(reprinted from January’s edition of “Mentality” for men)

Healthy self-esteem is a critical component in a well-balanced life. Guys need it just the same, and it’s a consistent practice over time to maintain and refine good self-esteem, or the relationship that we have with ourselves. The way we treat ourselves is a direct reflection of the way we attract others into our lives. Who we attract into our lives is a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves – good or bad. Let’s take a look at some components to developing better self-esteem for men.

Here’s how this will happen: we’ll look at four common areas affected by self-esteem, and give four tips for each category.

• At Work
  • Feel accomplished by breaking up large projects into easy to manage tasks, and structure your time.
    • Check these free forms out to help get you better organized: http://davidseah.com/
  • Periodically ask for constructive criticism from superiors to do a better job. Don’t wait for your review. It’s not ass kissing if you to want to perform better, and wiser.
  • Use your lunch productively: do some stress management for yourself for thirty minutes
  • Set quarterly goals for yourself on the job, and work towards gradual achievement of them; if you’re unhappy at work, set quarterly goals to get yourself out of there and into a better job or career
• Relationship with Ourself
  • Identify and watch the toxic “self-critic”. Start to watch how it beats you down mentally, and how much of your behavior may be driven to succeed to “show” or compensate. This is the voice inside your mind that tells you “you’re not good enough, smart enough, successful enough.” Yes, that one.
  • Identify your needs and communicate them to the people that can meet them for you. Deal with the ones that can’t.
  • Identify your feelings and communicate them to the people that can listen to them. Deal with the ones that can’t.
  • Know what your limits are. Learning to say “no” is just as important for men as it is for women. Having healthy boundaries – which originate in ourselves first – is the foundation for practicing self-care, and developing good self-esteem.
• Lifestyle
  • List three things you’ve been saying you’re going to do – that you’re not already doing – and develop an action plan to start to do them. This includes interests, hobbies, investment in relationships, etc. Identify the blocks and barriers, and write them down. Repeat.
  • Consider your friendships, and how they should be mutually satisfying for both parties. Do you feel good about them, and feel like you’re getting from them, as well as giving to them? If not, is a change needing to be made? Our friends can be great mirrors of our self-esteem, if we look closely. Research shows that mental health,  like depression, can be socially contagious, so why wouldn’t positive (or negative) self-esteem? Surround yourself with well-intentioned people who are good for your self-esteem.
  • Practice 20-30 minute regular exercise routines and do it not for an end-result, but as a commitment towards greater energy and positive self-esteem. Do it for your partner (or kids) if nothing else. We’re not talking Lance Armstrong here. Shake up those feel good brain juices.
  • Align your values with your behaviors. Are you practicing what you preach? Are you doing things in the world that are consistent with what you believe in? Sometimes, recalibrating them brings improved self-esteem, when we’re living from our core values instead of someone else’s.
• Stress Management

• Practice 10-15 minutes of conscious breathing (you can do this at work) or mindfulness meditation. You’ll be able to “unstick” from negative thinking about yourself through this process. E-mail me for instructions on meditating or breathing exercises.
• • Create a “stress list”, and record the daily items that stress you. Dump the stressors onto that list, and put the list in your desk drawer, or in a glass jar labeled “To Worry About”. Don’t stress: you’ll get to them later.
  • Practice better anger. You can exercise it out, yes, but you can also get in touch with the experience of anger in yourself, and communicate your anger in a healthy way to those that are the cause of it. Don’t stuff your anger, but don’t explode either. Choose “the middle way,” and cool your anger and frustration each time it comes up. But time it well.
  • Don’t smoke, and drink a little less. Both will spike stress, and exacerbate negative thinking about yourself (especially if you then tell yourself you want to quit. This is called “cognitive dissonance”, when stress appears as a product of two competing ideas. (“I want to quit, but I’m still doing it.”)

Self-esteem is a relationship that we build with ourselves over time. It requires some work, and continuing to do the right things over and over again. If you think you have chronic self-esteem problems, and need help, contact me to see how counseling or psychotherapy might benefit you.

When we’re not living in our heads – in the regrets of the past and in the hopes for the future – we’re living safely in the present moment of our lives. Nothing too special, just being at peace with what is unfolding moment to moment. It’s what ‘is’.

Losing ourselves in our minds is an o.k. place to be while planning or daydreaming, but to get lost there and forget that the presence that we are – who we really are underneath it all – is there, waiting for us to attend to it.

Our work, relationships, thrills, and pain often reside in the past or the present. We fixate on things, people and experiences that are unfinished for us, and become resistant to moving on. People become emotionally frozen in time, and find it impossible to live presently. They forget about the very breath right under their noses.

With guys, who tend to go to their heads to solve problems, it becomes more difficult for them to tune in emotionally. Not being able to tune in emotionally, we fixate and circulate in our heads, trying over and over to fix our problem or dilemma, but never really getting anywhere.

Learning to live more in our lives – in the present moment – reduces some of the illusion and fantasy we carry with us. Sometimes this takes the help of a professional counselor or therapist, who can help unearth the frozen emotions. When we can learn how to develop emotional intelligence, tune into our bodies for the information we need to fix ourselves, and stop overusing our heads to figure it all out, I think we can start to develop the presence we need for greater happiness and more fulfilling lives.

(Taken from “Mentality” for men monthly newsletter, October edition. Sign up at www.phoenixmenscounseling.com)

The compromising of trust is such an infectious and widespread problem, especially in intimacy and relationships. Distrust corrodes relationships, breaks down friendships, prevents career advancement and creates a schism within ourselves that widens over time.

In intimacy, the number one problem I hear women discussing is how they don’t trust their guy. They may be holding onto distrust from past incidences, or they may be reacting to things that you’re doing to stoke that distrust today. But the barriers that distrust creates block real intimacy, sexual connection and the chance to deeper and strengthen a relationship or marriage.

There are a myriad ways in our culture to erode that trust: other women, a sexually repressive culture, divorce, excessive behaviors and addiction. In our culture, men are taught to stuff their feelings and emotions, which automatically both magnetizes us to those “erosion behaviors” and sets the stage up for distrust to come.

Questions to consider in the building of trust:

• Are you a man people can trust and rely on?
• Do you make a practice of doing what you say, when you say it?
• Would others say you compromise their trust at times? How so?
• How do you deal with others emotions? Can you listen and accept them when others are down and need support?
• Do you focus your emotional or sexual energies on other women, and not your wife? (e.g. thinking about other women, excessive masturbation, pornography, even flirting with other women)

A theme that I refer back to is the idea of values vs. behaviors. Are you practicing what you preach? Are your deeper values producing behaviors in the world that line up and are consistent? If not, what prevents them from mirroring your values?

Values could be anything like these:

• You see a vision of a strong and healthy relationship in your life, which may be different from past relationships
• You believe in truth and honesty, and seek to communicate those values through your behaviors
• You want people to know, like and trust you – do you give them reasons to do that?

If you’re in a relationship now, or would like to be, I’d invite you to open this discussion up with your wife, girlfriend or partner. Talk about the insecurities that come up, and the blocks or potential threats to building that trust. If you want to build more trust, ask your partner how you could go about doing that if you suspect your relationship could benefit from more trust.