By Gael Lindenfield
In How To Feel Good in Difficult Times, readers will learn to work through negative feelings, reclaim their sense of self-worth and bounce back feeling stronger and even more confident than before. Whatever the cause of your unhappiness and self- doubt – personal, work-related, or a combination of the two – this book gives you all the tools you need to conquer the overwhelm, dust yourself off and regain positivity, whatever life throws at you. How To Feel Good in Difficult Times is available on Amazon and in all good book stores “If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong.”
~ Robert Louis Stevenson, nineteenth- century writer and poet
Self-respect is crucial for psychological health. It is not possible to have genuine self-esteem or self-belief without it. In addition to loving and taking excellent care of your- self, you need to be able to look in the mirror and see someone whom you can also truly respect.
But how is self-respect achieved?
Unfortunately, most of us learn about respect the hard way. A decisive moral awakening for me came from one of my daughters when she was just eleven. I shall never forget the stinging retort she gave me in response to a demand for more respect: “Respect has to be earned, Mother!” Although at the time this felt like a cheeky “below-the-belt” blow, on later reflection I could see that it was well deserved.
Its wisdom still impacts upon my conscience today, and it resounds in my head whenever I need reminding that, just like the respect we have for anyone else, self-respect has to be built on living proof. It isn’t enough to believe in certain moral standards; you must know that you are living by them. This means that when you reflect on your behaviour, your decision-making and your lifestyle, you must be able to see the proof that your actions have been truly in sync with principles you value. Good intentions do not bring self-respect. Anyone who has felt the shame that comes with repeating the same resolution with each new year knows this well enough.
Difficult times frequently confront you with what you really value in life. They are renowned for their ability to act as a “wake-up call”. Although no fallible human can ever maintain moral perfection, true self-respect is only possible if you are convinced that you are doing your very best to live up to your principles.
The best tip for living in line with your own principles is to compile a list of simple life rules. These can then be used as an ever-ready checklist whenever you are confronted by any kind of dilemma. As an example, I’ve shared three of my own below. These life rules have been immensely valuable for me. They work because they were especially created with my particular needs and bad habits in mind – see the comments in brackets. Your life rules would need to be similarly tailored especially for you.
My life rules are:
• To ask myself regularly if I am being true to my real self and my own values (I spent too many years trying to be someone I thought others wanted me to be)
• To spend more time than I think I can afford on relationships that matter most to me (I used to find it hard to say no to anyone who asked for my help, friendship or time; the result was that my close relationships suffered and I was getting burnt out)
• To see the positive in change, however unwelcome it may be (my programmed auto-response to change is depression, even though I have an excellent record of adjustment).
Try creating similar rules for yourself, but remember the following:
• They should feel uplifting rather than burdensome. To be motivating, they must bring you more pleasure than pain, so abiding by them should not feel in any way punishing! This is important because so often there has been an early childhood association between morality and punishment which is etched deep into the neural system. (So remember the wise words of Robert Louis Stevenson quoted at the start of this tip.)
• They should be relevant. They need to fit with your current needs and priorities. This means they will need to be reviewed and possibly changed during or after each life transition or big experience. Most parents, for example, feel that they have to modify their guiding principles once their children come along. Other people say that they have to do this when they reach positions of leadership when it may be more appropriate to take a more conciliatory stance on many issues. During difficult times, you often have to be more compromising than you would otherwise be and this prompts a review of your principles.
• They should be defendable. They have to be able to stand up to the rigour of a “devil’s advocate” test. You can do this for yourself, but you will have even more confidence in your principles if you can test them out with other people. To do the test on your own, use a two- chair exercise, whereby you start by sitting on one chair and making your case for your belief in one rule, then sit in the chair opposite you and take the stance of someone who believes the opposite. To do the test with someone else, ask a friend to take the role of devil’s advocate or, if you are brave, you could start a debate with someone you know who you think truly does have opposite views from you.
• They should be publishable. In other words, they should not give you any cause for embarrassment. They need to reflect values that you are proud to be seen to uphold. If they do not, they will deplete rather than enhance your self-respect and self-belief.
Another way of putting your life rules through a rigorous test is to read books or articles on the Internet which express different views from yours.
Most people find that between three and six guiding life rules listed in hierarchical order is ideal – few enough to commit to memory, but enough to cover the key moral issues that will confront you. If you find it a struggle to come up with a list (and many people do at first attempt) this simple exercise will help you to clarify your key values.
QUICK FIX:
Stifle your selfish survival response with good deeds
Dousing the Protectionism Flames
Newspaper headline during the global financial crisis, 2009]
Twenty leaders from different countries gathered in London on the day of this news story. Their aim was to find ways of collaborating in order to solve the world’s economic problems, as it was clear that “protectionism” (i.e. national selfishness) is one of the greatest obstacles to achieving this goal.
In difficult times, most people naturally prioritise looking after their own, but in the long term, there is a hefty price to be paid for this “survival-of-the-fittest” impulse. Your self-respect will plummet and your relationships with your community will deteriorate.
One way to guard against this happening is to make it a rule for yourself to do one good deed each day, and record your act of kindness in a small notebook or in a file on your computer. You may not keep to your rule each day, but the monitoring process will prevent any selfish protectionist trend from getting its grip on you.
Your record can also serve as a more general self- esteem-boosting resource. Look at it whenever you need a reminder that you are actually “nice” occasionally!
