more on self-esteem

Jasmine asked me how I'm working on my self-esteem.  Well, given that it's only been a few days since my revelation that it's a serious problem, it may be premature to post about it.  But what the heck.  Here is what I'm doing:

• monitoring my thoughts to find out what my negative thoughts are.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Meditation is a good way to learn to do this.  It teaches you how to be aware of your thoughts. 
• reframing my thoughts.  This was easy and fun for me.  You just have to make sure you believe your reframing.  
• practice my reframing.  This takes remembering but is reasonably fun since it's positive.
• Regarding healthy eating and weight loss, I don't know if this will work but I'm going to try this:   be happy with myself when I do well, and to refuse to be unhappy with myself when I'm not perfect.  

The last one might need some explanation:   The brain likes to do the opposite of what we tell it.  You discover this in meditation too.  My teachers play these games telling us to meditate on this and that, and we we constantly find that our brain does the opposite of what we tell it, it does what we tell it to avoid.  In fact, we are told the best way to meditate is to "not meditate."  Same with mountain biking--when you focus on the obstacle, you will hit it.  Focus on the path you want to take.  When you worry you will ride off the bridge, you will.  Focus on the center line of the bridge (the bridges are sometimes narrow).    So this is all to say, it's not easy to lose weight--otherwise the vast majority of people would not be overweight.  So refuse to be hard on yourself when you stumble.  otherwise, you will probably stumble more.   You'll head towards the obstacles instead of the path you want to go.