What a great meeting we had last week! Our topic was "Self Esteem", something many of us struggle with. Below is a synopsis of what we discussed, and then....a dare, for any submissives who are struggling with a low self-esteem.

Simply put, self esteem is your opinion of yourself. Your self-esteem affects how you think, act and even how you relate to other people. It allows you to live life to your potential. Self-esteem is something that's learned, not inherited.

Low self-esteem is a negative opinion of oneself. Low self esteem means poor confidence and causes negative thoughts which makes you likely to give up easily rather than face challenges. It has a direct bearing on your happiness and well being.

Your self esteem depends on many questions: Do others respect what you do? Do you respect yourself? Do you believe you are successful? How do you see yourself (your self image)? How do you feel about your strengths and weaknesses? Are you comparing yourself to others and ignoring the unique value that you have? What do you think of your social status? How do you relate to others? Can you make your own decisions? A lack of choices leads to low self esteem.

Positive self-esteem means thinking as highly of yourself as you think of others. It's such a shame that we are usually more aware of our weaknesses than our strengths. A positive self-esteem makes it possible to face life problems and bounce back from them.

So, how do we raise our self-esteem. How do we work on what might be a lifelong problem?

Identify triggers to low self-esteem - What sets us off? Is it criticism, stressful situations, or misfortunes? We often personalize these things and turn it into a negative meaning about ourselves. That's often followed by a self-defeating though or action. Instead, let each "event" be a chance to learn about ourselves, if we face our fear of doing so and the negative beliefs about ourselves that sustain the negative meanings.

Stop personalizing. This will help to stop the impulsive responses. Try using relaxation and stress management techniques to help with the automatic overreactions. This allows us to interrupt the otherwise inevitable automatic reaction and put into play a way to begin to face the unacknowledged fears at the root of low self-esteem.

Stop and take notice our reactions to different stresses and situations. We often overreact in the same way to the same things. Noticing and being aware of the similarity can help slow our negative reactions.

Acknowledge the reaction. Verbalize, "Here I go again!" The result is to slow the impulse and give ourselves a choice about how we want to respond, instead of automatically responding in our usual way.

So, let's try something different! Instead of dwelling on the negatives, celebrate your strengths and achievements. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Don't dwell on your weaknesses; every human has them. Change the way you talk to yourself--stop putting yourself down! Be sure that you are not judging yourself against unreasonable standards.

And now, the dare! One of our members came up with this idea and we thought it was great. So here it is...

We dare you for the next 6 weeks to do two things.