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Tag Archives: overcoming poor self esteem


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Hearing and Listening in Relationships

Hello and Welcome !  The foundational work of relationship is to maintain a connection and alignment with self while simultaneously connecting with your partner.  It requires a thorough understanding of yourself to do this.  You have to have a sense of what matters to you, your goals, your talents, and your limitations so that you can negotiate the common ground of the relationship or partnership with your partner.

This is harder to accomplish than your may think because humans have a tendency to hide information from themselves or distort truth in order to feel accepted or to feel approval or fit in to their chosen group.  This tendency to hide internal needs may, in one’s youth, assist in avoiding difficult situations or even surviving difficult environments – but the habit later becomes a powerful deterrent to a successful partnership.

Seeking internal guidance and developing an image of your self that coordinates all of the necessary components of your being into a congruent and coherent whole is the first step.

Seek first to know thyself; this suggestion is centered in the understanding that through self-knowledge you can attain your highest goals easily and happily.  Once you have an understanding of who you are you can then begin to connect with another in partnership.  When you begin the connection process you need to have a certain knowledge of yourself and then you can focus your attention on understanding the other.  Through this investigative process you develop the connecting points of your relationship. The better developed your hearing and listening skills, the more facile your capacity to develop relationships.

When beginning a self-discovery, first be willing to accept yourself precisely where you are – it is only through this acceptance that you will have the strength, understanding, and compassion to love yourself.  And through love you can then determine if you have things you would like to change in yourself.  Self knowing is a starting place for self-development, and relationship development.

One common  problem that happens with hearing in relationship is that people get into a habit of hearing what has been said in the past or hearing with a historical negative energy – so that they aren’t actually listening but rather already preparing a defense to what they think they heard.

You may be able to discern this is happening if you are surprised by your partner’s response – for example you say something innocuous and they respond by yelling or with a very negative attitude – using your listening skills you hear the dissonance between what you meant and what was heard by your partner – before mounting your own defensive action I suggest you first ask this question”  what did you hear me say?”  This will get you and your partner refocused into the present so you can communicate more clearly.  And then you can each listen to each other more fully, respectfully and lovingly.

This is true for love and work relationships.

Listening and speaking in a thorough manner when developing the expectations in any relationship will assist both parties in getting what they truly want and connecting more deeply.

This of course is the basic description of mindfulness.  Discovering another’s paradigm as well as your own and then shifting these to see the connecting threads is the place of true intimacy, love, and relationship.

This requires attention to subtlety without judgment and with a focus on connection and clarity with acceptance, compassion, and dispassionate observation.  It requires hearing and listening both – hearing being that component of noticing when something is off, changes in another’s tone, and tenor – and listening being that component of content, meaning, and feeling that we need to listen to from within us and from the perspective the other.

When I am hearing another I feel their meaning from within me and when I am listening I am aware of not just what I perceive but their perspective as well.

Hearing and Listening to another is the ultimate gift of care – it reveals visibility.  From this deep connecting point many negotiation paths are available for relationship.

This is especially true because our world is one of language and verbal, cognitive symbols so that being heard directly relates to being seen and therefore being real.  It is why in the reverse many are drawn to do things against their nature through words that drag them away from their true center.

By focusing our attention on truly listening and hearing the true meaning and perspective of another  we can develop powerful and sustaining relationships as well as avoid those that seem good on the surface but are without sustenance underneath.

Listening and hearing are fundamental tools in relationship.

May your true spirit be heard wherever you go. With the tone of love and light, Beth.


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inner guidance IV

Hello and Welcome!  I love the name of this post because it could be read inner guidance intravenous (IV) and I think that is the whole thing in a nut shell.  Infuse yourself with your own inner guidance and your cells will swell with real joy, strength and the necessary resources to create anything you desire.

Remember two things:   that mindfulness, compassion, and love are your best tools AND following your inner guidance simultaneously supports you and your community.  This is a different notion than scarcity of resources where competition for resources is required – this notion is that inner guidance will increase opportunity for all.  The idea of taking from another to fill your pocket keeps you in the duality that results from the concept of scarcity of resources.

Opening to your inner guidance increases trust and faith so that you are able to see how you and your community can prosper and uplevel together, not one over the other.

The more you can see another person’s point of view through mindfulness–> the more increased your understanding –> and the greater your understanding, the greater your capacity to see the other as yourself –> see how you are similar –>which increases your capacity for compassion and love –>  and through this:  war, conflict, and those activities that spawn from mis-understanding will diminish and an overall upleveling and prosperity for all is increased.

Here are some reminders on how to get back to your inner guidance.

1 always draw your strength from within and source*.

  • *source as spirit, god, the spiritual universe as you connect with it as an entity or energy or supportive pattern.

2 to do so feel, listen and see your internal presence and connection to source through your internal sensory guidance system, your 6 senses – surround yourself with love and light and joy.  

  • Listen to your inner guidance over and above the propaganda around you . 

3 remember to focus on a higher spiritual plane and understand changes come on the planet from stepping out of the earthly battle and into the spiritual light –

  • so if you are feeling let down by the infighting, in politics or tragedies – Focus your energies in being even more light even more love and forgiveness – smile – and ‘do battle’ by living in that light with spirit. 
  •  think of the battle as not against human forces but against the mistruth or lack of truth.

4 to remain steadfast, surround your self with source and the inner truth. 

  • This can be like an armor or coat of truth, light, and love – surrounding yourself with that energy so that you can feel more protected as you see through the lens of compassion and love.

5 believing is seeing –  so believe, know the truth and you will be shown and will see light, spirit and prosperity –

  • ignore and look away from the propaganda of the earthly plane – political and business – focus on spirit for guidance and truth – 
  • make each choice from an integrated and spiritual connection and then you will feel strength from your feet all the way up your spine to your head or crown – surrounding your waist like a belt and spilling out and around your chest and heart center.

6 walk in the truth of what you know and remember to always be in gratitude and love –

  • mercury is seen as wearing wings on his feet and on a helmet on his head consider the power of the swiftness of truth to spread through a community – 
  • truth spreads more quickly than propaganda because it goes straight into your heart – no glitches or questions.

7 Through everything have faith and be faithful, when you feel fearful acknowledge this and then stand in your faith turning the fear on its head –

  • it’s fine to be educated about what is happening around you in the politics but act from your inner truth and inner guidance

8 see the way and follow it like a path – 

  •  Know your truth, live it, say it, feel it, see it, be it!

9 share your knowing with the world in love and light without pressure or hardness – 

  • Meditate, be mindful, listen from within and share it at every opportunity.

This is the way to inner guidance and it can bring you an infusion of peace, joy and prosperity.

In love and light, many blessings to you, Beth


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ego re-balancing – inner guidance II

Hello and Welcome!  There is a lot of reference of the negative of the “ego” among alternative healers and spiritual healers.  These groups tend to perceive the ego as negative; this is a matter of not understanding the role of ego in self-development, and further of mis-connecting ego and narcissism.

The story of the ego to which I refer is its identification  in the development of self, and each person’s interaction with self and other.  The ego is that aspect of your personal self that can mediate between your personal wants disconnected from society and your belief systems swallowed whole from society.  Ego basically is mediating between individual wants or needs and the needs or wants of the group.  So from this perspective ego is a neutral more helpful aspect of your personality.  It is the part of you that can be objective and see self and other on the same plane.

Narcissism is a more problematic aspect of personality.  Narcissism is a skew in personality away from mindfulness and neutrality and objectivity.  Narcissism is problematic in relationship as individuals who are narcissistic have little to no capacity for empathy.

Empathy is the shear act of paradigm shifting – putting yourself in another’s position and understanding that other’s perspective.  Mindfulness, lovingkindness attitude and paradigm shifting require empathy.  Lack of empathy disconnects you from society and others.  Narcissism allows you to take actions without regard for how you may hurt another and focuses your actions on self alone without a connection to society as a whole.

Your cognitive mind has a way of tricking you.  It is a thinking aspect – with cognitive firings and logic.  It is that aspect that can get caught into a habit of relating, or be guided by indoctrination.  You can think of mind as an aspect of the information available to you as part of your inner guidance but when it is disconnected from spirit it can skew perceptions and actions out of balance.

These groups that teach you their language and then have you act by that set of symbols and beliefs are having you work with your mind while simultaneously saying your ego (aka mind) is guiding you away from your true self – which from their specific perspectives is whatever they are teaching.  Be aware.  Allow yourself to trust yourself first.

Ego allows for the integration of mind and spirit as it allows for empathy and negotiated action that synthesizes individual and groups needs/wants.

The simple rule found in so many spiritual texts to not treat others as you would not desire to be treated incorporates ego, mind, spirit integrated and in balance – it requires empathic lovingkindness guide your action.

Guidance from without must be filtered through your inner guidance to experience its truth.

Truth is not an abstract concept to be discussed and proved through the cognitions of the mind in isolation, but rather it is something that is a trifold experience of knowing, feeling, and understanding.

You can feel when it is not truth.  Something doesn’t ring true, look right, feel right.  There is a catch in how the information goes on or a blip or bump – if you are paying attention you know it – you fully and completely know it.

The tricky part is the paying attention part.

If you are simply on automatic and going through life as a passive receiver then you may miss the information present in every interaction, in each dream, and story, and connection you make or have.  This includes how you respond or react to the story of your politics, your family, your ethnic group, your partner, and your peers.  The stereotypes you allow to guide you rather than the personal information you feel, hear, see, know from within.

Paying attention requires attentiveness, awareness, openness, and a willingness to follow the inner thread of inner guidance.  To risk discovery of new information, change your opinions, and allow truth to be revealed.

Each person is unique when born.  Each life has a unique path.  Each being is special.  Each of us is a child of source energy, of god or spirit.  Each has access to source energy through the source guidance built into her cells, into her internal sensory system – her six senses.

These are always present within you and speaking to you all the time if you would just listen.

You actually are constantly being directed through your inner guidance through these messages; when you feel like something that someone says is off then that is a message from within.  Paying attention to these messages through your intuition, your inner hearing, seeing, knowing, feeling.  This is the fastest and most effective way to get onto your path and create your life fortune.

The truth will set you free and following your bliss will indeed bring you success.

So here’s an important message – if you are not doing what you want or living at your highest potential – go within reconnect through you internal guidance system with yourself.  You can use prayer, meditation, Yoga, running, ice skating, walking, dancing, writing, journaling, dreaming, sound, toning, therapy, or anything that assists you in connecting with your inner truth – but the key is that whatever you use your guide is within, not without, and the answer is personal, empathic, and loving.

When you begin to listen, pay attention to the subtle, gentle messages in the background not the angry, emotional loud messages in the foreground.

Your personal inner guidance will generally not yell at you unless you are about to have a car accident.  Otherwise it’s just a quiet, firm yet light message or vibration  turn here, let go, trust, believe, and ooh that doesn’t feel, sound, look right.

And give your self/ego a break – your ego is trying to mediate all your inner wants and outer expectations – have a little empathy, love and kindness toward yourself while you begin to acquaint yourself with your inner guidance.

Thanks for your continued interest and support, please pass on this information as you are guided to do so – more joy for everyone, in love and light, Beth


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In the search for security, self-confidence is the first milestone

Hello and Welcome to my new readers!

The idea of security drives much of human action and directed behavior. The search for security can take many paths.  There are different forms of security attached to financial, physical, emotional, relational, and personal safety and various personalities are drawn to various hierarchies of security.  The path chosen will be focused on the core insecurity for the person.

So if you find that being alone is difficult or you have your strongest feelings of insecurity around relationships then it was in that portion of your life that you have a lack of security and a lack of strength.  If you live here then money may not be of much importance but human interaction is a focus of security.  Individuals who live here will say,  “the money will come” but if someone doesn’t respond to them quickly they begin to catastrophize about the meaning of the lack of communication, sometimes even after 15 minutes of waiting.

If you focus on making money and creating financial security then not having money creates an inner sense of insecurity.  If you live here then relationships have less of a pull on you but wealth creation and savings is of great importance.  Individuals who live here easily let go of other people’s needs or requests and in general can survive with few connections but they have difficulty spending the wealth they created.  They may be unable to spend their money even on fairly necessary things because the spending causes them to feel paralyzed by insecurity.  This is an example of someone who has the funds but never spends it – the money in the bank, or in some cases millions under the mattress, creates no sense of comfort except in the knowing it is there.

How a person develops a sense of insecurity is related to his early circumstances, his place in society, his parent’s perspective of security and his personal temperament and skill set.

So an individual who focuses on financial security will usually have a story or myth behind it that describes a powerful point in his life when he was without money and the lack of money felt dire, dangerous, and life-threatening.  The gathering and having of money becomes the object of security.

In a different circumstance an individual who focuses on connection or relationship for security will have a story of being abandoned and the abandonment will feel like a dire, life-threatening situation.  Physical neglect and abuse in early childhood can feel like an abandonment and individuals can develop an insecurity in relationship as a result of this.  The relationship, being connected to someone, is the object of security.

The issue of insecurity is an equation of the experience plus the attached story or belief system connected to a feeling of life-or-death.  So not all individuals that come from poverty or abuse, who have a challenging financial situation or individuals who have dealt with abandonment, will develop this sense of insecurity.

And this sense of insecurity is something that shows up along a continuum, from slight to overwhelming.  On the slight end of the continuum, supportive groups and talking oneself through the anxiety can be enough to decrease the internal reaction or imbalance.  On the more overwhelming end it can be debilitating, interfering with an individual’s capacity to function.

The word security can conjure up many different connotations: a sense of physical safety, inner balance, laws and rules; the meanings are diverse but the underlying concept seems to refer to a sense of balance and safety.

In order to create a sense of security, the work needs to begin at home.  The first step is to build an internal sense of security or self-confidence and inner strength.

Child development theorists talk about this as the first stage of development for children.  It develops out of trust or mistrust of your caregiver. From there, following Erik Erikson’s developmental model, each stage builds on the previous stage.  A feeling of trust and confidence will lead to self-confidence, competence, success in relationships and career.  Creating this pathway for your child is a function of being present and real with her.  Creating this for yourself is a function of returning to neutral, returning to balance, through meditation and paradigm shifting with compassion and lovingkindness toward others and yourself.

Mindful meditation is a useful habit to help create this.

A feeling of mistrust can skew the development of these capacities; it can decrease your chance to develop the positive aspects of the stages.  It can result in a lack of self-confidence, insecurity, timidity, a lack of internal strength, a sense of incompetence and ultimately if enough aspects are negatively affected then insecurity can create an individual who has difficulty with relationships, is unable to make basic decisions, and breaks down in nominally stressful situations.

This situation can be positively affected with meditation, prayer, breathing, and reality testing through compassionate paradigm shifting.

The first milestone to shifting your relationship with security into balance is through the development of self-confidence.

More about how to development self-confidence and stave off insecurity in upcoming blogs.  Also see February 3, 2011, blog instinctive health medicine, self-confidence vs insecurity, and other blogs through the search icon above under insecurity.

See you tomorrow.

Beth