Ten Tips to Improve Your Self-esteem

I wanted to talk with you about self-worth, but when I looked up the definition of self-worth, self-esteem is listed as the reference. “Improving one’s self-confidence and value.” Wow, this is so vital that I am inspired to continue to keep going over this.

You aren’t doing the things that will improve your life and self-esteem. Are you?

It’s my plight again that hopefully you will listen to this and take action. The things I am teaching you will work and will improve your life and self-esteem. Don’t dismiss the simplicity of the exercises to gain more confidence in yourself. I want you to move forward.

Doing a little bit of research, and I came across a blog called, “Ditch the Label,” and in one of the posts, they have ten steps for improving self-esteem. I have talked about all of these before, but this is another witness for developing self-esteem.

I will slightly use it as a reference, “10 Tips to Improve Your Self-esteem.”

Tip #1 – Improve Self-esteem – Challenge Your Negative Thinking

It does not surprise me that their first tip is to challenge and change your negative thinking. Question your bad thoughts.

We have over 65 to 75,000 thoughts a day. Out of those 65 to 75,000 thoughts a day 45,000 to 50,000 of those thoughts are negative. Our negative thoughts tear us down and our destructive to us. When we get negative thoughts, be mindful of what you are saying to your self and start corrective measures. Step back and allow yourself to think objectively and to change the negative thought into a positive declaration. Instead of the negative thinking when you make a mistake,

“I’m so dumb.” Change it to, “I improve by making mistakes.”

Adding a simple phrase like this helps you to stay focused on being better, instead of tearing yourself down.

Stay in a healthy, consistent striving and thriving mode, so you immediately recognize your negative thinking.

When the negative thoughts come up, catch them, be mindful of them, be aware of what they are and write them down. Write those negative thoughts on a piece of paper so you can get them out of you. Here’s an example of what to do. Remember to start out with I’m feeling …. because… and allow yourself to vent; Get it out of you and then shred that piece of paper, as you’re destroying it tell yourself,

“These are the thoughts I had before that I no longer want and I’m letting them go.”

and then throw them in the trash or burn them.

Tip #2 – Improve Self-esteem – Self Care

The second tip to improve your self-esteem is to take care of yourself, also known as self-care. Self-care is critical in helping you improve your self-esteem. It is difficult to take care of others if we are not healthy our self. There are many things regarding self-care to be mindful of, here are a few I feel are most important:

* Healthy Eating

* Exercise

* Scheduled Down Time

You need to be your healthiest self to be at your most mindful and aware state. Self-care is not a selfish thing. Taking care of yourself helps you to be able to help others. When you help yourself, you will have enough energy, excitement, love that you can then extend to others. The problem is if we don’t take care of ourselves we get overwhelmed and go into shutdown.

Our body physically lets you know you can’t handle this and you start to get sick.

You Need to Establish Personal Boundaries and Emotional Boundaries

Today was a powerful experience regarding personal boundaries. I kept feeling like I need to do a video, which I normally do every Tuesday and Thursday but I kept feeling a sense of urgency so I set up my lights; wrote on the board my topic and then hit record. After about 15 minutes of recording, put away the lights and I prepared the file. In the process of editing the video so I could upload it, I felt,

“This is not the video to create today.”

Feeling perplexed and confused because it was what came to my mind, I sat down and wrote a letter to my Higher Power (loving Heavenly Father). In my letter, I  asked him,

“What should I do a video on today? What do my listeners need to hear?”

His Response

In response to my letter to Him, this is what I heard,

“There are a lot of my daughters that need to establish boundaries to protect themselves from physical and emotional hurt. Talk about these boundaries.

As soon as I finished reading the letter, I felt a flood of emotion come over me. I don’t know exactly who this video was for, maybe it was for you? I am honored that I was here to deliver it. It is an honor and blessing to help all of Heavenly Fathers daughters and son’s discover how to let go of their past, to move forward.

You may not be feeling worthy, devalued, useless, worthless, disgusting and like you should just die. These feelings come because of the pain you have experienced in the past that you have not learned how to manage them. You may be thinking you’re a lost cause and that you’re not worth any help.

I’m here for you. You are of worth, value, and love.

Realize Your Worth

No matter what you have done in your past, you’re a child of God. You are. This concept may be foreign to you, but it’s true. You have infinite worth. You’re loved by a greater love than you’ve experienced on this earth.

Abuse of any kind is NOT okay. You are not responsible or the cause, it’s the reactions of someone else who has not learned to manage their behaviors. There are also people who prey on those people who are weak.

Individuals that don’t know how to manage the pain from their past, give off a cue as easy prey. You must strengthen yourself, mentally, emotionally and physically. If you strengthen yourself mentally and emotionally, you will no longer be preyed upon.

You are amazing! The problem, you don’t realize it! I’m here to help you realize how amazing you are and believe it.

If you have any questions, please ask?

 

Tony Rhoton, Mentoring Women and helping them discover their value and worth.

Articles I reference in the video:

 

You Determine Your Value and Worth

The other day, I was feeling so excited about everything that I am doing in life. My motivation was at its highest. Nothing could knock me down, so I thought? I was looking at some questions and comments on my page and the value people were getting out of my content and then…

I read it … a negative comment.

One negative comment amongst all of the positive ones, but it was like a punch to the gut.

There was a flood of feelings that came through: hurt, anger, frustration, sadness and more hurt.

These thoughts pulsed through my brain, “I’m doing all of this to help people. How could they say those mean things?”

Reframed Thoughts

That’s when I reframed my thoughts and realized I had to look at these as gifts, positive and negative. “I was blessed with many positive gifts, things like:

* Thank you, you’re changing my life.

* Wow! I had no idea.

* Powerful insight, etc.

The positive gifts went on and on, and I was choosing to allow this one contrary gift almost ruin my day. Right then I realized it was my choice if I was going to accept this negative gift or not. It was my decision what I wanted to do with each present?

There’s a lot of challenge that comes with negativity, primarily if it is directed at you because it cuts to the core. If you learn to reframe positivity and negativity, you can discover a new level of self-mastery.

What negative gifts are you choosing to accept?

You need to decide today, do you want to keep these negative gifts or let them go?

The gifts you keep will determine the person you are going to be. You cannot accept negative gifts without them affecting you negatively. However, the exact opposite is true; you can’t accept positive gifts without them affecting you.

It’s your choice, are you going to accept positive gifts or negative gifts.

I’m here to help you discover how to get straight A’s in life, financially, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I’m here for you.

 

Tony Rhoton – Allow me to be your Mentor, Coach, Speaker 801.787.5765

 Are You Frustrated Because Things Are NOT Working Out?

I woke up at 3:30 am this morning and just lied in bed and I couldn’t fall back to sleep so I finally got up. Instead of being frustrated and angry, I sat down and asked Heavenly Father (my Higher Power), “What do you want me to do?”

I got the feeling I should listen to a certain talk. I don’t know why that specific talk but I felt good knowing that I listened, which got me thinking.

How many times in your life do you do something and you feel it’s what you’re supposed to be doing but it’s not working out? I belong to several mastermind groups and this morning one of the persons on the call was really down. I asked him what’s going on and he expressed his frustration about doing something for 5 years and it is coming apart.

He wants to keep working on his project and dream but his wife is wanting him to go back to work, move on.

My Greatest Frustration

One of the greatest frustrations I’ve experienced in my life is being held back from pursuing my dreams. I realized that when I have these moments, I need to look at the lessons I have learned. As I discover all of the things I have learned, I ask myself the next question,

“What should I do with all of this knowledge now?”

I take the question to my Higher Power and also I ponder it myself. In the process of discovery, I write down any and all thoughts, which are many.

When you start journaling and writing down your thoughts, lessons learned, etc., you stay in a creation mentality. Creation and solution mentality helps you to find answers to the problem you’re facing. You may need to take all of your lessons learned and apply them in a different way. Everything you have learned is going to help you in the future, it’s not for nothing.

You’re amazing, stay in creation and solution mode so that you can find the answers to your challenges.

Tony Rhoton, Life Mentor, Life Coach, Life Speaker – 801.787.5765

Jane’s Story of Feeling Worthless and How She Overcame It

I would like to share a story, altered a little to protect confidentiality but the concept is based on a true story about Jane feeling worthless.

Meet Jane; she’s an amazing, beautiful and talented young lady in her 50’s. In the world’s eyes, she’s the epitome of success. Jane has a loving husband; he’s supportive, caring, kind, churchgoer, he’s perfect. Her children seem to behave so well that people envy her. Every week Jane goes to church and fulfills any that she’s asked to do. She has a smile continuously on her face. She has a perfect life or does she?

What you don’t know about Jane is that she struggles with the feeling she does not have any value or purpose in this world.

How Could This Happen

You may be wondering, “How could this be possible, she has everything?”

When Jane was young, her father was supportive but not around, and she would do everything she possibly could to get his approval. She was married for a short time before the man she’s married to now, and he cheated on her. As a teen, Jane had a boyfriend that mistreated her, teachers that said some harsh comments and her favorite dog died. Her mother worked full-time, and when she was home, there were so many children that she never got attention.

You may be thinking this is life. Yes, it may be, but this past life is holding her back. She’s allowing the trauma, the challenges, the struggle to prevent her from moving forward. Jane does not feel she’s worth anything and is continually trying to prove herself but still never getting what she’s seeking.

Her Experiences

Through her experiences, she has internalized that she is not worth anything and her brain has sorted it out to make sense. Here are some examples of things that were running through her mind:

If I was worth something, my dad would have spent time with me. Yep, there’s another example that I’m worthless because what the teacher told me. I’m obviously not worth anything because my husband cheated on me. Obviously, God doesn’t think I’m worth anything because he allowed my dog to die. If I was worth something …

Jane has spent a lifetime of beating herself up and giving herself validation and verification that what she thinks is correct.

She has thrown herself into work, children, family, but has never taken the time to take care of herself. She needs to love herself for how amazing and beautiful she is but how?

The Healing Process

Jane called me up and said,

“I’m hoping you can help because I just have this feeling of being worthless and having no purpose in life. Can you help me or am I a lost cause?”

I replied,

“Yes I can help you. You are not a lost cause, you’re an amazing woman but just don’t realize it.”

Jane: “What do I need to do?”

Tony: “Let’s get you scheduled and start regular mentoring sessions.”

Jane: “Let’s do it!”

Lasting Results

Jane has now been mentoring with me for awhile and has grown so much. After a few mentor sessions, she said, “You have helped me more than all of the therapists I’ve gone to throughout my life.”

You probably can relate to Jane and some of her challenges. No matter where you’re at, you’re not a lost cause. Your experiences may be different, but your feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness are unfortunately familiar with almost every woman I have met.

The statement, “You’re amazing, believe it! I’ll show you how.” Is not just part of my mission but it’s part of my life. Once you realize how amazing you are, how beautiful,

Parenting Tip: Valuable Lesson Learned Over the Weekend

In my communication with my children, I let them know they need to help me out. I told them we were going to do one hr of weeding, besides feeling like they were going to die all was going well, until…

I was working on removing a junk tree in our backyard, the Chinese Elm, blah. Anyway, I started looking around, and I couldn’t find my son, where was he? A few minutes later, I see him, and I ask, “What have you been doing?”

His response, “I’ve been cutting down the tree in the front yard.”

My Non-Verbal Communication – Blood Started to Boil

Instantly my blood started to boil, and I said, “You did what? Show me!”

I walked to the front yard, and this is what I saw, I’ve already removed the limbs from this photo.

He thought he was so helpful because he was removing the tree from blocking our view from the window. I was so extremely upset that I gritted my teeth and told him to get to the backyard and weed until I’m happy.

I was so angry that I knew I had to get rid of this anger somehow; I had to let it go. With all of the skills I have learned throughout life, I thought this would be easy. What I didn’t expect was a desire to hang on to the anger, the sense of power I was getting.

Recognize

Recognizing the feelings, I immediately started to do some let go techniques, and the first was to unclench my fist and open my body up. I noticed that I was clenching my fist and my muscles, holding and squeezing them tight against me. The message I was sending my body was, keep this power, anger and don’t let go of it.

It’s essential that when we are in any heavy emotion to recognize it so we can let it go. I realized it but noticed I didn’t want to get rid of it.

After noticing my feelings, The next step was to take action and to start asking questions.

* Is it worth hurting your relationship with your son over this?

* What’s the worst thing that could happen if you hold onto this anger?

* What’s the worst thing that could happen if you let go of this anger?

Engage Logically

After engaging my logical and rational brain, I was able to calm down. When I took a moment to think about it, there is no way that I’m going to allow a tree to get in between my son and me.

It’s so important when you experience any high emotion, to separate yourself as much as possible so you can think clearly. Logically, it seemed silly to put a tree over my son, but that is exactly what I did with my anger. I was allowing that tree to hurt my relationship with my son.

Through the process of calming down, I was still angry, but I was manageable now. I sat down with my son and worked along the side of him, weeding. Realizing I was still extremely upset, I did not talk, but I was side by side with him, providing non-verbal communication of love.

Eventually, I apologized to him for getting so angry.

Parenting is not the easiest thing to do, but the rewards are the greatest.

 

Tony Rhoton, Mentor, Coach, Speaker • 801.787.5765

Don’t Allow Emotional Footprints in Your Room

I would like to take you on a visualization exercise today. Imagine yourself sitting in a room of a gorgeous house. This room you’re sitting in is peaceful. You’re surrounded by walls of white, and soft gray tones, a soft white carpet, gold trim, large stained glass that looks like a waterfall. Within this room, there’s some small plants, mirrors and a white couch with cherry wood trim that you’re sitting on. This place is heaven on earth, simple, organized, clean and most of all peaceful.

While you’re sitting in your place of bliss, someone walks in without taking off their shoes and leaves some footprints on the carpet. You’re fuming. How could they be so disrespectful? However, as they walk out of the room you but brush it off as it’s not that bad.

Ahh, you’re back to your place of bliss.

While you’re sitting there enjoying your solitude again, someone else has the audacity to walk in your room without your permission and they leave their footprints. As you look at where they walked, you notice that it’s kind of overlapping the previous person’s footprints and now there’s a darker stripe where the two footprints join.

You’re enjoying your current state and don’t want to worry about cleaning up those footprints and tell yourself, “I’ll clean them up later.”

As you’re starting to settle back down into your blissful, but now a little-frustrated state, you notice that more and more people keep coming into your room and leaving footprints, this time, where the original person stepped, you notice those footprints are so dark, they are almost black. You also notice that your beautiful gold trim on the edges are starting to get chips. Your couch that you were sitting on has little black smudges on it. The one ornate stained glass is now cloudy and hard to see the waterfall.

How Could My Room Get So Messy?

You wonder to yourself,

“How could I let my beautiful sanctuary get so messy?”

“Is it possible to get these black emotional footprints out? Can I find the gold to paint the trim again? Will it be possible to clean the stained glass window, my couch and be able to enjoy this place again?

The Room is You

I will now take this story and create the analogy. You are like that beautiful room, with gold trimming, white and gray walls and a gorgeous stained glass. You are absolutely amazing.

In life, you have had people say some sarcastic things, leaving little footprints on your carpet. However, you and society brushed them off as “they were just joking.” Like these footprints, the sarcasm left a slight mark on your carpet.

Dangers of Sarcasm

Then another person used the same sarcasm and left another set of footprints right next to the others, but this time, you start to think, “It must be true or there’s some truth to what is being said.” Again, you brush it off and think you’ll worry about it later and then a lot of people start coming into your life, leaving footprints. Your beautiful carpet is now smudged, you have started to internalize what is being said and feel it must be true. There are footprints all over with areas that are black because they have overlapped so many times.

You may feel or have felt like this room. Are you wondering if there’s a way to clean this room and find peace, joy, happiness again?

The answer is Yes!

Cleaning Up Your Room

There are many methods to start cleaning your room. Here are just a few:

* Emotion Journaling

* Talking to Trees

* Rewrite Your...

This video is a brief description of being mindful. Read below to learn how to improve your mindfulness.

How to Live a Mindful Life

You’re walking into a store, and it happens, you get triggered by something. A trigger can come in many ways, it could be emotional, physical, visual, smell, etc. The temptation to return to a past behavior you thought you left behind a while ago comes at you. Are you mindful of your thoughts, what do you do?

Remember This:

“…Action always happens in the present, because it is an expression of the body, which can only exist in the here and now. However, the mind is like a phantom that lives only in the past or future. Its only power over you is to draw your attention out of the present.” – Dan Millman

If the definition of addiction is that one has lost the ability to choose, how can that ability be reclaimed? It starts with watching your mind.

“We know that the ancestor of every action is a thought” (Emerson. “Spiritual Laws.”)

Your brain cannot tell the difference between a vivid thought or something that is seen with your natural physical eyes. All behavior is preceded by a thought or a series of thoughts that were given attention.

To live a more fulfilling life and to accomplish your goals you must become more aware of your thought processes. After you become aware of your thoughts, direct them through mindfulness. Mindfulness is making a conscious choice as to which thoughts to give attention to and focus on.

It’s Your Choice – Rewind the Tape

At every moment of your life, you have a choice as to which thoughts you will pay attention to or entertain and which ones we will let slip away. Most people are not accustomed to the awareness this requires. We each have a gatekeeper in our mind; we need to learn to recognize and pay attention to it. Even if one is completely enveloped in a negative behavior, the process of change can begin in an instant with a choice.

Learning to watch your thoughts is essential on the path of change. Most likely you have never been trained to do this. Negative behaviors are usually preceded by small and simple choices. These choices are mostly made without full awareness.

In the therapy setting, our therapists help clients process their slips. We use a simple technique called “rewinding the tape.” Think about what was happening before the action took place. Most of the time the slip occurred several days, weeks and sometimes months before the negative behavior manifests itself. If you learn to rewind the tape and recognize the process, you can build guardrails along the way.

Sabotage For Safety

When you choose to make choices in your life that will empower and benefit you, your mind may try to sabotage you for safety. Any time you become Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stressed or Tired, your mind seeks to help you survive. Your mind is going through your life of tapes trying to identify what helped you relax in the past. However, this false sense of safety can sabotage you if you are trying to push towards anything that’s new, like personal improvement.

Be Mindful of Your Thoughts

As you are pushing forward towards something new, you may experience thoughts like this:

“Are you sure you can do this, you have failed so many times in the past? You know you will fail again, so why try?”

“What if you fail? You’ll be a failure! If you don’t try at least, you can protect yourself from failure and keep your dignity. You know how painful failure is and it is better to protect yourself from possible failure.”

Once you recognize your thoughts, you can ask yourself if you want to have those thoughts and if they are serving you. After you identify the thoughts you want to keep and those you don’t,

Experienced Trauma? Manage Traumatic Events Instead of Them Managing You

This simple technique may give you the additional support and strength you need. I have been mentoring an individual for a while now, and she’s come a long way. She experienced some severe abuse as a child, physical, sexual, emotional and mental abuse. It’s incredibly saddening to hear about some of the violence she suffered. At first, when I hear about this kind of trauma, I am always amazed at how well a person is doing for going through all of the pain and suffering.

This young lady is no exception. She continues to smile and do her best for herself and her family. However, when someone has experienced trauma in their life, it’s embedded deep because the victim wants to forget about it; ignore it and pretend it never happened.

You Can’t Forget About It

Unfortunately, as much as a victim may try to push the memory down and forget about it, they can’t. Your brain is the greatest computer and remembers everything in its subconscious. To help manage and deal with the abuse, the victim will go to counseling. Therapy is extremely helpful but may not be enough, you have to learn to let it go. I have a simple LET Go technique for you to try to help you in your healing process.

Bright Light – Hope

All though a person who has been abused or experienced a traumatic event feels lost, there’s hope.

With this technique, you are going to need to find a mature tree because you’re going to expend all that pinned up, negative energy at it. Do NOT do this technique towards anything living, because it is extremely harmful. Please only talk to a mature tree or an inanimate object.

Talk to a Tree

After you have selected a mature tree, you’re going to talk to the tree and express gratitude for the tree being there but let the tree know you are going to be spewing a lot of negative energy at it. (I know it sounds weird, but it works.)

Next, you are going to take off your shoes, stand in front of the tree and vent all of your anger, frustration, pain, sorrow, hurt, stress, etc. to the tree with full emotion. Yell at it, scream at it, call the tree names, say everything you can think of that you would want to say to the perpetrator, don’t hold back.

 

Grounding or Earthing Therapy

This technique helps to get out penned up emotions so that they can be processed correctly. You are letting go of these emotions and allowing the tree to take them and send them to the ground; this process is called grounding or earthing therapy. Grounding helps to get rid of the negative energy, radiation and harmful things in our body so that you can heal.

All of the negative energy that is inside of you needs to get out, and this is one technique to get it out, here’s another that I mentioned in the video. This technique is efficacious and may completely change your life.

Tony Rhoton, Mentor – Helping you find hope, confidence, value, and purpose so that you can accomplish your goals, and help your children and family do the same. When you’re strong, your family is strong.

Mental, Emotional, and Physical Stuff for Survival

How much mental, emotional and physical stuff do you have lying around? What purpose is your stuff serving you? Identify what’s the purpose you are holding on to the stuff. Acknowledge that the stuff served a purpose, but now it no longer is needed.

Here’s an example of how physical stuff can mentally make us feel like we will die if we get rid of it.

In this example, I’m going to use a story from a young lady that helped me realize how her brain was considering physical stuff was necessary to survive. Her subconscious was controlling her life and was running a program that said, “Without the stuff, you will die.”

“It was a beautiful day outside. I am 7 years old and I was playing with dolls next to the couch when I started hearing yelling. Yelling was normal in my house so I didn’t think anything about it. However today was a little different, I saw my brother come in and he was yelling and running. My dad was running after him and was threatening to beat him. My brother turned around the corner and was trying to get away.

Seeing how mad my dad was, I knew he would seriously hurt my brother. Anyway as my father was running after him and reached for my brother, he tripped and hit his head on the coffee table.

My dad split his head open and lied on the floor bleeding, but my brother was safe. We were all grateful the coffee table was there because who knows what my dad would have done.”

In this story, you can see how stuff had saved her brothers life. Without the physical stuff, her brother may have been seriously injured.

Psychology That’s Going On

This young lady witnessed something that was very traumatic. Her brain instantly internalized, “If I want to be safe, I have to be surrounded by stuff. Stuff will protect me and make me safe.”

Fast forward many years, she struggles with keeping her house clean and orderly. She assumed that she was just a mess; however, she was unaware of a mental block being caused by her subconscious. Her mental state was not allowing her to be clean and organized, even though it’s what she wanted in her physical state. She has since been made aware of this block. Through the mentoring process, she has developed a lot of techniques, here’s one of them, to help her move forward, and now she’s in the process of cleaning and organizing her house, one room at a time. She sent me photos showing all of the stuff she’s getting rid of because now she knows how too.

Inventory Your Life

Now with this story, although a bit dramatic, you can see how stuff became survival to her brain and was using it without her knowing. In this example, I referenced physical stuff; however, it’s not always physical. It may be mental clutter or emotional clutter because of something that has happened in your life; you’re just feeling stuck.

When you can identify what’s keeping you stuck, you can discover the tools to leverage to get unstuck. I feel honored and blessed to help this lady discover those tools and to see her progressing so well. She is sharing these same tools with her son and realized that her son was keeping his room a mess because he could get away from the bad guys if they have to climb over stuff. He was using physical items to survive.

Your brain is phenomenal, and when you learn to leverage its power, you can accomplish anything you want.

 

Mentoring Women in American Fork, UT • Tony Rhoton 801.787.5765