Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on. — Maxwell Maltz
The Purpose of this Exercise
The Self-Esteem Builder exercise is designed to provide you with a boost of confidence when you need it most.
It’s especially of value if you lack the confidence you need to achieve a desired outcome.
So whether you’re struggling with something tangible or finding it difficult to overcome challenging emotions, the Self-Esteem Builder exercise will help you find the confidence you need to move forward in optimal ways.
This process of 7 steps is based on Neural Linguistic Programming (NLP) principles. NLP can help you rewrite habitual psychological patterns that no longer serve your best interests.
Who Should Work Through this Exercise
You should work through this exercise if you struggle with low self-esteem.
It’s of particular value when you’re confronted with unexpected problems, obstacles, and setbacks that prevent you from achieving your desired outcomes.
This exercise will help you develop the self-belief you need to overcome personal challenges that are keeping you stuck in the present moment.
The 7-Step Self-Esteem Builder Exercise
Step 1: Stay Vigilant and Aware
Your first objective is to stay very vigilant and aware of how you’re feeling at all times throughout the day.
Whenever you notice that you’re not feeling your best, lacking in confidence or underperforming, that’s when you need to step back and take time to work through this exercise.
Step 2: Undertake a Self-Assessment
Your next step is to take a moment to assess exactly what’s going on (your current reality). Ask yourself:
What exactly am I dealing with right now? (problem)
How am I feeling about all this?
Why exactly am I feeling this way?
How am I focusing on things internally?
How am I focusing on things externally?
Why am I focusing on things in this way?
How am I talking to myself?
What tone of voice am I using?
How am I moving my body?
Why am I moving my body in this way?
What’s my posture and breathing like?
What do I believe about myself in this situation?
How am I interpreting the events and circumstances I’m experiencing?
What assumptions am I potentially making about what I’m experiencing?
What else do I notice about myself in this particular experience?
What is it exactly that’s stopping me from feeling my best in this situation?
Your objective here is to evaluate what exactly is preventing you from feeling your best. In other words, what’s stopping you from feeling good in this particular situation?
The more clarity you have about why you’re not feeling your best at the moment, the more confident and capable you will feel that you can work through this situation in optimal ways.
Step 3: Create an Ideal Future Version of You
Your next objective is to use your imagination to create an ideal future version of you.
This version of you is feeling confident, empowered, and capable. In fact, this version of you is easily able to handle the current situation or problem you’re facing.
Take your imagination into the not too distant future and visualize the future you having the necessary resources and confidence they need to work through this situation in optimal ways.
Step 4: Assess Your Future Self
As you observe your future self, assess precisely what is happening and how they’re handling things.
Pay close attention to their behavior and to how they’re dealing with the situation in a confident way.
Break this down in detail by asking:
How exactly are they feeling?
Why are they feeling this way?
How are they focusing on things internally?
How are they focusing on things externally?
Why are they focusing on these things in this way?
How are they speaking to themselves?
What tone of voice are they using?
What specific words do they use?
What do they believe about themselves in this situation?
What is their body language like? How are they moving?
What’s their posture and breathing like?
How are they interpreting what’s happening around them?
How are they perceiving their circumstances?
How are they interacting with others?
Are they having fun and enjoying themselves? How so?
How have they acquired the necessary resources, confidence, and knowledge they need to excel in this particular situation?
Your objective here is to get as much clarity as possible about what it will take to feel confident in this particular situation.
More specifically, you need to challenge yourself to understand from an emotional and intellectual perspective what it takes to excel in this particular situation without losing confidence.
Step 5: Generate two Bubbles
Take a moment to capture the essence of your current-self (lacking in confidence) and your future-self (radiating in confidence) in a crystal clear image.
Make sure that each image is very specific to the particular situation you are dealing with.
Place these two images side-by-side within your imagination and reflect on the differences that distinguish each image from the other.
Now, surround each image in a perfectly symmetrical glass bubble.
Step 6: Modify the Bubbles
Take the bubble image of your future-self and make it smaller and smaller in your imagination, then larger and more significant in your mind until it becomes life-size.
Continue this process several times while feeling the positive emotions from your future-self radiating through your body and subsequently transforming your emotional state of mind.
While you do this, say to yourself:
I feel good about myself.
I feel confident and capable.
I feel empowered and ready for any challenge that comes my way.
Now, take the bubble image of your current-self and enlarge it in your imagination. As this image grows, poke a hole in this glass bubble and watch the image shrink before your eyes.
As this bubble image shrinks, your future-self bubble comes to the forefront and envelops the current-self bubble in size and stature.
Do this several times while feeling the positive emotions radiating from your future-self rushing through your body.
Imagine these emotions completely enveloping you and transforming your emotional state of mind.
Yet again, state affirmatively over and over again that:
I feel good about myself.
I feel confident and capable.
I feel empowered and ready for any challenge that comes my way.
Step 7: Populate Your Future-Self Bubbles Along Your Timeline
While continuing to feel the rush of positive energy radiating through your body, imagine cloning the bubble images of your future-self many times over and stacking them up one on top of another.
Once stacked, imagine rolling them out along your timeline into the past as well as into your future.
All those positive emotions, behaviors, and the self-confidence that your future-self has demonstrated becomes a part of your future timeline.
Now, everywhere you go, and no matter what you choose to do (in the coming days, weeks and months) these empowering visuals will be there waiting for you.
They will give you the boost of self-esteem and confidence you need to get through the day in optimal ways.
Concluding Thoughts
As you continue to work with the Self-Esteem Builder technique over time, you will progressively grow your level of self-confidence and competence.
This self-confidence, of course, comes from all the future-self bubbles you rolled out along your timeline.
Whenever you’re confronted with a difficult situation, all you need to do is visualize the future-self bubble that you placed along that part of your timeline.
Doing this will help you tap into a more empowered emotional, mental, and physiological state.
As a result, you will naturally become more resourceful and able to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances as they arise.
It can also be helpful to practice mentally working through this exercise while bringing to mind various scenarios and problems you might face as you work toward your desired objectives.
For instance, think of a problem you could potentially face and imagine a resourceful future version of you working on that particular problem with supreme confidence.
Once you have a clear picture in mind, scatter cloned bubbles of your future-self along your timeline where you’re likely to face that particular problem.
Down the track, as you work toward your goals and confront that problem, you will naturally feel more empowered knowing that your future-self has already laid out a framework for you to use to overcome that particular problem.
The key though to making this process work is to go through this exercise consistently over time.
Only by working through it repeatedly over and over again, will you develop the necessary habitual patterns of mind that will help you overcome potential problems.
This works because the more practice you get working through problems in your imagination, the more self-belief you will develop. And this is precisely what will carry you forward toward your desired objectives.
With enough self-belief, anything is possible. Without it, we are nothing more but candles flickering in the wind hoping to stay alight. 🙂
Time to Assimilate these Concepts
Did you gain value from this article? Is it important that you know and understand this topic? Would you like to optimize how you think about this topic? Would you like a method for applying these ideas to your life?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then I’m confident you will gain tremendous value from using the accompanying IQ Matrix for coaching or self-coaching purposes. This mind map provides you with a quick visual overview of the article you just read. The branches, interlinking ideas, and images model how the brain thinks and processes information. It’s kind of like implanting a thought into your brain – an upgrade of sorts that optimizes how you think about these concepts and ideas. 🙂
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