In this week's segment of the Mindset Transformation radio show and podcast with Coach Myrna, I teach on the topic how to Raise your Self Esteem by Erasing Self Doubt.

Self confidence and self esteem is the belief that you can accomplish any task or any goal.

Self doubt is the negative narrative that plays in your head. It is like PAC man. It is there to eat up your confidence

I was listening to a Ted talk YouTube video last week and the speaker was telling his story.

He said for 10 years he smoked crack when he woke up and before he went to bed. Hoping to numb the pain of living. He was a disappointment to his mother, his wife and his children. He felt worthless!

On his second trip to prison, he spent a total of 8 years in prison, his adopted mother had a heart attack and he was told she was not going to make it. He felt pretty low that this woman who he adopted him and loved his as her own and tried to give him a better life was now in the hospital, in a cold dark room and he was not there to offer her comfort. This was the first spark of change in him. Maybe he should do something with his life other than being a mess up.

When he got out of prison this time he decided to go to college. He was now a middle aged black man and he was in college with 20 year old white students. Never the less he did good and now looked forward for the accolades his teachers gave him because he was performing better than expected. He said that praise was now his new drug. He lived for his teachers praises. One day one of his teachers put an application for a job on his desk. He couldn’t believe it. His teacher had confidence in him, his teacher had confidence in his ability to do the job. The self confidence seedling inside him got water and grew a little. As his self confidence grew, his life changed. No longer was he a non contributing member to society, he was making a contribution. He now had a new family and 7 years after he was released from prison, he received his PHD in Physiology!

Self confidence doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes you have to practice and practice until you build it. Sometimes it comes from your teachers or your parents.

So today I will share some tools to help you build up your self confidence and self esteem while starving the negative self talk. The negative talk that tells you, you are not good enough. You can never make it, you are not smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough.

But before we can get to the solution of anything or before we can get to anywhere on the map, we have to know how we got to where we are right now and pinpoint where we are.

For example. If you are at the mall and you are wanting to go to Macy's department store you look at the map and it shows "You are here" if you want to get to Macy's than you know you have to walk right or left.

It is the same way in life.

Statics show that we can shed a lot of light on how we got here on the map by looking at our childhood. You see parenting does not come

with a manual and some parents get it right; but most get it wrong.

Understanding your inner child is very important to unlocking the door of where you are on the map today.

You see when you came into the world you were totally dependent on someone else to care for you. Not just to feed you, bathe you, and to keep you warm but to love you, protect you and nurture you.

If whenever you cried your mother or caregiver came and picked you up and smiled at you and comforted you then you transformed that into the feeling of you are important.

If however when you cried you were ignored, then you formed the feeling that you are unwanted.