psychology. How resilient are you, you know, and but we can train train to become more resilient. And I don't know, a mind skill, a trick, uh not a trick, but just a hack, mind hack that I use. And uh I mentioned this earlier, is just to see everybody as a soulful being. And then from that perspective, we're all just these confused god beings trying our best, and we're here for a hundred years, which is like a flash of lightning. So let's not take things too seriously. We tend to like bend things, you know, way out of proportion because we we don't understand, you know, it's like that YOLO philosophy, which is just such uh um, it's laughable to me, you know. You only live once, whatever that means. You know, so that puts a lot of pressure on this very oh shit, I gotta get that car then.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Yeah, you know, it's like yeah, there there is that as well. There, yeah. Being a human is such a complicated subject in itself, you know, and there's the the grounded present moment of I'm a human, I exist here now, yeah. Whatever's beyond this doesn't matter because I'm right here right now. And I guess that's maybe a stoic view or or a very natural-minded Taoist, yeah, you know, and then there's the more of a spiritual uh connection where people connect with a deity, maybe God, Jesus, Allah, Brama, you know, there's so many, so many to choose from. And so because of this spiritual connection, therefore they can handle being a human. And that's definitely where I've resided a little more comfortably because when I just try to imagine I'm just a human and this is it, I start to get really depressed and sad about it. So for me, it helps to have that spiritual outlook. But there's plenty of people who are atheists who seem to like have a fair life, you know? Absolutely. So there's these levels of self-esteem related to simply being a human. And and how does one be an animal spirit creature?

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, that's true. And like if we really have a strong spiritual belief, we we are valuable by just being here. You know, there's value to to to being alive as a human, and that helps with self-esteem, right there. I'm valuable. I'm I'm this amazing, deluded, confused God creature.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

You know, that helps with self-esteem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Well, the God creature is part it helps. But it's good to be realistic and know that we're not like we haven't, we don't have it all figured out. And yeah, you know, yeah. I mean, for me too, I I imagine, you know, I like the I'm at least recently been playing with the idea like of the angels, like angels surrounding us that we we we don't see them, right? But they're there all the time. Fairly likely they're there.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

No, I mean that we don't see them all the time.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Right. Well, maybe some um Steiner said he he could see them all the time, but oh who knows? But yeah, I've been envisioning them as um globes of light that kind of surround us, you know, and we and the more we meditate, perhaps we are in another globe or something like that. I think there might be some kind of um who knows? You know, this is all just this wild guessing game. Yeah. It's like the the greatest detective mystery of all time.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

It's like that we don't ever get to know the answer to.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Well, we do, but it's unsolved case. Well, I mean, yeah, unsolved case until until we know, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Yeah, and I've thought about that too, you know, that we all uh we'll find out when we die. And it's like, well, we that still is not known. There is zero known, you know, other than we appear to exist here and now. Yeah, we appear to be this human family that fights amongst themselves. Yes, we appear to be easily hurt. Emotionally by others. Yes. And generally w prefer to blame than to grow and take responsibility of our side. And the there's these these appear apparent uh issues of being a human, but in reality these are all just energies that we think we're tapping into. And and like you said before, we're all creating reality in this moment as it is, and that boggles my mind, but it's like are we? Is this all just uh are we actually just uh there is no gravity, we're just imagining gravity, and we're we're not actually cells glued together, we're actually floating particles in some outer space thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

I I mean, yeah, that's that's a whole other podcast. Yeah. But it's interesting to like yeah, understand that perhaps we're vastly more powerful than we understand. You know, that we're god beings and we're val, we're we're super powerful, only we don't get it. Yeah, we don't get it because we're trained to feel powerless. The society we live in, maybe the human culture is like you are powerless individually, you're powerless, powerless, powerless, powerless. So everybody's walking around, oh, I'm powerless, you know, and that's low self-esteem right there. But for me, it's like I I'm really grappling with the idea that I'm like actually way more powerful than I understand, you know, and just having that question in my mind, hmm, am I like way more powerful than I realize? Oh, that's cool. I'm gonna try and um explore this further, you know, and just that's that's the kind of game I'm playing these days. And I hope a lot of us are because it's exciting, it's adventurous, yeah. It's it's like beyond beyond the pale of what most of us ever even consider. Yeah, but maybe now's the time we start considering it, yeah. And then as we start playing that game, then boom, we naturally just feel better.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Nice, yeah. So to kind of pull it back around to self-esteem and and tie this up neatly, I what's coming to my mind is in yoga the third chakra is a lot about self-esteem. And the that's um like the solar plexus, so above the belly button, below the ribs, yeah, and that includes the stomach, the spleen, the pancreas, the liver, and the kidneys, and the gallbladder. And um, this area is so vital to our health. And if any one of those organs is off, we experience a lot of pain and um sickness.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

The solar plexus, too, is like one of the most vulnerable vulnerable areas in our body, yeah, for sure. And it's interesting because if you bring the solar plexus forward, postural awareness, bring your solar plexus forward and your head up. But if the solar plexus come forward, guess what? You feel more confident.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah, and we've done studies on it.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Confidence and self-esteem are definitely yeah, university studies, good posture, better posture equals more confidence. So that's directly working with that um solar plexus. So that's that's kind of cool. That's that's an area that I spend a lot of time focusing on when I'm walking into the street. Oh bring that forward, you know. Just like I feel like that's perhaps. I mean, in my imaginary world, like the soul is located there, perhaps. Yeah, yeah. That's what I've and that's why I think you know, if you get hit there really hard, you can die.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Yeah, it might just it's so shocking for the body because there's no protection and the vital organs are right there.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

And yeah, so it just you you completely lose your breath for some reason. I've gotten hit there before.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

It's like but anyway, it's a good it's a good area to bring forward and um yeah, I focus on this in meditation a lot because uh I've been working on containing my energy uh because I hit adrenal fatigue and exhaustion and basically drained my whole being of vital life force energy. And I've been doing qigong for uh you know over a year daily, but I was really focusing on circulating the qi, and I needed to shift that because I was still exhausted, and I changed to containing qi. And so I work with the solar plexus and generally put my hands over the solar plexus, and then imagine that there's a small sphere of light at my in the center of my solar plexus, and as I inhale, it expands to fill the whole physical body, maybe beyond the body, and then as I exhale, it goes back to a small ball of light. And in this, I imagine that it's charging my kidneys up and it's it's refilling my battery, and I've been noticing that it's helping a lot. So I know in uh many different styles of yoga, there's a great emphasis on the third chakra and self-esteem and having a proper balance of self-esteem and uh loving others, you know. There's this balance that needs to be struck to uh to truly be healthy and live a meaningful life.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah, you're here.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, all right. So, yeah, that's what I had to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Okay, well, life's a great adventure. Let's just keep working on improving our self-esteem if possible. Yeah, and just keep everything into perspective and have a joyous time. Yeah, at least some of the time. Find that joy, find the peace some of the time. Yeah, as more and more, as much as possible.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Yeah, it's definitely possible to feel calm and peaceful in this world. Yeah, I feel that the more we feel calm and peaceful, the more meaningful life gets, the easier self-esteem is and on and on it goes.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

Yeah, I just want to say my last little bit on self-esteem is if we can get to that transcendental spot in our minds where we're actually not thinking anymore, we're just being transcendental awareness, transcending the thinking mind, then we just naturally feel better. So it's like if we go below that, if we're not, that's where the self-esteem is. Because do I have good self-esteem? Don't I have good self? You know, that whole like the chattering mind thing. But if we can transcend the chattering mind for moments every day, then we're just naturally gonna feel better.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

I like that. All right. Well, I want to let y'all know that we have a website out there with a free gift for you. And it's seven strategies for peace or seven, yeah, I can't remember what it's called. Seven strategies to reset a peaceful existence.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Or that's not what it's called, but something like that. That would be the website.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Mindflowradio.life.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Mindflowradio.life. Yeah, and it's a good ebook, actually.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

Yeah, we we both put our heads together for our seven favorite skills. All right. And uh, you are welcome to go pick that up. So until next time, be well, y'all.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Peace and love.