Comments on: Raising the bar – on self esteem

By: Reg

Reg — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:52:59 +0000

Agree with you, Anne. It’s a shame (putting it mildly and politely) that so many adults consider it to be their duty or their right to indoctrinate young minds.

Whether these adults be parents, teachers, or religious mentors their unspoken attidude is: ‘Here’s a young impressionable mind – let’s fill it with our standards and prejudices and fears!’

It’s often called ‘teaching’ or ‘giving the child standards’.

The Catholic Jesuit Order used to proudly boast ‘Give us the child at 5 and we will give you a Catholic for life!’

By: Anne Bright

Anne Bright — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:02:59 +0000

I pass by your blog on a sporadic basis and often take away little titbits to ruminate upon.

Some years ago I became so aware of the indoctrination that is so pervasive in the young child. The example of the child and the spelling bee is a good example. Another is the concept of the imperfection, the ‘sinner’ concept that is expounded by so many religions. We are never good enough, we are always striving to be better people. The programming is not simply social or emotional, it is also cultural. It’s a hard thing when a religion tells you that you’ll never be good enough!

By: simonroskrow

simonroskrow — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:25:20 +0000

One of the real challenges I find (both in business coaching and in bringing up children) is striking the balance between feeling great about what has been achieved (supporting our self-esteem) whilst avoiding the danger of complacency where people, teams, or organisations decide that they’ve “done enough” or are “good enough”.

One of the great personal developments I’ve had through NLP training is a raised awareness of the extent to which I beat myself up for (self-diagnosed) failure, and ignore, discount, or downplay successes. This old approach has had some positive benefits – in terms of driving me forward – but has had far greater negative consequences – in terms of my self-confidence.

I believe this process is (can be) a quite subtle and long term one, and that there is a real danger of not noticing how it creeps up on you until some major event brings it to your attention. Much of the internal language used becomes very obvious via the Meta Model – I should be better at this (says who) as an example.

This example has brought some clarity to me. The acknowledgment that it is only me saying that I should be better at something, and that actually other people can be pretty impressed, helps me to strike the balance…I’m much more comfortable now, and the internal language has changed – one word only, but a big difference for me:

“I should be better…” has been replaced by

“I could be better…”

That way, I reinforce the belief that I can improve my performance; that the improvement is within my abilities to achieve; and that I have a choice about whether I go for that improvement or not.