Self-Esteem vs Bullying

You’re about to get advanced training in self-esteem. It is a kind of good news/bad news thing. The good news is that if you pass the training, your life will be on a much stronger footing. The bad news is that it can be a rocky road to travel for a little bit. Having a more inspiring life is a matter of deeper understanding. Because people have a deficient understanding of life, they struggle and can develop mental problems. Mental problems like confusion, depression, life’s meaning, becoming bullies, and so on are problems of thought and the thoughts we think are the product of what we understand. For example, besides my MA in Counseling Psychology, I have a BA in Theoretical Mathematics. Before I took a class in Partial Differential Calculus, I couldn’t think in those terms. Learning allowed my thinking to brighten and expand. In the field of mental health more understanding is needed and when that is grasped thinking improves and changes and depression or other problems depart for they are only products of misunderstanding. Having self-esteem has to do with having a warm, loving and peaceful feeling as we go about life. It has nothing to do with our present, past or future circumstances. The fundamental error most people make is to believe that life should make them happy and so they live their lives trying get that to happen. People who are happy tend to be kind and friendly. So, you can see that bullies are unhappy and most likely fearful about their situations in life. Being soft makes you an easy target for bullies as they try to compensate for their inner fears by pushing others around to make it appear as though they are superior. They are looking for a reaction, if they don’t get it, they’ll probably try harder, but if eventually they don’t get any reaction, they’ll move on and try out their issues on others. Some things that may help. Here’s a short-term solution: 1. Get into a good martial arts class. By good, I mean one that is demanding without being mean and makes you sweat for 1.5–2 hours. I have a 6th degree black belt and 56 years of experience in karate. I know what I’m talking about. Bullies will be bullies until it starts to cost them. If they think they might get their butts handed to them, they are likely to back off. Here’s a lifetime solution about finding and maintain self-esteem under any circumstances. 2. Understand this: Happy people tend to attract more friends and everyone can be good at being happy regardless of their circumstances in life. Such depression, mood swings, etc. typically arise from the false assumption that life should make us happy and if we want to be happy, we’ve got to arrange matters or matters have to turn out in “the right way” so we can relax and be happy. However, expecting life to make us happy is like expecting a mirage to give us water. It doesn’t work that way, but if you firmly believe that a mirage SHOULD provide water, that lack of results can lead to anxiety, depression and so on. What complicates matters more is that becoming bothered tends to narrow and darken our thinking making it hard to know what to do to “get things right”. If we try to compensate and compromise in order to get life to make us happy, it won’t work either. So, what is the source of happiness in our lives? Here’s some information that can really help: “There’s a light within us that never leaves and can never be taken from us. It is not contingent upon any external circumstances or what has happened in our lives. Evidence for this is the fact that without a troubling thought on our minds, we naturally and effortlessly become positive — we experience peace, mental health and feel the warmth of the love within. We don’t have to do anything or think anything to make it happen. It is just the way we are built. This is our human consciousness — the light of our world.” “Life is not supposed to make us happy. Love and happiness are bundled into our composition. We are the bringers of love and happiness.” — quotes are from “Shooting Arrows at the Moon” by Phil Kromka. Understanding this tends to broaden and brighten our outlook on matters. We find more peace and that mental peace gives us that which we really want as well as providing space for really helpful ideas to appear. The natural flow of thoughts is to appear for a moment and then move on making room for the next thought. We wake up, brush our teeth, have breakfast and the thoughts associated with each activity appear, then vanish providing space for the next thought to appear. One thought follows another unless we cling to one of them. Just as stones don’t weigh us down unless we hold onto them, depression or other troubling thoughts won’t bother us unless we hold onto them. The ultimate point I’m getting to is if we stop being captivated by our thoughts, we’ll naturally return to the warmth and health of our inborn consciousness. So, as you’re learning this, for a while you may have reactions to bad behavior directed towards you and get bothered. In a split second, you can let thoughts of what just happened go and return to poise and self-esteem. “There is no time when the radiant wisdom within is switched off. It is always present, available and true to us. We learn to trust and make use of it. If we consider ourselves to be surfers on the ebb and flow of life’s situations, most of us would have difficulty standing up, let alone getting a good ride due to our frequent auditing of our lives — worrying, reviewing our past, etc. Learning to surf over thoughts minimizes their significance and maintains our connection to the radiant wisdom within. It changes life from a struggle to uplifting anticipation. In a split second, every moment becomes the past and we’re on to the next one. We don’t have to know what to do, we can just let the knowing come to us.“ — also from “Shooting Arrows at the Moon” by Phil Kromka.