Tag Archives: students

Only for people with low self esteem

Dear reader,

if you are one of those who consider themselves not being self confident, not having very high self esteem and who are experiencing doubts about your skills, abilities, etc., ..

.. this post is for you. If you are fully confident you are one of the best, this post is not for you, so do not keep going.

I’m seeing enormous numbers of clients since September. Men, women, various age, different ethnical groups, social class and definitely different abilities. Before starting to work as a coach and more recently, as a therapist, I worked as a head of tutors for students with disabilities. Hence I met many students. I trained several hundreds of people in numerous groups. Let me tell you a secret.

People I met who were the most capable, special, most skilled, gifted and promising were people, whose self esteem was rather low or very low. These people were full of doubts and very often pretty insecure, quiet and shy.

Their bright minds prohibited them to see their own brilliance, which was probably the reason why others could see and recognise it.

Mass media persuade us high self esteem and self confidence is the key to success. By this we are targeting the belief that we should believe we are something special and that we can do whatever we opt to, no matter what. I think high self esteem is not the key to success and growth. Here’s why.

  • If we believe we are something special and unstoppable, but without moral values concerning the wellbeing of others, we can easily become brutal, heartless and without any internal boundaries. Some of the gangster leaders, brokers, bankers, owners of multinationals are very high in self esteem. Yet only look at what they are doing to our community.
  • Thinking we are special does not necessarily make us special. If you think you can sing, doesn’t necessarily mean you really can.
  • Being content too quickly leads to sloppiness and shallowness. If you are happy with your achievements and inputs of average quality, you are not likely to be heading down the masterpiece route.
  • Yes, it is more likely you will be noticed and yes it is more likely you will have more doors open if you are high in self esteem. Yet if that’s about it for you, people will notice soon enough. And on the long run it doesn’t pay off. You need to demonstrate some real skills then. And they do not develop through nourishing your self esteem.
  • Even if you do have the skills and are truly gifted, having high self esteem can easily drag you into the zone of comfort. This is where you stop being modest and from there you won’t be able to grow any further.

Here’s on the other hand how having low self esteem works for you:

  • You are your worst enemy and no.1 critique. If you do something that you consider good, it is probably a masterpiece.
  • People like spending time in your company, because you can actually listen and are interested in what they have to say, others than talking about yourself
  • You don’t mind being and working alone, because you do not rely on others opinion.
  • When people criticise you, you take their opinion seriously. It might paralyse you for a moment or two, but once you recover, you will improve and get better.
  • The Pareto principle is not for you. Once you go into something, you strive towards perfection. Imagine what a gem you are for the team and to your boss … Imagine having someone like you as a help. Invaluable!

The bottom line: it is much easier to climb a step up and admit to yourself that you actually deserve some of the glory when you truly worked hard for it, than to step down from the pedestal of fake successes you ascribe to yourself. So I am really concerned by this mantra of being super confident, self assured, etc. It leads us to a society of narcissistic, self-reliant individuals. And yet I’m hopeful. Because I see many people. I met and am meeting many people. Many of them are not confident, some not confident at all and have very low self esteem. And this post is a tribute to them – thank you so much for letting me be with you on your remarkable journey and for teaching me this valuable lesson I’m sharing in today’s post! You are and will make this world bright again!

Biba

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Get over yourself: You’re Not Special

Dear reader,

I see quite some number of students in one-on-one sessions. Many of them are quite miserable, especially freshmen and fresh graduates. They have problems in decision making, with procrastination, concentration, problems with relationships, bad habits or problems related to their socio-economic situation. But most of them are quite unhappy, they feel trapped, disappointed, sometimes even bored and sick of everything. They want something big to happen in their life, they are waiting for their breakthrough and somehow nothing happens. They want to dream and achieve big, but someting goes wrong. Why does everybody have a better life than I have? Everybody travels, everybody has 500 likes on facebook, everybody has better times than I have. I hate my life, my body, my friends, nothing really matters to me, they say sometimes.

Of course most of them are doing great in sessions eventually, but before the change can happen, they need to swallow a huge piece of fact most of them did not see coming. The fact that they are not special.

It hurts knowing that you actually don’t stand out of the crowd. It hurts like hell to confess that you might actually be “just” the average. The thing is that many of these young people were brought up by permissive parenting, without borders and with self esteem boosters, which was a mantra through the last 20 or 30 years. It’s neither their fault, nor their parent’s.  It was Zeitgeist. But what happens with youngsters who were told that they were perfect?  That they were special? First, they have hard time to learn respect for others. Second, they  are waiting to be served, because that’s what they are used to. Third, eventually they grow up. And as they do, they become miserable, because the big breakthrough they were waiting for, doesn’t happen. They start getting bad grades and blame their professors. They drop out of university and they blame their parents or the school system. They don’t get jobs and they blame the employers. I’m not saying it isn’t partly on other stakeholder’s shoulders, just want to illustrate that it’s always somebody else’s fault and never theirs.

In the crowd where everybody was told to be perfect and special, suddenly there isn’t anything special about being special. Realising this hurts. So what happens is that they wait, thinking “Sure, we’re not that perfect and not everybody can be”, but secretly they think: “but I am an exception.” Sorry, sadly, you’re 99% not. No, you’re not that 1 percent.

Neither am I, or is your neighbour, a friend, your boss, our president, that popstar on youtube. Most of us are just average. And there’s nothing bad about that, because that binds us; that unites us. In the world imbued with individualism and competition it is long forgotten what collectivity looks like. This might be one tiny reminder that we’re all in this together. And that’s okay. Others are miserable too. So don’t make their life even more miserable. When you suffer, look in the eyes of others. They are suffering too. We all want to be accepted, appreciated, loved. And we all deserve this. That’s actually the slogan of our fb page. We deserve this. But we are nothing special.

So as soon as you realize the bigger picture and forget about yourself a little bit, you are awarded immensely. You are able to breathe. You no longer feel pressured to perform. No longer have to compare to others. No longer have to worry whether you’ll manage. Because you can trust that you will, somehow. You have done it before and you can do it again. Only this time without this overwhelming feeling of self-care, self confidence, self image, self pride and stupid self-help industry products and inventions.

You are great. And so are others. Stop comparing, because you’re no better than they are. Or worse. We’re in this together.

frzol

None of these beans were anything special. But together they made a perfect salad.

The Campaign – a Word about Money

Dear reader, Since I’ve told you about the big news gone bad, I moved on, looking for other possibilities. I’m a very altruistic person, money plays little role on my priority scale. However we both know where (sadly) the power is and that money does make the world go round (the good news about this being it doesn’t bring any sense for its spinning – other things that money cannot buy provide that!).

So I started looking elsewhere, how I can make my dreams come true on one hand without losing my passion and energy by being absorbed in financial issues and on the other offer my knowledge and time to everybody without charging for that. I still hope these things go hand in hand, so I’ve launched a campaign of fundraising for my project.

Today a dear friend of mine whom I’ve met in London sent me a message, commenting my campaign in terms that I should think about how to engage people to feel that there can be some difference through my project and I need to show how I want things to be. He’s really smart and has helped me before, so I’m taking his advice seriously. If you’re following this blog regularly, you might have some clue about what I want and why I want that. Still it might be a good idea to put it into concrete details and outline the project more specifically, since I didn’t want to do that in the campaign description (wanted to be very short and precise).

I expect this project to be a masterpiece. I want to do with the students the same as spring does to the cherry trees (P. Neruda’s quote). I want to help them blossom, discover their full potential not only in academic sense, but also in their core qualities, their inner beauty. Since I’ve been engaged through one form or another in student academic and extracurricular activities I’ve seen a lot. Also being a student myself, I know it’s a huge pressure to be a “good” student. Besides, I’ve experienced some very tough time myself and was also very ill, but there was nobody who would offer me support. I’ve experienced exclusion, shame, stigma and lots of pain. Pain caused by words, denial, avoidance and physical pain as well. There were doctors, all sorts of specialists I didn’t want to go. There was no one, who would listen, who would understand. I had suicidal thoughts and have caused lots of harm to my body. Everybody pretended they didn’t notice. This has been going on for quite some years before I came to university.

Most people, according to statistics collapse and fail. I survived. I had to pull myself up, it was one of the hardest things I had to do and yet the one I’m most proud of. Even though I did some very nasty things that were very wrong and I’ve caused lots of trouble especially to my family, this is a part of my life that helped me shape into the person I am today. Back then I was alone, couldn’t talk to anyone and yet I managed. Still I remember how deeply I wished there was someone or something that I could run to and rest a bit, just put my head into someone’s lap and close my eyes for a moment and forget about everything. That has always been my driving force that pushed me forward in doing what I do with my students. I wasn’t lucky to be provided with support. But I can be that support for somebody else, because I understand. Not everything, but I understand at least what it’s like, when it’s really bad.

So my dear reader and potential contributor, that’s what I HAVE TO DO. Be the one for those who need it, be the one I didn’t have. Students come to me because they feel welcomed, they feel accepted and safe. The effects we both (a student and I) witness in sessions are hard to describe. Just one session can sometimes cause huge consequences in terms that a student realizes she/he can do it and is not alone. But I can’t do that voluntary my whole life and at the same time I want the students to have free support. That’s why I need your help.

So if this project is to succeed, here’s what you (engaging) might be part of:

– if you are from the higher education area and the project is running at your institution, you may notice better student’s performance, less stress and more cooperation. Solution focused approach brings people together and fosters collaboration instead of competition.

– If you are a company or an employer you’ll benefit from confident and reflecting graduates, who might gain their confidence in the sessions.

– If you are not directly engaged, still there’s a chance you’ll have an intern who has benefited from this project. Or a business partner. Or a spouse, a son in law, etc. Because all these students will one day take the role in society. If they are able to fly instead of being depressed, then the future society looks good. My faculty (and university) is large, our graduates travel and move across the globe. So you never know when you’ll meet someone who’s been down at a certain point in their life, but with this project he/she got the support to develop the wings.

– If you want, you can be an active part of it. I’m always opened to new ideas, new partners, who share the same ideals. If you want, I’ll come deliver a workshop for you. Or a training course. Or can help you with what I have to offer. And I may not have everything. But what I do have is unique, it’s real, based on my own personal experience and it’s provided with honesty and enthusiasm.

Take care. Now time for some garden soup.

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Sky’s not the limit today.