I've heard this story about something that happened when The Dalai Lama first came to the U.S., and I think it's worth repeating.
During the Dalai Lama's first speaking tour, someone asked him why, in all of his talk of compassion and kindness, he never talks about self-esteem. At first, The Dalai Lama didn't understand the question and asked for clarification. According to the story, the explanation brought him to tears.
The Dalai Lama wept because it had never occurred to him that people would feel badly about themselves.
I haven't been able to independently verify this story, but I've heard it from a few different people. Nonetheless, it makes a good point - feeling bad about yourself is not a natural state. It's a cultural phenomena - something we learn.
Now there are things that happen to people that damage their self-esteem - childhood abuse, parental abandonment, other traumas. But the problem of low self-esteem is more pervasive than that.
The media is littered with messages that we're not okay. Most of those messages come from advertisers who tell us we don't wear the right clothes, don't smell right, don't eat the right foods, need to lose weight, don't drive the right car, etc. All of this, of course, comes with the message that "you can feel good about yourself if you buy our product."
But it goes even deeper than that. In his book The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts suggests that our difficulties feeling good about ourselves stem from the myriad of conflicting messages we get starting in childhood. We're encouraged to be spontaneous, but follow the rules; be a free spirit, but don't rock the boat, etc. It's extremely confusing and leads us to wonder if our basic wants, desires and choices are okay - if we're okay.
All of these things - trauma, abandonment, the constant drum-beat that we're not alright and the contradictions inherent in just learning to navigate the culture - combine to inform the way we think about ourselves. It's easy to internalize messages like:
· I'm a failure,
· There's something wrong with me,
· I'm not enough,
· I'm doing my life wrong,
· I'm not competent, etc...
But what if it turns out that our assumptions about ourselves are incorrect?
In her book, The Key - And The Name of the Key Is Willingness, Zen teacher Cheri Huber writes, "The ways you think you are, not the ways you really are, are the bars of your personal prison...Just because you think something is so (that you're bad, selfish, ugly, perfect, brilliant, inadequate) doesn't mean it's so. It only means you think it's so."
I have a wall hanging in my office with a quote from Buddha. It says, "Happiness does not depend on who you are or what you have. It depends solely on what you think."
In other words, you can choose your view of yourself. It's that simple. But it's not easy. It may require a lot of time and effort to shake off years of programmed attitudes and assumptions about ourselves that inhibit our ability to feel good about ourselves.
It can be done.
One place to start is to consider your thoughts. We all have this narrating thought stream that we hear in our heads - our thoughts. Sometimes they're flowing quietly in the background. Sometimes they're more intense, like when we feel our mind is "racing" when we're under stress.
Although our thoughts tend to be loud and easily capture our attention, our thought stream is actually a tiny, tiny part of who we are.
We are not our thoughts. We are just the space through which they are moving. They are tiny baubles floating through the vast space that is our consciousness.
Imagine a large circle. This is your mind. There are two lines running parallel, a few inches apart, through the middle of the circle. Between those lines is the part of our consciousness that we're aware of. Now imagine running through the middle between the lines is a very, very thin dotted line. It's so thin, you have to really look to see it.
That's the thought stream - a tiny line that runs through the relatively small part of our consciousness that we are actually aware of.
That part of us is not who we are, though it would have us believe it's who we are. If you really listen to that stream, here are a few things you'll notice: It constantly changes the subject - every few seconds. It's the voice of worry and anxiety. It's almost never focused on the present moment - rehashing a conversation from yesterday, or creating a scenario about tomorrow, often with a negative slant. And it tends to state the incredibly obvious - you're in the middle of something really difficult and it says "this is really hard," as if you didn't already know that. It's not even interesting.
The thought stream can be a major contributor to our suffering if we let it decide how we should see ourselves and the world. I recently saw a quote by Buddhist teacherPema Chodron: "We do not suffer because of events. We suffer because of what we tell ourselves about events."
We can change our thoughts at any time. It just takes practice. Here are a few exercises that can help:
A daily meditation practice goes a long way toward taming the thought stream and helping us distance ourselves from it. We can't shut it off most of the time, but meditation will help us separate from it.
When you notice negative thoughts, or you feel anxious, usually nothing bad is happening in the present moment. Instead of dwelling on negative thoughts you can replace them by saying to yourself "I am safe in the present moment" three or four times. Or you can just say "I'm okay, I'm okay" a few times until you start to feel calmer.
It also helps to bring your attention to your breathing. Try taking ten slow deep breaths. This will help slow your mind and give you a little distance from the negative thought stream.
Daily affirmations are also helpful. Take a few minutes every day to affirm in your own mind that you are safe and well and okay. You can simply repeat to yourself "I am safe and well and okay." There are lots of books on daily affirmations.
The Dalai Lama was once asked to describe his religion. He responded "My religion is kindness."
Let's start by being kind to ourselves, by remembering that we are good people. Perhaps we have been wounded somehow. That is not a referendum on our character or ourselves as human beings. The negative thoughts some of us have about ourselves are simply the waste byproducts of difficult or traumatic experience.
We can train ourselves, train our minds to remember we are good and whole and well, even when we don't feel that way. We can start by directing our thoughts to our wellness and affirm that we are good people.
