How To Build Self-Esteem
Start By Loving Your Shoes
Your path in this life is unique. This is a cause for celebration; a daily ritual of acknowledgement and respect. Now that you are working from home, or sitting at home with time on your hands…perhaps this is an opportunity to examine your direction. Sometimes we wander off the path and forget why we are here. Here are some questions that I ask myself every day:
What is my purpose?
What can I do today to fulfill it?
How would I like to live my values today?
I don’t spend hours trying to answer these questions in perfect sentences. Some days, it’s just “Hey, how are you today?” The point is to check-in, to recommit, to do the work and do it every day.
This is about living in the solution.
About honouring and loving the shoes you walk in.
Life is an opportunity and our only job is to live well. If you want to thrive begin by living in abundance today. It is the basic concept of the law of attraction: The universe will notice what you give your attention to -whatever you spend all your days, time, energy-paying-attention-to, talking about, expending energy thinking and feeling about- the universe will come to understand that this is what you are most interested in and it will give you more.
Fill your boots…
means stand in your truth on the path of your making.
Life wants to support you. Whatever you invest your energy in and spend your time thinking, talking and acting and feeling about is what you will receive back from life. If you desire a different return on your investment, give away something different, give away what you want. Notice the money language?
If you believe that your dream is worthwhile, invest in it. To invest means to: give it your loving attention, nurture, nourish and care for it. This may be your one and only life. This is your true richness, your bounty, your fortune, your blessing, are you available to receive it?
It is a fallacy to think that what you need exists somewhere outside of you. You have everything you need to be successful and rich already. You just need to connect with it, accept it, let go of it.
The mistaken idea that we need something from outside ourselves like approval, tokens of merit, trophies and celebrations of achievement; that somehow we are lacking, that we have a void, a hole inside ourselves that needs filling…This is a myth that is fundamentally incorrect because it is based on the idea that we are somehow separate from the world around us, that ‘inside our skin’ is different than ‘outside our skin’.
The idea that we all exist in bubbles that do not influence, interact, and constantly affect each other is a ridiculous notion- but many of the basic ‘edicts to live by’ are based on this idea of ‘self and other’. Such as: try to get ahead, defend your point of view, annihilate the competition, prove yourself worthy, win it, kill it, crush it, go for it, put your head down and push hard, success means being the best, at the top of your game, and ultimately owning it. These are the phrases that reflect the ideas that are driven by the beliefs that shape our world. If you want to know how that is working out…just look around you.
What if we embrace the idea that everything is interconnected? What if we come to understand that inside and outside are two iterations of the same thing?
The other person is you. What happens to one part happens to all. Money is one of the mediums of energetic exchange - but the money is simply shifting from one place to another. The first law of thermodynamics states “that energy can neither be created nor destroyed”. The universe is composed of only two things: matter and energy. If you zoom down into the sub-particulates of the sub-particulates, the difference between matter and energy loses useful distinction; it all becomes energetic goop.
Everything is ultimately goop;
you, your ambitions, your shoes, everything.
It is easy to forget this when we get caught up in comparing our shoes to other people’s shoes and wondering if we are still fashionable or relevant. If we want to particpate in healing our world we can start by loving the shoes we walk in today. We can conduct thought experiments, like trying to imagine what it feels like to walk around in someone else’s shoes and be delighted by the quiet empathy that develops as a side effect. You are the world, and those are your shoes…now what?
