By Marcelo de Almeida
These 10 steps to self-esteem were carefully developed to increase even more your self-love and, mostly, to help you reach higher levels of tranquility and happiness.
The most important step in life is to learn to love oneself. It’s the only way to reach success, happiness, good relationships and inner peace. Your health also depends on how much you love yourself, since your cells receive information and influence from everything you think and feel. Good thoughts and feelings generate a resistant immunologic system, while negative mental attitude and low self-esteem may weaken your body and natural defense system.
I suggest you reflect on each of these steps, because by doing it, the results, such as the inner balance and emotional strength, will be highly satisfactory.
1 – Harmonize your Environment
Open all doors and windows of your house or workplace and initiate a thorough cleaning. Begin with the closets; remove everything and just put back what you really need and use. Eliminate the rest the best way you can, donating or selling it. Do the same in every room of your house and office.
Remember: only keep the necessary. Clothes and objects not being used lose their vital function, blocking the environment energy flow. The lack of this energy or the stagnated energy may cause the environment, you or your family to get sick. Do this cleaning periodically, and specially being aware that it’s also a mental cleaning.
Tips: broken electronic devices must be eliminated or fixed, because they represent unresolved issues. Light, plants and good aromas improve the energy of the places and of the people who visit them. It’s best to try to avoid arguments in your special rooms, like bedrooms or office, because the energy generated tends to stay in the memory of the places.
2 – Eat Well
Do respect mealtime. Pay attention to what you are doing. Don’t concentrate on TV and don’t schedule business meetings at this time. Avoid talking about problems. Calm down, look at the food and remember: what you are eating is going to your cells and will be part of you, physically and mentally. Your body is originally 100% natural. An artificial meal is not compatible with your nature. Avoid red meat as well, because the animals are mistreated during their entire lives, especially at time of slaughter.
All those emotions like fear, despair, and sadness impregnate the meat in the form of negative energy. Think about it!
3 – Pay Attention to You
Pay attention to your thoughts. You have thousands of thoughts throughout the day, some negative, others positive. You are not your thoughts, but they have a huge influence over your life. If you have more negative thoughts, it indicates you are a negative person, your life is not good, and the people and situations you attract are also in the same negative frequency. You can change your life by changing the quality of your thoughts. As far as the negative ones, you cannot eliminate them, but can reduce their negative influence by cultivating positive and elevated thoughts.
Just by paying attention to your thoughts, you will have more control over your mental energy and consequently over your life. Try to read positive statements and biographies of successful people. But when a negative thought jumps in your mind, repeat seven times:This thought has no power over me. With time, you will notice that there are roses as well as thorns in the garden, and that happiness is a gift to those who observe the roses, and sadness to those who only look at the thorns. Think positively!
There are five types of thoughts:
- Negative: pessimistic thoughts. It’s to think that nothing will go well.
- Useless: those that start with if. To think about something that could have happened but it hasn’t is a loss of energy and time.
- Common: those daily routine thoughts that make us think about bills, errands, and practical decisions.
- Positive: the optimistic ones. To believe in oneself and to bet that everything will go well.
- Elevated: the spiritual ones, when we intend to help someone, do something good, or talk to God.
Throughout the day, our thoughts vary. But at the end of the day, after reflecting about them, we can have an idea of what type of thought was predominant and if it is compatible with the quality of your life. Remember that your life quality can be negative, useless, common, positive or elevated. It only depends on the thoughts you usually nurture during your days.
4 – Have objectives in life
Do have material and spiritual objectives. Try always to improve your financial situation. Plan to buy goods, make investments, travel and do everything you want because you have this right. But remember never to depend on these material acquisitions to live emotionally well. They cannot guarantee it! True happiness is only reached through spiritual objectives.
Try to become a more patient, good, serene, trustworthy, and friendly person, as well as humble, open, honest, and simple. And, especially, a person who believes and has faith in life. These and only these objectives can ensure balance, satisfaction, and the reason to live.
5 – Exercise
Choose an exercise you like: walking, dancing, and swimming are excellent activities. Exercises stimulate vital energy flow, generating besides a better physical conditioning, a great feeling of well being. Bioenergetics exercises such as yoga, tai chi chuan, belly dancing, among others, are also fundamental to body and mind balance. The hardest part regarding exercises is to make the decision to start, to take the first step. But after 21 days of practice, the brain registers it as a habit and everything becomes easier.
6 – Use you talents
You have gifts and talents. Discover what they are and start practicing them. Your physical and emotional health depends a lot on them. People that don’t use this creative energy block their energy flow and become physically and emotionally ill. Direct your talents to the purpose of helping people have better lives. This is an excellent way to find pleasure, balance and progress in your life.
7 – Meditate Every Day
Meditation is the alternative medicine of the body and the mind. Besides being therapeutic, it is the best tool to personal and spiritual growth. Pay attention: learning to meditate, you will discover, with time, the difference between what is really important to your life and what is not. You will become more objective and have more self-assurance. With meditation you cure your body, improve your memory and concentration, stimulate intuition and perception. You willll become a more energetic, productive, pleasant and serene person. The way each one chooses to meditate is very personal.
There are several techniques and rituals. Each person should practice the way that makes her/him feel better. Look for a book, a class, or a mentor, but do it! Because meditation will really improve your life and will make you reunite the most important person in the world: yourself!
8 – Accept life
Stop complaining right now! Tune you mind into the good things life has to offer. Accept living in this blue planet and enjoy the trip the best way you can. Remember that life will come to an end, so take advantage of it. Help people, be an honest, happy person, and try to work with love. Accept your house and possessions. Accept people the way they are and, specially, accept yourself, your body and personality the way they are. But that doesn’t mean to get accommodated with life is problems and difficulties. We should seek the power to change what we can, and the acceptance of what we cannot change.
9 – Visit Nature
Make it a goal. At least once a month, pay a visit to Mother Nature. She has the power to purify the cells and calm the spirit down. The ocean neutralizes negative energies and recharges the electromagnetic field (aura). Waterfalls activate cellular life and also energize the aura, besides hydrating skin and hair. The green activates the inner self-healing process, physically as well as emotionally. To walk barefoot on the ground helps to discharge negative energy. And don’t forget: you are part of Nature and must be in harmony with it if you want to maintain or recover the quality of your life.
10 – Talk to God
In the early times, spiritualist Greek people avoided pronouncing God’s name because they believed their vocabulary was too limited to express His greatness. Therefore, every time that they had to talk about God they used the expression All. Learn to be in tune with the All; that’s around and specially inside your heart. The best way? It’s up to you. The important thing here is to desire it to happen. Remember: what you are looking for the most is already inside of you!
* Marcelo de Almeida is an organizational consultant and therapist, expert in neurolinguistic programming, human development and quality of life. He is a director of the Instituto Marcelo de Almeida and of RH Brasil Consultoria Empresarial in São Paulo, Brazil.
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