 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through AllCEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on 50 mindful steps to self-esteem. And no, we're not going to go through 50 different slides today. So, you know, you can just rest assured there. It is a book by Jeanette Marotta that is one that I use in order to get some ideas for activities to do in group. So it's one that you may want to check out, check your local library, see if they have it there, etc. What we're going to do is understand what self-esteem is, why it's important and how to develop it. You know, that's kind of a primer or a review for a lot of us, but we'll go over it. We'll explore how physical sensations give clues to what's important and whether you're living in harmony with your gut and your values. And this book, as an aside, as you can see just from the objectives of the book, it is written to be used with clients. I find a lot of times my visual learners, when I do psychoeducational groups, my visual learners really like to have something tangible. And it doesn't have to be paper, you know, it can be a PDF or something, but they do like to have something that they can read over because that's how they take in information better. So, you know, for a lot of my groups, if there's a particular book that we're going to base the group on, I will have the participants purchase that book. Most of the self-help books are, you know, 15 bucks or under, so it's not a huge deal for them. It's not like textbooks when we went to school, but anyhow. Identify and address thinking errors that keep people stuck, that's head honesty that we're going to look at and head mindfulness, and evaluate how emotions and the heart contribute to the development of self-esteem. When I was just a beginning counselor, I worked with a mentor and one of the things that she used to tell her clients, and I stole it, was that if you are living authentically, if you are being truly honest, and this was a co-occurring program, so we talked a lot about honesty, you're being truly honest, you have head, heart and gut honesty. Intellectually, you know, it's the right thing to do. Your heart, it makes you feel good inside and your belly or what she called spidey senses are, it's not going off. Your gut saying, yeah, that's okay, you know, I'm not going to get anxious or all tied up over this. So head, heart and gut honesty is what we want to look at to see if we're living authentically, and we want to encourage clients to check in, because a lot of times you can have two out of three, but two out of three is not fully authentic. And finally, we'll examine how the environment impacts self-esteem. So how you feel about yourself in contrast to who you think you should be is really the basic definition of self-esteem. The more rejecting people are of themselves, the more distressed they experience and the more they may seek external validation. If I look at myself in the mirror or, you know, think about who I am and I go, oh, I really suck as a person, then I'm not going to feel so good. So I'm going to be looking for other people to tell me I'm okay, tell me it's all right, bolster my self-esteem. And it also causes a lot of distress. I mean, if we don't like ourselves, we're living in our own skin, we can't get out of it. So we're looking at that and being faced with it every single day. And it can cause anxiety, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of isolation. All of these things can be attenuated if we help people start working on their self-esteem. One of the first pushbacks that I usually get from people when we start talking about self-esteem is, well, I don't want to be an egomaniac or isn't that boasting? No, you know, it really depends on how you present it. And getting over that hurdle of what self-esteem is so people don't feel like it's, oh, we're going to talk this psychobabble, warm and fuzzy stuff, even though it may be. Helping them see that self-esteem is their self-concept. And we look at, you know, I ask people to look outside themselves first. You know, in their children, do they want to develop their children's self-esteem? And I have yet to meet a parent who says, no, that's not important. So we start looking at how do you build self-esteem in your children? What is self-esteem in your children? How do they, how do you know if they've got good self-esteem? And then after we go through all that, then I go, okay, so self-esteem is important for your kids. Let's look at you. And yeah, they get wise to that trick pretty quickly and they see where I'm going with it after a while. But sometimes it helps to get outside yourself and see, you know, if you have a child with good self-esteem, do you think that they're an egomaniac? Do you think that they're being too boastful? Or are they carrying themselves confidently? And what's the difference? It's kind of like the difference in assertiveness versus aggressiveness. It's how you do it and the extreme to which you do it. In order to develop healthy relationships, people need to feel good about themselves. I make the analogy when I'm, when I'm doing relationships groups about chocolate chip cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate, chocolate chips on their own are a great dessert. You know, I could just eat chocolate chips plain and I could be happy. Sugar cookies on their own, they're really good too. Both of those can stand alone and be perfectly awesome desserts. You put them together, you get something that's kind of doubly awesome, but both can stand alone. And that's what we're talking about when we're talking about relationships. It's not one part, one person in the relationship is the flour and the other person in the relationship is the eggs. Because you can't make a cookie without flour and eggs. You have to have both of those. So we don't want to fill something that is incomplete. We want to take two complete things and make some uber awesome thing. And, okay, so I'm distracted by chocolate chip cookies now. Anyhow, people need to feel good about themselves. They need to feel like they're the sugar cookie or they're the chocolate chips and that's awesome. And they don't need something else to make them complete. They need to be in touch with themselves and their true values. And a lot of mindfulness work focuses on actually figuring out what you need. Having people look inside and go, what's important to me? What are my values? And where do I want to invest my energy? I could be all of these things. I could have a list. You know, I would love to be president of the United States. You know, but that's not going to happen. Potentially I could even do it at my age. But I have no desire to invest my energy in becoming president of the United States. You know, it's just one of those things that's like, that might be cool. It might be really stressful. So you want to help people look at how they're spending their energy, what they're focusing their attention on. When they look at the things that they're not, you know, I'm not a CEO. I'm not a parent. I'm not a spouse. Whatever it is that they see as a something that's lacking in their life, that they're not, encourage them to look at it and go, is that important? You know, in the big scheme of things, what's important to you? Is that important? My stepmother knew from a very young age that she never wanted to have children. You know, by the time she met me, I was older. So it was different, but she never wanted to have babies. She's just not that kind of person. She's a wonderful woman. That wasn't something that was important to her. So, you know, looking at over the course of her life, being authentic to herself and true to her value, she didn't feel like any less of a woman because she never had biological children. And then we want to encourage people in their relationships to choose actions that are in harmony with their true selves. So when we get in relationships, it's easy to just kind of ride the coattails of whomever, you know, whatever you want to do is fine and lose ourselves. We need to choose actions that are in harmony with ourselves. I mean, sometimes you both are going to have things that are in harmony. You may really enjoy rock climbing together. And other times you may look at it and go, you know, that's not my thing. You know, I like this thing over here. I'm not big into shooting guns. My best friend loves guns. I mean, he was military for his entire career so you can understand why. But, you know, he loves going out shooting. Not so much. I'll stay home and crochet. Thanks. No problem. You go out and shoot guns with somebody else. But sometimes, you know, we both like rock climbing. So sometimes we'll go out and go rock climbing together. So it's choosing things that are in harmony with yourself that make you feel good. And that, you know, help you be the person that you want to be. And that's what self-esteem is about. Being the person that you want to be. The gift of mindfulness. Now this is the second chapter. It teaches people to live in the moment, not stuck in guilt or resentment of the past. So self-esteem takes a really big hit if you're one of those people who feels guilty about everything. Because guilt is anger turned inwards, if you want to think of it that way, of things that either you should have done but you didn't or you did do and you shouldn't have. We don't like shoulds either. But so we want to help people deal with guilt and figure out how to make amends for it, learn from it, whatever they're going to do so they can move to a place of acceptance instead of having it stick back there and regularly check in with that guilt meter and go, yeah, I feel guilty about all these things. How people deal with it is going to be different for each person. So encouraging them to figure out what can you do with this guilt and having them look at what is the function of holding onto this guilt. How is it helping you? How is it propelling you forward? It's hard to find reasons to hold onto guilt and resentment. You can say, well, if I hold onto it, then I will remember how bad I felt when I did it and I won't do it again. And my response is usually, well, can't you learn from it and then still not do it again? So we want to look at the reasons people are resistant to holding onto guilt. Sometimes it may be a loss that they're not ready to get rid of or ready to let go of yet. So there could be some issues there they need to deal with. But living in the moment helps them be authentic. If I'm feeling bad about how I was or what I did 10 years ago, well, that's not reflective of who I am now. And so my self-esteem now is taking a hit for something that a way I behave or a way I was back then and that's not who I am now. Some people are paralyzed by fear of the future. So they're thinking out there and they're worrying and they're anxious and they can't seem to make any movement forward. Well, if you're throwing all your energy forward, of course you're not going to be able to make any movement because you've already gotten rid of all your energy and it's tied up in the future. So mindfulness helps people harness that energy in the moment and focus on the moment and focus on being all that they can be in that moment. Mindfulness also helps people put one foot in front of the other. It says, okay, I'm not in the past. I'm not in the present. I have this energy and I want to move forward. Let me do it one step at a time. And mindfulness encourages people to be practical and pragmatic of what's the first thing I need to do to improve the next moment. The cornerstone of mindfulness is acceptance. People need to be non-judgmental, willing to just let it be and be patient. Non-judgmental is really hard for a lot of us and not even just our clients, but for a lot of people it's hard to not be judgmental, especially of ourselves. So encouraging ourselves to check in and we want to model this for our clients. We want to model all of these behaviors, being focused in the present, not worried about the future. I mean, sometimes we need to worry a little bit about the future for safety reasons and all, but in reality, not worrying about a month from now, but focusing on what's going to happen right now, putting one foot in front of the other and sometimes articulating this, being non-judgmental. If you have a bad day, say, I'm having a bad day. Or if a session with a client didn't go well, you know, pointing out, you know, I felt like today's session wasn't as productive as we usually are. I felt like I wasn't connecting with you like I usually do and owning it, not saying you didn't have such a good session, but using those I statements, being non-judgmental and accepting it is what it is. Sometimes you're not on your A game and being patient with yourself and with others. For a lot of us, it's easy to be patient with other people, not so much with ourselves. We want it done yesterday. So mindfulness focuses on, all right, you are who you are right now. Maybe there are things you want to improve. Okay, that's fine. We can work on that. Right now, let's be happy with what is. Mindfulness teaches that when you trust yourself and act with awareness and purpose, you become more self-reliant. In the book, you have access to online recorded versions of several meditations that can help people start focusing on living in the moment. You can also Google mindfulness meditations, and there are a lot of free mindfulness meditations online that your clients can use. And yes, with mindfulness, it is important to grieve past losses and plan for the future without obsessing over either. There's being realistic and planning, and then there's being all tied up over it. Impact of mindlessness, ignoring or invalidating how we feel. Now think about most of us, again, not just our clients. From the time we are knee-high to a grasshopper, we are taught that there are certain things we're going to do. You're going to get up, you're going to get dressed, you're going to get on the bus, you're going to go to school, you're going to do your schoolwork. Nobody asks or really asks truly honestly, how do you feel today? You know, your parents, when you get up in the morning, say, how are you doing this morning? And you say, fine or grunt at them, as my kids do. But there isn't really a honest check-in. And it's not because parents don't care. But we haven't been taught to do an honest mindfulness check-in with ourselves, let alone encourage that in our families. So from the time we're little, we're taught to kind of invalidate how we feel. We get up in the morning and we're kind of on autopilot and we get to work. You know, we haven't really checked in to go, did I get up on the wrong side of the bed? Am I feeling cranky today? The only thing you're really going to notice is anything that's glaring. Like if you slept the wrong way and you've got a kink in your neck and you can't look behind you to back up. So we want to encourage people to start doing those mindfulness check-ins. Mealtime mindfulness, breakfast, lunch and dinner, at the very least. So they can start figuring out how they feel. If we're doing it for self-esteem, I also want them to focus on what good things did they do that day? What awesome things did they do in order to be mindful of the random acts of kindness and the good things? Because what do we focus on? Generally at the end of the day, you know, unless you're focusing on your to-do list and you look at it and go, hey, I got two-thirds of that done, score. But a lot of times we minimize the good things that we do, holding doors for people, smiling at people, being kind to someone, you know, calling up a friend who you knew was struggling or whatever. So mindfulness check-ins throughout the day encourages people to give themselves at a boys or at a girls for doing things that are authentic to their true self. Mindlessness encourages us to fail to integrate feelings, thoughts, sensations and urges. So let's think about that. When we have a feeling or a thought, and we're just going to start with both of them for simplicity. Anger, you know, you start getting angry. Well, what are your thoughts when you're angry? What types of thoughts do you have? All right. When you are angry, what do you feel? What sensations do you have? And what urges do you have? Because a feeling has all of these things involved with it. And it's important for clients to start recognizing because sometimes you're not going to know what you feel, but you get these sensations and you're like, oh, I guess I'm getting a little irritable or antsy here. And that can help clients check in and stop something or intervene early with things that might cause them problems, with things that might go against their self-esteem. Running on autopilot and not making time for the things that are important that get us closer to our ideal selves. An autopilot is that, get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, take a shower, go to sleep, repeat. And you're not making time for those things that are important. So figuring out mindfulness encourages you to say, you know what, I've got eight hours in the day for work, and that's what I'm going to do. And when I get out of work, most of the time, you can't always have an eight hour day, but most of the time. And when I get out of work, then during this downtime, this four hours I have or five hours I have before I go to bed, I want to do something that helps me get me closer to my ideal self. It can be reading a self-help book, working on a craft, spending time with family, whatever. But mindfulness encourages you to notice how much time that you waste. I know I waste a lot of time in the morning. I get up and I'm kind of slow getting started. And I have to really check myself. So my first cup of coffee doesn't turn into, you know, an hour and a half of reading the news or something because that's not productive for me. Mindfulness helps us get started and get moving towards our goals. Mindlessness encourages blindly adopting mainstream messages of who or what we should be. And it may not be in harmony with who we really want to be. You know, when I was growing up, and I think still today to a certain extent, I'm not... Well, when I was growing up, the idea was of the superwoman. You were the full-time mom. You were the full-time corporate worker, executive person. You were the full-time spouse. Well, that's three full-time things. There ain't that many hours in a day. And we were supposed to excel at everything. That was at least what the messages that came to us. And we kind of realized that that's not it. So figuring out who we really want to be, what's important to us, and acting in accordance with that. Is it important for me as a person to have children? Is it important for me as a person to be a corporate executive? And going through those things and checking those mainstream messages. That even goes with appearance. Is it important for me to be a certain size, shape, look a certain way? Or not? You know, what do I believe is important for me to be happy? Breathing in the body is the next chapter. And she talks about developing mindfulness and self-awareness in order to help quiet your thoughts. And you know when you're focusing on something, just a simple mindfulness exercise. You know, if I'm focusing on my phone and I'm thinking about what it looks like, how heavy it is, what the case feels like. If I'm really focusing on that, then I'm not thinking about what I've got to do when I finish teaching today and all this stuff that I had hoped to get done and whatever else I'm worried about. I'm focused on that. So it quiets my thoughts and helps sort of tame the monkey mind. You know, the monkey is just kind of sitting there going, hello, I'm over here, but you're focusing. The constant noise of monkey mind, if you will, often prohibits us from addressing underlying issues of emotional turmoil. If I'm constantly thinking of got to do's and should've done's, then I'm not addressing my feelings. I'm focusing on stuff external to me. So by quieting my thoughts, I get more in touch with my emotions, my sensations and my urges. When we're not focused, life becomes focused on treading water instead. We're just trying to stay afloat. We're not making forward motion. If you've ever treaded water, you don't make much forward progress. You just are trying to keep your head above water. And that's not an effective use of energy. Instead of treading water and staying the same, I want to use that energy to move forward and become more of the person that I want to be. Forward goals are exchanged for just surviving. By making contact with the present moment, people can find their strength. They can identify and start going, you know what? I'm stronger than I thought I was. Or I had more skills than I thought I did. Or you know what? I've got an extra three hours a day. I can start spending on learning how to cook. If that's something that is important to you. You can learn to grow. And you can choose how you wish to respond. People who are in contact with the present moment can choose if they want to get upset over something. You know, that initial anger, anxiety reaction, that's normal. That's biochemical. But what we choose to do with that is within our control. So we can decide whether we're going to radically accept it and say, it is what it is. We can choose whether we want to change how we feel about it. Whether we want to just let it go and say, that's not worth my energy. Or we want to approach the problem and try to fix it. But just getting upset about it doesn't, all it does is burn up a bunch of energy. Now some people need to talk about and have their feelings validated before they can move on forward towards stuff. And that's okay. I mean, that's a temperament style. That's fine. It's that when you stay stuck in anger for hours or days or weeks, that it starts just sucking life and sucking energy out. Some activities that we can have clients do are encouraging them to take a deep, full breath. And in answer to your question, HALT is the acronym for a relapse warning sign, hungry, angry, lonely and tired. And yes, I would say that that is definitely something that you could very effectively use in a mindfulness scan. When I have my clients start, when they start doing mindfulness scans, I give them a worksheet that they look at and it has anywhere from 10 to 15 questions that they ask themselves in order to get them used to checking in. And they'll cross out ones that they don't feel, you know, are really applicable. But hungry, angry, lonely and tired definitely is worth putting in there because, you know, that hits a lot of our emotions and a lot of our reasons for not being in the moment. So activities that we can have people do a deep, full breath. Abdominal breathing signals the brain to slow down and relax, which is our rest and digest. So that kind of calms down that monkey mind. You can try this while I'm talking. If you want, if you take a couple of deep breaths, when you're taking those breaths, your mind is going to be going less like this and you're going to be focusing on breathing in and breathing out and how everything kind of starts moving. Or maybe I'm the only one that gets dizzy, but I digress. Abdominal breathing helps people calm their anxiety and it can help them get a little bit more focused. Before you go in to do something, you know, give a speech or perform or whatever. A lot of us take a big deep breath right before we go out and we're like, All right, I'm going to do this and we go out and do it. And that's kind of what we're talking about here is that deep, full breath. Simply paying attention to your breathing often causes it to slow down. So if you start to feel anxious or clients start to feel anxious, have them just pay attention to their breathing, put their hands on their bellies. Chest breathing is not effective or efficient. They want to feel their belly going in and out when they're breathing in order to help them get enough oxygen. Another activity is called feeling the loving touch, which is your breath. Life begins and ends with breath. You start breathing the minute you're born and stop breathing the minute you die. Breathing helps relax the body and move Chi around. And Chi is the life force that is what they talk about a lot in Eastern medicine. So it helps that life force and that life energy move through your body. You can add visual and auditory breathing reminders. So if you tend to be somebody who gets tense when you're driving, having, you know, something in your car that reminds you to breathe. If you need to have something written on your bathroom mirror to remind you to breathe in the morning, whatever it takes to remind yourself just to get in touch with some of these most basic functions. Breathing, sleeping, nutrition, you know, the basics can really help people start feeling a lot better. In and out activity encourages people to inhale and take in positive affirmations. They can say, I've got this or you're good enough, whatever it is that works for them that they don't feel hokey saying. Some things that they say reminds you of the old Saturday Night Live skit. Some things are very positive and affirming that the old song, don't worry, be happy. You know, that's one you can breathe in. Exhale to let go of stress and negativity. So let the negative thoughts go out when you exhale. Taking another step further, imagining inhaling cool calming blue air and exhaling stresses through red, black or gray air. Watch all the pollution go out. This is something that people will need. It's not something you really do while you're driving. But when they take time out and it can be two or three minutes, it doesn't have to be a 15, 20 minute session. Just to let it in and let it out. You know, excuse yourself from a meeting that's really stressful, go into the bathroom, do this activity really quick, and then return to the meeting in order to get re-centered. Read the inscription, paying attention to what your body is trying to tell you. And a lot of times when we're mindless, we're not paying attention to what our body is saying. And self-esteem, how we feel about ourselves, if we have good self-esteem, then we're going to do what is in our best interest. And we're going to say, you know what, it's in my best interest to tap out of this right now or do whatever. I have an elephant and I decided to name him Lenny. I don't know why. But Lenny, when things get really stressful and I start feeling really anxious, Lenny sits right here on my chest. And, you know, that's kind of the ongoing joke around our house is, you know, is Lenny visiting whenever mom starts to get a little bit stressed. But that's my cue that I need to step back and check in a little bit. When people start feeling stressed out, anxious, tense, whether their self-esteem is low and they're feeling rejection or abandonment or is just stressful at work or something, encouraging them to practice noticing points of tension, tightness and heaviness. And then feeling them relax or loosen as you exhale. So, you know, for me, feeling Lenny kind of get up for a second. Or, you know, if I'm holding tension in my back or in my jaws or when I drive, sometimes I'll notice that my fists clench on the steering wheel. I'm a little high strung. Anyhow. But noticing those and letting it go and being like, there's no reason to use energy to hold my fists that tight right now. Encouraging people to be aware of this, how much energy does it free up if your muscles are not always tight? If you can breathe fully and deeply without feeling like your chest is going to cave in. So, all of these things can help people deal with their emotional anxiety. Deal with that emotion and calm down so they can get to a point where cognitively they can say, what is the next thing I need to do for me? What is the next thing I need to do to improve the next moment to be true to myself? Thinking in the mind. You know, we think a lot of things and we need to be aware that our mind plays tricks on us. So one is being an impartial witness, a fly on the wall. Think of how many of our clients that have difficulty not being judgmental. And remember, one of the first things was being non-judgmental. Our clients have difficulty being judgmental of themselves. They say, I should have done better or I shouldn't have done this. Well, an impartial witness or a fly on the wall. What would that person looking or fly looking at the whole situation? What would their perspective be? Did you do all you could do? Stop sorting things into good and bad. You know, I was good today or I was bad today. Well, number one, you are always good. It's the choices that you make that may be better or worse. So, you know, that's the first thing. But then encouraging people instead of looking at things as good or bad, embracing that dialectic and saying they are, you know, there are good and bad things. One of my clients is having to move right now. And there's a lot of chaos and disruption to it. And, you know, it's stressful. No doubt that's the bad part. The good part is she's starting a new chapter in her life and she's optimistic about moving forward from there. So instead of seeing it as, you know, a complete tragedy, she's embracing the dialectic. So encouraging clients to embrace the dialectic and about things that they do, you know, maybe they gave a speech and it wasn't their best. Okay, but they did it and they can learn from it. So the next time they do that speech, it'll be a little bit better. Same thing when we see our clients. Most of us don't have 100% on days and I don't think anybody does, but I'll say most of us. And so if we have a bad session or even a whole bad day, we just can't seem to connect to save our lives. Making sure that we don't generalize that and say, you know, I was, I'm a bad therapist, you know, I had a few bad sessions. You know, I need to get mindful because being a good therapist is important to my self-esteem. So I need to get mindful and say, what was it that kept me from being the therapist that I wanted to be today and identifying that. So tomorrow when I see clients, you know, I'm back hopefully to 90% or better. See the whole elephant, not just one, not just the elephant in the room. You know, when you're looking at an elephant in the room, it's big. We want to see the whole elephant. We want to see the whole issue, everything that's going on and look at the strengths and the drawbacks to the situation. Spin the wheel of paradox is another thing that you can look at. And this is imagining, you know, what would be if it were the opposite? You know, if you're driving and it's really busy traffic and you're like, oh my gosh, this is so stressful. What would it be like if there were no traffic at all? And practicing the no blame game. Emotions in the heart is the next chapter in the book. And she talks about spaciousness, recognizing all the emotions contained within your heart. And they're not all warm and loving. You know, there's a lot of passion in there that can come out as anger or jealousy or envy or, you know, there's a lot of emotions. And any emotion that we have is generally like an onion. There's multiple layers to it or like the earth if you don't like onions. And we need to peel away the layers to figure out what we're dealing with. Encouraging people to look at that. When somebody's depressed, okay, what are you depressed about? You know, we can start looking and sometimes they're depressed because they're exhausted from being anxious. Sometimes they're depressed because they're grieving something or they feel guilty about something. So depression is what's at the surface, but what's underneath. And a lot of times there are two or three or more different things that are fueling their sense of hopelessness and helplessness. So we want to look at that. And we also want to recognize that there's plenty of room, even if there's unpleasant feelings in our heart, there's plenty of room for those good feelings. And let's talk about those because too often we focus on trying to get rid of the negative. Let's get rid of the negative. Well, then there's a void and nature abhors a vacuum. And so do I, a different kind of vacuum. Now, we want to recognize that we've got to encourage clients to put something else in there, which means they need to cultivate warmheartedness. If you have compassion and patience, you're going to be less likely to feel resentment and irritation. You know, if you can sit there and go, all right, let me just take a second and get inside this person's head and see what might be going on. I encourage people to look for three alternate explanations with other people. You know, if somebody's irritating them, if a cashier's too slow, if somebody's driving like a maniac, if their office maid is doing something that irritates them, think about what are three possible explanations this might be going on? And how can you cultivate compassion for that person? If you're being really cantankerous today, you could get snotty back or you could be like, you know, this person must be in a really bad space right now. What can I do in order to help them improve their next moment? Once we start doing that for other people, then it's easier to start doing it for ourselves. I mean, hopefully I would love to see it be the other way around. We can do it for ourselves and other people at the same time. But a lot of times people are not patient or compassionate with themselves. So encouraging them to cultivate warmheartedness when they do their mindfulness moments or check-ins, encouraging them instead of being judgmental about, I should have more energy. I should have gotten this done. You got done a lot. You got done what you got done and being patient and compassionate with themself if they can focus on that. And it takes time. You know, a lot of people I find it takes a month or more of practicing this and not being judgmental before they start cutting themselves some slack. Plant your garden. What are you going to care about? You know, when I go out, when I plant my garden in the spring, I have to go out and have to cultivate the ground, get rid of the weeds. I don't use, it's an organic garden. So I got to do everything by hand. So there's a lot of work in preparation, just like, you know, for going to, going to graduate school, becoming therapists. There was a lot that we had to do in order to become therapists, be the person that we wanted to be. So we had to plant our garden and we had to cultivate it. We had to pull the weeds. We had to take our exams and do all that stuff, do our internships. But that's okay because we loved what we were doing and you want to, you need to love what you're doing in order to be able to give it 100%. So that's why it's important that people focus energy on the things they care about. Tend and befriend is another thing, tending to your own emotions and befriending yourself as well as tending to others and befriending them because we rely on social support. And it makes your heart warmer if you want to, if you want to stay with the heart metaphor. When there's social support, when you can reach out, when you do something nice for somebody else and you know you made their day, you know, it does something nice for you. When they do something nice for you because, you know, the goodness of their heart, it also makes your heart kind of warm up. So if you're a Doctor Who fan, the TARDIS is this little tiny phone box, but when you go inside, it's bigger on the inside. It's this whole massive place where he lives. And our heart is the same way. You know, our heart is really physically not very big, but we can hold immense amounts of love and compassion and caring and also some of the other passionate emotions that may not be so pleasant. But there's plenty of room for all of it. Encourage people to count their blessings, have an attitude of gratitude, whatever they want to call it. Instead of focusing on what they don't have and what they are not, focus on what they do have and what they are. What gifts and strengths do they have? And delight for others. And this is a hard one for people, especially when they've got low self-esteem and they're still focusing on what they don't have and what they're not. It's hard to be happy for others when they succeed. When self-esteem is strong, you can say, you know what? I am really happy and content where I am. I am so happy for you that you got that promotion or whatever. So we want to be able to delight for others, which means we've got to be content with who, where and what we are. Being in the world, claim your emotional baggage. Don't let us stay on the conveyor. Too often we have our emotional baggage and it just goes around and around and around in our head or around and around, you know, like every holiday. That emotional baggage comes back to the terminal and causes us depression or anxiety or whatever the case may be. We don't want to let it stay on the conveyor. We need to get it off the conveyor and unpack it. Don't give it to somebody else. If you are having a bad, you know, Thanksgiving or Valentine's Day or something, you don't take that negativity and bring everybody else down with it. Nobody wants that. Good self-esteem, you're going to say, you know what? These are my feelings, emotional boundaries. I can ask for support, but I'm not going to begrudge anybody else having a good time on this particular holiday. Another part of being in the world is listening. Just listening. Listen to hear and understand. As Americans, especially, we are very, very busy trying to formulate our responses before anybody is finished speaking. And sometimes we just, we quit listening completely halfway through so we don't even understand or we cut people off. Listening to hear. So I want to listen to everything they say and then let them take a, take a breath so I know that there's a pause. I want to take a breath, then formulate my response and usually, you know, the best way to do it is straight up paraphrasing. So what I'm hearing you saying is help people start listening to hear and understand. They're going to be in the world better. They're going to understand what's going around or on around them a lot better if they're paying attention and not worried about trying to get a leg up on somebody. And we need to listen to hear and understand ourselves. When we do those check-ins, when we write in our journals, we need to hear what we're saying, you know, read back over it. Because if you're writing in a journal, for example, and, you know, step out and pretend you're your own therapist, do a Freud and try to understand what is this person trying to communicate or what is the underlying message in this particular, particular journal entry. Speak with compassion to yourself and others. Don't call names. It's not to be irritable. And I'm guilty of, you know, calling myself names periodically and I try to check that. And I don't mean it, you know, I'm just like, instead of saying that was a moronic thing to do, I may say mommy's an idiot. And when I was little, I said mommy was a moron one time. And every time I lost my keys after that for like the next six months, my son would be like, mommy's a moron. Oh, a little out of the mouths of babes. But speak with compassion to yourself. You're not going to be perfect or infallible. And just laugh at yourself and go, well, that was a learning moment. The other day, you know, I come from Florida, so I'm not used to snow. And we had snow and I went out and I opened my car door and I turned my car on and it was big fluffy snow. So I was like, okay, let's see, you know, maybe it's not frozen to the windshield. So with the door open and my foot right on the right on the little thing, I turned on the windshield wipers. Yeah, if you've ever been around snow, you know, that wasn't the brightest thing to do. I got a foot full of snow, lickety split. And I could have gotten upset and been like, but I was like, well, that was a learning moment and moved on from there. And we've laughed about it since I'm like, if you can't laugh with me, laugh at me. But hey, laugh. Write your own job description. And this is a cool thing for people who tend to be more sensing, more detail oriented. If you want to look at the Myers-Briggs and judging or not sensing and judging, sensing and thinking. Writing your job description. What are my goals in life? What is important to me? You know, just like you do at the beginning of every fiscal year, you get this description of your job duties and expectations. Well, write that down for yourself. What do you expect yourself to do this year? Or maybe this quarter, you know, maybe this year is too much. And that helps people get it down concretely. So then when other things come in, they can say, you know what, no, that's not helping me move towards these goals. But they can also look at those goals as they start accomplishing them and it improves their self-esteem. They can go, I did that. Hey, look how far I've come. So self-esteem begins in childhood. Being in an environment that is supportive and nurturing, being in an environment where parents separate, provide unconditional positive regard for the person and constructive feedback about behaviors is crucial to the development of self-esteem. Being in an environment that encourages children and even now, you know, where you encourage yourself to get out of your comfort zone with the knowledge that, you know what, you are going to fail sometimes. But that's okay. You tried. You had the courage to get outside of that comfort zone. Try something new. Sometimes you'll learn from it. Sometimes you'll learn that you don't want to do it again. But you'll learn. Being aware of yourself helps to identify your strengths and develops your me identity. So that activity we did at the beginning where people identify all of the things that they wanted to be, to be their self-actualized self or their best self, you know, that's this big list. And over time, people generally pare it down and go, you know what, that's not important. That's not important. But this year, this is really important. Let's put three stars and an exclamation point by it. And it helps them start figuring out what's going to help them be happy or have a rich and meaningful life. However, whatever you want to call it. Part of self-esteem development includes values identification. Your values are going to change. Your values when you were five, you know, what was important to you as a five-year-old is not the same as what's important to you as a 25 or 45-year-old. Or 65-year-old, you know, it changes. Some of your values are going to stay the same, like your integrity and your value of honesty and those sorts of things are going to be pretty stable. But some of them may change and some of them may grow and emerge, especially from childhood into adulthood as you're trying to figure out who you really are. As you're going through that identity versus role confusion stage of Erickson's model, you start understanding your wants versus your needs. What do you want versus what do you need? You want to have, you know, this beautiful house that's, you know, whatever that looks like to you. You need a safe, dry place to lay your head. You know, you don't, most people don't need, you know, a 20,000 square foot house or something. Some people want that. I wouldn't want to clean it. I digress. And it helps you address cognitive distortions. Part of self-esteem development involves looking at the dichotomous thinking and overgeneralization and personalization thoughts, among others. But those are three of the big ones. Also looking at magnification and minimization. Magnification of little things that went bad and making them into a catastrophe and minimization of good things that you do that you're like, well, anybody would have done that and you minimize it. We want to have a realistic appraisal of the good and the bad. We want to encourage people to be aware of sensations, feelings and thoughts because it helps them choose behaviors which are in unison with their values. You know, if you're getting ready to do something, let's say take a job or decide whether you're going to go out with somebody on a date. You've got feelings, thoughts and, you know, sensations that are going on. And if head, heart and gut say this is the right thing to do, then you do it. If one of those is not on board, then it's worth checking and saying, why do I feel this way? If I do this, am I being authentic? Am I living authentically? And is it going to help me be the kind of person I want to be? Sensations, feelings and values support you through difficult moments. You know, sometimes what is authentic is not the easiest and not everybody's on board. But if you're true to yourself and you can go, you know what? Other people may disagree with this choice, but I can look myself in the mirror and be okay with it. That's going to help, but only people that have really good self-esteem generally can do that. Generally can say, you know what? I don't care what everybody else says. I have to be able to look myself in the mirror because my opinion of the situation is what's most important. It silences the critics. Again, you're not looking for external validation. I don't need your approval. I may want it, you know, and that's that want versus need again. I don't need your approval. I might want it, but if you don't approve of me, you know, that's your loss. Because we are not going to make everybody happy all of the time. You're actually not going to make anybody happy all the time. That's unrealistic to expect that you will never tick somebody off or have a disagreement. So understanding who you are and what's important to you and not needing that validation in order to feel okay, in order to feel whole is really important. And sensations, feelings and thoughts often helps you clarify who you are and what you want because you'll notice the things that make your heart feel like it's going to burst open. Well, I guess that's important to you or the things that make your mind race because you're so excited. That might be more important to you than you thought. So paying attention to those things and going, oh, that's excitement or that's love or that's fascination. Let me pay a little more attention to that. That's how people start to figure out what's truly important to them and whittle down that list of things that they want to be. Carl suggests that there are mindfulness apps that you can get that help bring more mindfulness into your daily living and there are a bunch of apps. So go through and experiment with them. That's the nice thing about especially free apps. You can download them, try them out. If you don't like them, you just uninstall them. And not every mindfulness exercise is going to work for every person by any stretch of the imagination. One thing, if I have clients that like nature, which most of them do, not all of them though. So encouraging people to go into a place where they can see outside, where they can see a pretty view and just focus on the grass if they can get outside even better. Focus on what they see, hear, smell, feel, yada yada, for five minutes. Just to help them kind of get a quiet moment and let their brain settle down can be helpful. Let's see, where is that? Here it is. I have three different monitors, so I have to figure out where I drop stuff. Okay, self-esteem. There are different exercises and please feel free to share if you have other self-esteem activities that you do with your clients. There are so many out there. Some are awesome. Some don't seem to hit the mark for my clients, but they may for yours. So we'll just go through some. I really like this one for kids. It's a six-sentence prompt completion. Each day or each week you have them fill it out. I was really happy when something my friends like about me is. I'm proud of. My family was happy when I. In school I'm good at. And something that makes me unique is. And if you encourage them to do it every week, some of those things they have to start thinking really hard about after the fourth or fifth week, like something that makes me unique. Okay, well after you get past the first two or three things, what else makes you unique? Maybe it was something you did this week that made you kind of stand out. This is another one that I really like. Beauty comes in all different types. So encouraging people to identify things that make them beautiful both inside and outside. Toot your own horn worksheet. This one can be an excellent way for young children to explore what makes them good or likeable people and helps them build a foundation of healthy self-esteem. Now, I don't like that wording because they are good or likeable people regardless. But what behaviors tend to attract other people? I like myself because I'm an expert at. I feel good about. My friends would tell you that I am great at. So there's all kinds of prompts here that you can use. And this is something that you can use in group. And you can go around and do this. We had a big beach ball that we used in one of my groups and we wrote prompts like this all over the beach ball. And we would toss it to people in the group and they would get it. And whatever sentence they saw or prompt they saw first, they had to answer. So it made it a little bit more fun, a little bit more gamification, if you will. And nobody felt like they were being put on the spot. Like, why did you ask me that question? So we had fun with that. And that's one way to do it. Another way is poster board or poster papers around the room or white boards, if you want to be eco-friendly. And have those prompts on in different corners of the room and have your group go around in smaller groups and answer those prompts and then go through them as a whole group. So people can realize, you know what? Yeah. Somebody may put up that they're an expert at woodworking and somebody else may go, you know what? I should have put that up there too because I'm really good with woodworking. So it encourages people to start expanding their awareness of the things that they're good at and the things that make them unique and whatever. A recipe for making friends. List the character traits, friendly, good listener, cooperative, etc. Required to make friends. Beside each trait, explain what it looks like and why it's important. So what does it look like to be cooperative? And that's not having somebody say, yes, whatever you say, anytime you say something. That's just being super passive. What does it look like when somebody's friendly? For some people, I mean that looks different for different people. Some people may require you to be outgoing and bubbly and lots of eye contact and lots of talking and stuff. Other people, they're content. My stepfather, bless his heart, he is the sweetest man in the whole world. But I think in the 20 years I've known him, he's probably said a thousand words. And he's a reporter. It's not like he doesn't have a wonderful vocabulary. He won a Pulitzer Prize. But he's not a man of many words. And it's not that he's unfriendly if you ask him a question or ask him to do something, he'll do it. But when I first met him, he came off as more standoffish than friendly because he wasn't friendly as I normally think about it. So encouraging people to get outside of that and think about what are you looking for in a friend? What does friendly really look like and define it objectively? The self-esteem journal. This one has different prompts for each day, which can be nice. So they're prompted to write something positive each day, but a little something different each day of the week and then repeat each week. In middle and high school, encouraging people to start developing affirmations, helping them figure out things that they can tell themselves that remind them that they're strong, they're courageous, they're important, they're good, they're beautiful, anything that's any of those things that are important to them. But also affirmations on how to handle stress. And we can add that, add those in there. That's not mutually exclusive from self-esteem. So affirmations are short and specific and often can be in the present words and include ing. So I am feeling that I'm going to be able to do this confidently. A self-confidence worksheet, people can print and complete statements. The Code of Arms and Family Crest is another one that my clients really like to do. It's an artistic prompt for people to represent things about themselves that are important to them. My goals, and this is kind of like writing your job description, and flipping your mistakes, failures, and obstacles. So encouraging people to look back over those things that they hold guilt and resentment about or whatever. How can they flip those and turn them into a strength or turn them into something that they can learn from? And obstacles that are keeping them from achieving their goals, encouraging them to look at them as learning opportunities and creative challenges instead of something that's going to stop them dead in their tracks. Mindfulness exercises, and I'm going to go through a couple more of these. The Raisin Exercise, and it doesn't have to be a raisin. Just something that encourages people to focus all of their senses on something. The way it looks, how it feels, what it feels like on their skin, its smell, if it's edible, its taste. By focusing on one thing and making a point to notice everything about it, people are unlikely to be expending energy, time, and attention, worrying or ruminating about others or other parts of their lives. This is also true with the ice exercise, if you're holding two ice cubes. You're not focusing on much of anything, but how cold it is, how it feels, and getting through that. And that can also help you. It's basically just focusing your attention. Body scans helps people figure out how they feel, what the rhythm of their breath is, if they're breathing deeply or shallowly, and they can get more in touch with their sensations that are tied to feelings and thoughts. Mindful seeing is one that they talk about in the DBT books a lot, that encourages people to look outside a window. And instead of using language to label things, like a cloud or grass or whatever, just looking around and looking at the color and how it's moving and what it smells like, if you're outside and you can smell it, instead of trying to label individual things and just noticing it is. So, like when I look outside right now, my yard is a smattering of brown and green, which is mainly wild garlic. And, you know, I look at that and I can be a little judgmental, or I can just look at it and go, it's green. We're starting to see green, which means spring, which is a positive thing. So, there are a lot of different things, and this website, PositivePsychologyProgram.com, has tons of awesome exercises, but blog posts, activities that you can look at to incorporate with your clients. So, I would encourage you to check out their website, and I'm not affiliated with them in any sort of way. I just happen to come across their website and found a lot of really useful resources for y'all. Okay, are there any questions? Do your clients need a little help staying on track between sessions? Are you looking for a great aftercare resource? Look no further than docsnipes.com. For as little as $15 per week, Dr. Snipes provides concierge coaching services to clients through online weekly groups, chat availability seven days a week, and members-only resources. Learn more at docsnipes.com.