Sunday, May 20, 2001		Stressbusters

Fifteen steps to a more confident you
V.K. Kapoor

RECOGONISE your strengths and weaknesses and set your goals accordingly. Decide what you value, what you believe in, what you realistically would like your life to be like. Take an inventory of your library of stored scripts and bring them up to date, in line with the psychological space you are in now, so they will serve you where you are headed.

Determine what your roots are. By examining your past, seek out the lines of continuity and the decisions that have brought you to your present place. Try to understand and forgive those who have hurt you and not helped when they could have. Forgive yourself for mistakes, sins, failures, and past embarrassments. Permanently bury all negative self-remembrances after you have sifted out any constructive value they may provide. The bad past lives on in your memory only as long as you let it be a tenant. Prepare an eviction notice immediately. Give the room to memories of your past successes, however minor.

Guilt and shame have limited personal value in shaping your behaviour toward positive goals. Don’t allow yourself to indulge in them.

Look for the causes of your behaviour in physical, social, economic, and political aspects of your current situation and not in personality defects in you.

Remind yourself that there are alternative views to every event. "Reality" is never more than shared agreements among people to call it the same way rather than as each one separately sees it. This enables you to be more tolerant in your interpretation of others’ intentions and more generous in dismissing what might appear to be rejections or put-downs of you.

Never say bad things about yourself; especially, never attribute to yourself irreversible negative traits, like "stupid", "ugly", "uncreative," "a failure", "incorrigible".

Don’t allow others to criticise you as a person; it is your specific actions that are open for evaluation and available for improvement — accept such constructive feedback graciously if it will help you.

Remember that sometimes failure and disappointment are blessings in disguise, telling you the goals were not right for you, the effort was not worth it, and a bigger letdown later on may be avoided.

Do not tolerate peoples, jobs and situations that make you feel inadequate. If you can’t change them or yourself enough to make you feel more worthwhile, walk on out, or pass them by. Life is too short to waste time on downers.

Give yourself the time to relax, meditate, listen to yourself, enjoy hobbies and activities you can do alone. In this way, you can get in touch with yourself.

Practice being a social animal. Enjoy feeling the energy that other people transmit, the unique qualities and range of variability of our brothers and sisters. Imagine what their fears and insecurities might be and how you could help them. Decide what you need from them and what you have to give. Then, let them know that you are ready and open to sharing.

Stop being so overprotective about your ego; it is tougher and more resilient that you imagine. It bruises but never breaks. Better it should get hurt occasionally from an emotional commitment that didn’t work out as planned than get numbed from the emotional insulation of playing it too cool.

Develop long-range goals in life, with highly specific short-range sub-goals. Develop realistic means to achieve these sub-goals. Evaluate your progress regularly and be the first to pat yourself on the back or whisper a word of praise in your ear. You don’t have to worry about being unduly modest if no one else hears you boasting.

You are not an object to which bad things just happen, a passive nonentity hoping, like a garden slug, to avoid being stepped on. You are the culmination of millions of years of evolution of our species, of your parents’ dreams, of God’s image. You are a unique individual who, as an active action in life’s drama, can make things happen. You can change the direction of your entire life any time you choose to do so. With confidence in yourself, obstacles turn into challenges and challenges into accomplishments. Shyness then recedes, because, instead of always preparing for and worrying about how you will life your life, you forget yourself as you become absorbed in the living of it.