The boy that saw a dead dog in the mirror Part II - a series on self-worth

I hope you were able to go to the show notes for Part I and ask yourself  if any of the low self-worth descriptors applied to your life. Every once, and a while I will provide you with specific questions to help you reflect on where you stand and to challenge to create a better version of yourself. Listen, you can’t defeat what you can’t define. You can’t change what you are unwilling to confront.

Self-awareness is key. Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires. Self-awareness requires three questions: what am I doing?, what am I feeling?, and what are my blindspots? As a master life coach I have clients fill out a personal SWOT analysis in order to help them become more self-aware. The personal SWOT analysis is somewhat like x-ray or MRI that helps individuals gain a better understanding of where they stand. It asks four important discovery questions: what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses, what are my opportunities, and what are my threats?

Becoming self-aware takes your life off of auto-pilot and the cyclical monotony that takes you to the same dead end street every time. Self-awareness allows you to shift, adjust, and pivot your life in order to produce a different outcome.

Einstein once said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

People that repeatedly experience significant rejection by others end up believing that deserve to be rejected. They internalize the message and then reject themselves. This is especially true when the rejection is coming from those who are in authority and that the child depends on.

Such children grow up replying in their minds the recorded messages, the rejections they received until that voice becomes their own internal voice. It is virtually impossible for children to replace the big booming voices of their parents with their own small inner voices.

The words spoken over us by our parents and people in authority in our lives 90% of time become prophetic words that materialize in adulthood unless we are able to override such thoughts with the extreme polar opposite. Otherwise you end up developing self-limiting beliefs. In a nutshell limiting beliefs are those ideas that we have believed about ourselves and that keep us from moving forward.

Henry Ford said “whether you think you can or you think you can’t you are absolutely right” In other words whatever you think about self becomes your reality.

Self-limiting beliefs sound like this:

• I can’t
• I don’t
• I won’t ever
• I’m too old
• I’m too young
• I’m too poor
• I’m too fat or too skinny
• I am not smart enough
• I am a mess, I am hopeless
• I don’t have enough time
• Money is the root of all evil
• One day I will change
• I will start tomorrow
• I will never be happy
• I don’t deserve nice things
• I have such bad luck
• I can’t change
• Why even try, I always fail

3 Steps to change your life:

1) Change your belief system (about yourself)

2) Once your belief system has changed it will consequently produce different behavior

3) Different behavior will produce a different outcome