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“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does it mean to love yourself? Especially loving yourself unconditionally? How can you show love to yourself? What is unconditional love?

Imagine you have a child, maybe 3 years old or so. Every single time you feel like criticizing yourself, imagine you’re talking to that child.

“Where did we ever get the crazy idea that in order to make children do better, first we have to make them feel worse? Think of the last time you felt humiliated or treated unfairly. Did you feel like cooperating or doing better?” – Jane Nelson

If others criticize your child, what would you do? Would you also join in and start criticizing your child? Or would you protect your child and perhaps take him away from that environment or defend him?

If your child was going to go outside and play would you let him look like a slob or would you dress him up and make sure he looks his best?

If your child wanted to smoke, would you let him?

If you child wanted to stay up late and eat junk, would you let him?

What if your child just wanted to drink coffee?

What if your child just wanted to sit on a chair and watch tv all day long or just play video games?

What if your child just wants to drink alcohol?

What kind of food would you feed your kid?

Real love sometimes is soft and tender while at other times it’s firm and unyielding.

If your child wants to play, would you tell him that it’s a waste of time and he should be working on something that’s more productive instead?

If you child feels like laughing in public, would you tell him to shut up and not to embarrass you?

If your child is feeling hurt and is sad, would you tell him to stop being a sissy, be a man and suck it up and not to be so sensitive? Or would you comfort him?

If your child is learning a new skill, maybe learning to ride a bike, what would you do? Every single time he falls off the bike, would you say to him “You’re so stupid!” “You should’ve known better!”, “Just look at your neighbour’s kid and how he is already riding a bike”, “Can’t you do anything right?!” “People were right, you are no good!” “If you can’t ride a bike by now, why did you let me waste money on it!” “Look at how much time I’ve wasted teaching you already!” “You’re such a loser!” “What’s the point of learning when you’re going to give up anyways?” ”You always give up!” “How many times do I have to tell you not to do it this way?” “Do you know how hard I work to earn the money that you’re just wasting away?” “Why can’t you be more like so and so?”

Now imagine you’re saying this to your child. Reaaaaalllly take the time and imagine that! Would you do that? No, of course not! If you do do that then shame on you!

Then why do you do that to yourself?

You are your own best friend and if you continuously criticize yourself then what do you expect from rest of the world?

“If someone in your life talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you would have left them long ago.” – carla Gordon

And remember that when and if you’re totally alone, you only have yourself with you. If you don’t like yourself then it’s going to be very very lonely.

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain

Next time you feel like criticizing yourself for anything, imagine you’re talking to a 3 years old child. There is a child within each one of us that’s hungry for love and appreciation. And it’s not love from others, it’s love from ourselves. If we can learn to love and accept ourselves as we are, we would not need approval from anyone else.

“If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Now what does that mean? What does it actually mean to respect ourselves? And what does that have to do with others? If others don’t respect us, doesn’t that mean that they are disrespectful people? So, what does that have to do with us? It’s them and not us!

It sounded excellent but never really made sense to me. That is until last year or so.

I found out that if my house was extremely messy, others (family or friends) who visited me would not treat it very well. For example, they might just leave the plates lying around, not bother taking their shoes off while entering the house and so on.

On the other hand, if my house was really clean, same people would be making sure they took their dishes to the sink, took their shoes off before entering the house, some even cleaning up their own dishes.

Now it made sense to me. If I don’t respect my own house, others won’t either. Same way, if I don’t respect myself, no one else will either!

If they see a messy house, they assume I don’t care about my house and they don’t feel a need to care for it either. Some because of their good habits may still do but there is no inclination to do it.

Even the messiest people coming to my house would not leave a mess, or not as much, if my house was extra clean.

I have friends who are strict vegetarians. In the beginning, people tried to persuade them to try to eat meat but they stood their ground. Now whenever they go out, those same people don’t even go to the restaurants unless they serve vegetarian food also.

That’s what it means to respect yourself.

Another example:

I am also a real estate sales person. Usually I would keep showing houses after houses to people just because they insisted they wanted to see them or just because they were my friends. And these were the houses that they hated but they still wanted to see just in case.

Time spent on that is the time I could be spending with my family or doing something else that I enjoy but I would still go on these showings because they kept insisting. If I said no, they would say that they really wanted to put in the offer this week and desperately need to see these houses. They would also make me feel quite guilty by insisting that they were only looking at houses with me because of friendship and trust even though they had a lot of real estate people in their own family. Needless to say I would take them.

Recently I’ve developed the attitude that if something doesn’t feel good, I don’t do it. So, I’ve actually started referring these people to others. It felt really uncomfortable especially because I’m not used to it. Another big reason is because I’ve been brought up with financial scarcity mindset. So, there’s always a hope that if I sell this house I would get some more money to pay some of the debts off and so on.

I am actually very happy with my decision! And I’ve learnt that this was another area that was contributing to me feeling depressed. More I start to be selfish and avoid doing things that make me feel bad about myself and my life, happier I feel!

Learning when to say no is the key!

More on this later…

Does listening to subliminal tapes work? How about recording affirmations onto a tape and listening to them while sleeping? That’s what I had decided to find out for myself.

Subliminal messages on a tape or cd

A method that has been around for a long time now is using tapes with subliminal messages on them. A lot of people swear by them. There are literally tons of tapes and cds being sold (with subliminal messages) for just about every area of your life.

Basically, the tape contains some music and positive affirmations. All you can consciously hear is the music and not the messages. But your subconscious mind is supposedly able to listen to the hidden messages.

In theory this works because your conscious mind is busy listening to the music and the messages/affirmations bypass it and get directly imbedded in your subconscious mind.

Audio Affirmations

I had heard that a very effective method for using affirmations is recording them onto a tape or cd and listening to them while sleeping. To make it more effective you can actually listen to them while you’re falling asleep, through out the night while you’re sleeping and wake up listening to them.

These are the times that the conscious mind is dormant and you have direct access to subconscious mind without much resistance. You can theoretically bypass your analytical and self-limiting beliefs.

That’s briefly how they work. I’m assuming everyone has a basic understanding of them.

If not then there are probably many places online that can describe them in much greater detail than me, for anyone interested.

I wanted to find out for myself if they did indeed work. If they did then that would be simply awesome as both of these methods were very simple and easy to apply.

So, this is was my plan:

1. Listen to tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping, and wake up listening to them
2. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days
3. If no change then same as #1 but also listen to them through out the day
4. Do it consistently for at least 30-60 days again
5. If desired change not there then record baroke music along with the affirmations
6. Listen to them again for at least 30-60 days
7. Listen to subliminal tapes while I fell asleep, through out the night while I was sleeping and wake up listening to them
8. Do it consistently for at least 60 days
9. Same as #7 but also listen to them through out the day
10. Do it consistently for at least 60 days

How to measure results?

First of all I really wanted it to work. I had read how this had helped so many people so I was actually very motivated and very much looking forward to them working.

So how exactly would I know if either of these methods worked?

I was looking for any difference in my attitude. I also wanted to see if I was acting in accordance with the new messages or if I was still acting the same.

If a situation presented itself I would notice what thoughts came to my mind and what actions I took. I was not necessarily looking for a total change in my thinking but even a little reminder or a nudge in the right direction.

For example:

I was afraid of roller coasters, every time I got close to them I would start panicking and mind would be filled with fearful thoughts.

After applying these processes, even if I could feel myself thinking that even though it roller coasters were something I’d been afraid of I could actually take steps to overcome this fear, that would have been considered successful for me.

Basically, I was looking any, even a tiniest change in my thinking and attitude.

Results:

I did not notice any change.

The subliminal tapes also provided manuals with written affirmations that were recorded on the tapes so I actually would read through those affirmations as well to make sure I knew what was being programmed in my mind.

For the example of roller coaster above, I noticed if I was still acting out of fear or not. But in the moment of fear I could not even remember any affirmations that were being programmed in my mind through subliminal tapes or while sleeping via tapes I had created.

I had several affirmations regarding many different issues but I did not notice any change whatsoever in any of those areas nor in my attitude in those areas. That was very disappointing.

I had a lot of limiting beliefs toward these processes though. Even though I had really wanted them to work and was willing to put in the work required to make them work, I was also not very optimistic about them.

It’s quite possible they might have worked with a different attitude. But the whole point of these processes was to develop a different attitude. It was catch 22.

Even though both of these processes have apparently worked for a lot of people, for me neither the subliminal tapes, nor audio affirmations worked.

Over the past few years I’ve tried various different therapies for depression. Here are my experiences:

Family doctor – My family doctor never thought there was anything wrong with me. I had to try repeatedly to get a referral to see a therapist/psychiatrist. He kept saying “don’t worry, it’s just stress! Everyone has stress these days, it’s no big deal!”

Psychiatrists – I saw a few different ones. Few of them saw nothing wrong with me as I seemed to be knowledgeable about what might be causing me stress and what I could about it. They said “you know what to do, you don’t need anything, and you’ll be fine!” While one suggested I could try to go on medication which I refused at that time.

Talk therapy – Quite effective. I worked with a good therapist and she knew just the right questions to ask me to make me think deeper about my issues. By just talking with someone who’s not going to judge can be very comforting in itself.

Only thing is that it can easily make you dependent. Plus those were one hour sessions and she would always be looking at her watch to keep track of time so I never really felt comfortable opening up as I would always be thinking of trying to summarize every thing so it could fit in that one hour session.

Eft – I mentioned in a previous article about how I cured my lower back pain using EFT. After that I worked with an EFT practitioner for some time to resolve a lot of deeper issues. Even though she thought everything was ok, working with her actually did not help directly. She was very good practitioner and a good person but I think the problem arose because she tried to use techniques of EFT without really taking into account my background.

After we had stopped the sessions I continued with EFT for another six months at least and for 1-2 hours every single day so I got quite knowledgeable in applying EFT. Every time something negative happened in my life, I would just apply EFT and get rid of the negative association to that event. This enabled me to look objectively at the situation and thus learn from it but overall it did not help me resolve deeper issues.

I eventually stopped using it so much when I started using NLP.

NLP – I worked with a highly qualified NLP practitioner. He was highly recommended and had done a lot of good in the community using NLP. He had helped a lot of people deal with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and not to mention a whole lot of other disorders and phobias very successfully.

We went through really extensive NLP sessions. He assured me that I did not need to remember specific events in order to deal with them with NLP. Interesting thing is that nothing worked. We went through a lot of issues, with many different NLP techniques, but not a single one of them went away. So, that was kind of disappointing.

Thus, I found both NLP and EFT to be very good at dissolving negative feelings if I could remember specific events. They’re both relatively easy to learn and use. They’re also very good at curing phobias as you know specifically what it is that’s causing you discomfort.

On the same note, I have found that unless you can get to the core issues, it’s very hard to totally resolve an issue with them.

With EFT, the set up phrases and phrases that are recommended to be used while tapping may not work for everyone either. Problem is similar to problems with using affirmations, as I mentioned in my previous article.

So, there you have it. Please keep in mind that every single one of these therapies has actually helped a lot of people. Just because I didn’t find help using them doesn’t mean they don’t work.

This is just my experience and they did not help me. Also, I could have tried going to different people with in the same field but I was fed up with it all.

Still, I actually learned a lot about myself, from each of these different forms of therapies, so these experiences were not totally wasted.

What exactly is depression? You can read my previous post for the symptoms of depression. But what is the cause of depression?

Let’s remember one thing! You were not born depressed. Therefore, your depression is not permanent.

Please keep in mind that I’m not talking about some disability though, which is different all together. I am talking about people who’re born healthy otherwise but fall into depression due to the circumstances in their lives.

Also, there are a lot of people who’ve cured their depression without medication so we know it is possible. This is a very good start.

You have a bad experience in your life. Now every time you think about it, it causes you to feel some kind of negative emotion. Not only that, but negative feelings get associated to anything that reminds you of that experience, or even anything that’s a little similar in nature.

What if you have many different negative events in your life? For example, what if you grew up in extreme poverty, experienced racism, had poor health, and grew up without real friends and so on?

Now, almost everything you look at might put you in a negative state.

You’re feeling sad all the time. More you feel sad, more you reinforce your current state and harder it gets to get out of sadness.

In a law of attraction term, you are always in a vibration of sadness. And since you attract in your life what you’re vibrating, you keep attracting other people, circumstances, and things that keep you in your current vibration, which is sadness. You’re stuck in a vicious cycle.

You stop to think about why you’re feeling sad but there is no answer since it’s been going on for quite some time now. It might have been a simple new gadget that someone bought that you didn’t have. Even though you might be able to afford it now but subconsciously it took you to a time when you were unable to afford anything. Or it might just be the way someone looked at you on the road, or way someone was dressed, or certain smell, or certain tone of voice, or people of certain religion/culture and so on.

It can be anything at all. It all depends what was around you when you had your negative experience(s) in your life. If in your negative state you focused in on a certain person then everytime that person’s around you, you might feel the same negative emotion. Actually, this is called a negative anchor in NLP. That same negative feeling gets anchored to that person.

So, how do you deal with it now? What do you do when you can’t even pin point the cause of your depression, of your sadness?

Take your attention away

One way is to take your attention away from sadness and by deliberately placing it on something that you like, something that makes you feel good.

If even for one moment you change your focus to something positive, at least for that moment your depression is no longer there. For that one moment you are feeling good.

You could try focusing on your breath. Focus on one complete breath, inhaling and exhaling. For that one breath your attention was taken away from depression to peace and tranquility. For that one breath you were at peace.

When I experimented like this, that’s when I realized that I did not need medication but needed to deliberately focus on things that brought joy to my life, things that made me feel good.

So, even if I couldn’t pin point the root cause of my depression but if I could feel good for just one moment then there there is hope that I could feel good for a whole day. It is just a matter of being in that state for longer periods of time daily.

This again is encouraging!