The Basics
Though we had little control over the initial processes that established and configured our self esteem and self confidence simply because we were young and had not developed the knowledge and experiences necessary to defend and protect ourselves against outside influences, that is no longer the situation. Now we can go back into the programming and evaluate it from a new and more intelligent perspective and toss the thinking patterns and habits that are negative and unproductive and replace them with new and more relevant instructions. This time it will be the result of what we decide is right for our own best interests rather than those of someone else or some social ideal or agenda.
But when it comes to changing our thinking and behavior patterns, it is very helpful to understand how we acquired them in the first place. Generally, the initial sources of influence were parents, school, social environment (such as peers), self esteem (our initial estimate of self worth), courage and faith.
Parents: If we are fortunate enough to have parents who are intelligent, caring and thoughtful, then we grow up in an environment in which we are accepted for what we are rather than always trying to be what our parents want us to be and perform to their expectation of what we should be, and so have to deal with their disappointment at our failure to please them and achieve their goals. If we are fortunate enough to have parents who actually care about us more than themselves and their own interests, then our parents will be encouraging and supportive of our attempts to become independent and successful, otherwise we may never develop the self worth and confidence that is actually natural to us and can only not develop if we are tampered with by outside influences including parents. Parents are powerful but not necessarily good or valuable influences.
School: School and genuine education are not necessarily the same thing. Generally speaking, modern schools are little more than child care solutions for the teenage human life forms because the so called adults simply are not yet intelligent enough to figure out how best to utilize young humans in the current social and economic configuration of civilization, which may reflect on their own lack of genuine education. That said, schools today are more about social networking and random personality development and however shallow and superficial it may be, it is never the less a powerful influence on the developing mind. If you are not prepared by your parents with strength of character and strong self worth before you enter this arena, you may well have your spirit crushed here.
Social Environment: Usually a spin-off of school and the tendency to group by interests and personality, this influence is more about the reinforcement of the school influences than anything else. It's power is in the amount of time we are exposed to it. This is where the power of conditioning comes into play in our lives along with the influences exerted by media such as television and games which are extremely powerful influences that have extremely powerful affects.
Self Esteem: This is a basic that is established initially in the home by the parents and then reinforced by our interaction with the outside world. The outside world will automatically reinforce our feelings of high self worth or low self worth depending on which we bring from our home environment. Self worth should never be dependent on anything other than the fact that we are living creatures. If it is based on anything else, it is in peril, and this is a critical fundamental upon which whole lives are built or destroyed. Confidence in ourselves is not likely to develop from a position of low self esteem.
Courage: Courage relates to spirit, and sadly many children have their spirits crushed early in their lives by demanding and thoughtless parents. It is incredible to think we have laws against marijuana and not against incompetent parents. There is a huge need to establish intensive training and certification of parents before they are allowed to undertake the extremely important responsibility of raising new human life forms. This need is based on the fact that our species is devolving rather than evolving. Courage is linked to the excitement of being alive and exploring possibilities and those activities are in turn linked to how much confidence and faith we have in ourselves. Risk is a part of learning and growing.
Faith: Faith takes courage because of its highly speculative nature. Growing up in our material world where it is all about what we can verify by direct senses even though it is clear that we are spiritual life forms, makes it difficult to just let go and rely on a reality that we cannot verify directly. Even after our faith repeatedly performs as advertised we are reluctant to find the courage to risk the unknown territory of feeling confident in the idea that we can do something that we may not have done before. But most of this attitude is based on the ideas of success and failure and what those ideas may mean. These concepts have meaning only in a competitive reality, but are actually meaningless in themselves. Mistakes are an opportunity to learn and nothing more or less. Believing in ourselves and our abilities is a no-brainer and a requirement for self confidence.
Armed with this kind of information and the knowledge that we have enormous personal power with which to implement any changes or modification we find necessary in our lives, there is no excuse for not reconfiguring ourselves if we find that we are the victims of low self esteem and a lack of self confidence. We can change the thinking patterns that were established early in our lives and change the quality of our lives profoundly.
See how self hypnosis can help you gain self confidence here.
Robert Darby is a self change and personal development specialist who writes for many organizations including The Agenda Of Life Foundation He focuses on developing personal power and development since that is usually the cause of all Human problems. Largely due to his fearless exploration of the true nature of our inner reality, R.E. Darby is emerging as an important writer of our time.