Puneet Srivastava, Mumbai, India

It appears that, as I said might be the case, I misunderstood your opinion.

Your comment:

Know when to leave them alone and give your attention to someone who deserves it.

suggested to me that when someone doesn’t accept your help, they become an object of your scorn.

I now understand you to mean something like this: Some people won’t accept our help, for whatever reasons. If we find that we are working harder at helping them then they are at helping themselves, then it’s time to step back and wait until they are ready to accept our love and support, understanding that they might never reach that point.

If that (or something similar) is what you meant, then I agree with you.

Sincerely,

Mark

“Life isn’t about keeping score.
It’s not about how many people call you and it’s not about who you’ve dated, are dating or haven’t dated at all. It isn’t about who you’ve kissed, what sport you play or don’t play, or which guy/girl likes you. It’s not about your shoes, your hair or the colour of your skin. It’s not about where you live or go/went to school. In fact, it’s not about money, grades, clothes or colleagues that accept you or not.
Life isn’t about if you have lots of friends or if you’re alone and it’s not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn’t about that. Life is about who you love and who you hurt. It’s about YOU feel about YOURself. It’s about TRUST, HAPPINESS and COMPASSION. It’s about sticking up for your friends and replacing inner hate with love.
Life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance and building CONFIDENCE. It’s about what YOU say and what YOU mean. It’s about seeing people for who they are and not what they have or what you want them to be. Most of all, it’s about choosing to use your life to touch someone else’s in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise.
These choices are what life’s about.”

I definitely agree, if someone doesn’t want help, doesn’t think they need help, is not asking for help, one is wasting their time, trying to help those that don’t want/ask/think they need help. That’s probably harder than ‘helping’ yourself. After years of trying to ‘be there’ and ‘save’ others around me, I have finally came to the conclusion that it’s IMPOSSIBLE. I am NOT here to ‘save the world’ and I never will. All I can do is be myself. I can be there if they need me or want me there, other than that, they are on their own path. I have heard people call it a ‘crab theory’ – you put 200 crabs in a bucket, one starts climbing up the side, trying to escape from the bucket and the other 199 pull him down… negative people do not enjoy seeing other succeed so instead of cheering them on and helping them get there, they just try pulling them down with them. It’s sad. The world isn’t perfect, nor am I, all I can do is MY BEST and hope those surrounding me do the same!

Great topic, thanks for sharing! :)

My mentor has told me, “Network marketing is an easy way to make money- once you’ve mastered the ‘mental’ game.”

My own conclusions: my self-esteem is formed from my habitual thinking, which influences my actions and my expectation of a friendly (or unfriendly) universe.

If someone said to my face, “I think you’re a loser!”, my self-defense mechanisms would kick in and I would tell them off. Directly spoken opinions can be spotted easily– and it’s obvious the OTHER person is the one who is sending the message.

However, the most readily absorbed (and potentially the most destructive) thoughts came from things that were NOT spoken- instead they arose from how I was treated as a child.

Consider these situations: you were ignored when you spoke, people looked at their watches as you spoke, you were forced to eat last at family gatherings strictly because of your gender, you were chosen last for sports teams in spite of being an excellent athlete, strived for academic mastery while observing the guys weren’t dating the smart girls, pushed around on the playground because you’re a guy who isn’t drawn to playing football, interrupted when you spoke, over and over again, that is confusing to a child. Lacking the wisdom to see the larger PATTERNS, a child comes to the conclusion “There is something inherently wrong with me.” And the mental habits we form in childhood will continue unless we face them.

Only through intense one-to-one therapy have I been able to learn to see the PATTERNS- both in how others treated me and my own reactive thoughts. With that knowledge, I can understand ‘this isn’t personal’, observe my thought patterns and choose to think differently. This is an ongoing process.

Yes, therapy is a key element in creating a healthier sense of self-esteem. I consider my therapist my “Emotions Coach”, just like how people have a “Personal Fitness Trainer” or a “Business Coach”. She is a crucial member of my Success Support Team.

—————-

Two additional tools I use:
Listen carefully to a compliment. Pause for a split second, and say “Thank you.” Do not discuss it further, whether to agree or disagree. Come back to the office, and type that compliment into a word processing document, as accurately as I can remember it. This teaches me to listen closely, accept compliments, remember them, and gives me something to read on days when I’m feeling a little discouraged.

Second tool:
I create a scrapbook each year, chronicling MY accomplishments and the cool things I enjoyed. It’s an ongoing process to gather the events- Every few days (or when something neat happens, no matter how ‘small’), I type a quick note into a word processing document. After creating the actual scrapbook with a scrapbooking program on the computer, I pay to have it printed in a hardbound book. Again, I look through it when I’m feeling a little discouraged. Since I’m comparing myself to myself, I feel a sense of accomplishment- which is empowering.

Many comments here say that the low self esteem issue is due to “someone else” that got you into that either by lack of loving or by constantly putting you down.

Another factor I believe really makes your self esteem go low, is the “lookikng back” factor. If at a point in your life you decide to look at your achievements and find little to nothing there (I am sure there will always be many, but not necessarily ones you find important at that point in your life) then low self esteem kicks in, and we suddenly start finding everywhere reasons that “confirm” we are not worthy.

I always thought of myself as a person who really likes himself, but at a point in my life about 5 years ago, i fell on the trap mantioned before, the problem was that I was “comparing” others experiences with mine. That is not what is all about is about comparing you against yourself to measure improvement.

These are my 2cents !

keep these great topics coming!!!

Federico

Sigh. This is something I’ve been struggling with for years – with other people in my life. I seem to attract them, maybe because I might have been suffering from it too – I don’t know, but I stopped analyzing. All I know is, there’s nothing I can do for any of them, and not from a lack of trying on my end. Now, I just do what you say – I take one step, they take one step; if they don’t I take one step with someone else. I know you meant it for my business, but it’s so fundamentally sound that I apply that to ALL my relationships – in the network & in my personal life. I guess what I learnt through all the years of trying to *fix* other people was that I was avoiding dealing with my own life, to delude myself that trying to fix other people was *noble*, but ultimately it’s futile because people don’t need fixing as they choose to be where ever they are. So I support them how I can & love them anyway, but no more do I feel responsible for getting them out of where they wanna be. I’ve found that it’s much more serving this way for all involved – and through my results, it indirectly helps to inspire some of them to garnering higher self-esteem for themselves. Like your life story did for so many.