Do you lack the self-esteem and confidence you need to create healthy and satisfying relationships?  Do you sometimes find yourself worrying so much about what other people think of you that motivation or positive thinking is all but out of your reach? Low self-esteem is a common problem that causes many unnecessary anxiety symptoms. Stop worrying and discover how to finally unleash the true power of positive thinking. And you can't do that until you understand how you got here in the first place... read on.

Do you sometimes wonder why you are unable to be free from worry and doubt or why it's difficult for you to find stability in your relationships? You're not alone. We find that many people ask themselves to some degree, "Do the people in my life have a problem with me or with my actions?" You might feel weird and uneasy about yourself and your behavior around people. Simply stated, we describe this as a fear of being judged by others. We believe this is the result of some form of self-judgment.  

It's very difficult to feel comfortable or stable when you are worried about other people's judgments of you or you're in the process of judging yourself.  We call these Moralistic Judgments because they focus on who's "right" and who's "wrong," who's acting "appropriately" and who's acting "inappropriately."  

If you find yourself doing this, it seems that all of these Moralistic Judgments are turned inward, toward yourself. We’ve never seen self-judgment cause anything but doubt, insecurity, confusion, fear, etc. (When judgments are turned outward towards others they tend to generate feelings of anger, mistrust, frustration, etc.)

Most of us are raised in a culture that teaches us to use moralistic judgment as the way we control people's behavior.  These judgments are used to determine who gets punished and who gets rewarded as we grow up. Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Four Agreements, describes this as the process of domesticating our children. It's the same process we use to domesticate animals.  

The biggest problem we see with this system is that it strips people of a true sense of their autonomy--the ability to choose their actions wisely according to their internal set of values.  Instead, we learn to choose how we behave based on the reward offered or the punishment threatened by those in positions of authority.  

When we‘re raised without learning how to exercise our true autonomy we are left with only two options: we can either submit or rebel. (Think about the “terrible-twos“—that time during child development when the emergence of our true autonomous human nature clashes with the cultural process of domesticating our children.)

If we are only left with submission and rebellion as our options, the worst cases are that: ?A person becomes a doormat, always placing other people's interests and desires before their own.
?They become a rageoholic, using domination as the only way they know to meet their needs.
?Or they may swing between these extremes, passive-aggressive in some situations and belligerent in others.

How do we know where we are along the spectrum between submission and rebellion? Whenever we submit we tend to feel doubt, insecurity, confusion, fear, etc. Whenever we rebel we tend to feel anger, mistrust, frustration, etc.

Sound familiar?  

But we‘re confident it’s not part of our human nature to either be slaves—submitting without question to others, or to be rebels—forever at war with anyone who seems to oppose what we want.  

Over and over again, we’ve seen the people who’ve taken our courses regain a sense of their true autonomy and rediscover their ability to choose how they act based on what is most important to them.

They learn to replace the false sense of "choosing" whether they will submit or rebel with a deep understanding of what they most deeply value.  And even more importantly, to negotiate from this position of internal authority and power and begin to create extremely satisfying relationships in all areas of their lives.

Nowhere in our schools, the entertainment media, or our popular literature are we ever taught to develop our internal sense of authority or how to foster the kind of trust, respect, and cooperation we need for our relationships to be based on our shared values.  

But we believe that this is the essential core, the very foundation of our ability to be free from worry and to create stable relationships. You can discover some practical advice about how you can begin to create this for yourself in our article:
Self-Esteem... How to Turn I'm Not Good Enough, into I'm Un-Stoppable,  found on our website in our articles archive.  

We hope this gives you some insight into what may be creating your experience in your relationships. We also hope this gives you a starting point for what you might begin to do so you can have a different experience.

Discover more about how you create your relationships and more personal growth and self-help techniques , sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.FocusedAttention.com.

This series offers targeted advice on how to resolve the internal and external conflicts you face as a result of how you create your relationships.

Visit our blog at http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com

Have you ever wondered what unconditional love actually means, or what it would take to give yourself or someone else this kind of love ?  

We believe everything in your world is a reflection of YOU. And that’s the good news!  

Why? Because if everything starts with you, then you don’t have to FIX, CHANGE, or concern yourself with what’s out there; all you need to do is understand and focus unconditional love on yourself.  

This newfound self-love will lead you to a life filled with more self-confidence, peace, and authentic happiness?guaranteed.  

Let’s begin by understanding what unconditional love means. According to Wikipedia, it’s: "Showing love towards someone regardless of their actions or beliefs.”

What Is Unconditional Love?
To answer the question “What would it take to give ourselves unconditional love,” we'll start by looking at what prevents us from offering unconditional love to others in the first place. We believe what prevents us is how we’ve been conditioned to respond to people’s actions and beliefs.  

From a very young age, we’ve learned that the most effective way to change someone’s behavior is to criticize, blame, judge, humiliate, threaten, or punish them. Or to use any number of other tactics that will cause them to fear acting the same way in the future.  

On the flip side, we learn to use rewards to reinforce the behaviors we do like. This punishment and reward system is basically a “behavior control” technique. It’s the same system used to train circus animals.

But what do most people learn from being subjected to these “behavior control” techniques? We quickly learn how to avoid being on the receiving end of the “punishment.”  

When we‘re caught doing something “wrong,” most of us learn how to be very, very careful so we don’t get caught again! And it’s not surprising that, at a very young age, we begin to use this behavior control system on ourselves whenever we don’t live up to our own expectations.  

The Two Questions
But first it’s helpful to understand how completely misguided these “behavior control” techniques are in achieving their true underlying goals. Answering the following questions helps us to understand this.

The first question is: What do we want people to do?
If you only consider this first question, then a system of punishment and rewards may seem like a very effective system because it does produce the desired results?at least some of the time.

The problem is that when people are only motivated by fear of punishment or promise of reward you’ll likely get the highest prison population in the developed world, and large numbers of company executives defrauding their shareholders.  

Why? Because people have only learned to focus on getting the rewards and avoiding the punishments.

Most of us never ask the second, and much more important question: What do we want people’s motives to be for doing what we want them to do? (Or?Why do we want them to want to do it?)

So stop for a moment and think about the basic things we want other people (and ourselves) to do. Almost everyone would like people to be truthful, honest, respectful, kind, considerate, etc. If you think about it, how we want others to act is simply a reflection of what we most highly value.  

How Do You Create Unconditional Love?
The way to create unconditional love for yourself is to turn your attention away from the system of punishment and rewards you learned to use to control your own behavior. Instead, turn your attention to what you value most.  

Feelings of discomfort are bound to occur in situations where what you value is missing in what you’ve said or done. However, you can learn to use these feelings to focus all of your attention on how to create what you value in that situation, rather than punishing yourself for having done something “wrong.”

You can download our free Values Exercise Worksheet from our site to help with this process. You can use this exercise any time you want to get clear about what you value in any situation you want to improve.  

Focusing your attention on what you value is the essence of what we suggest at the end of our video. What you focus your attention on will grow. This fact makes it essential for you to learn how to dig below any disappointment in yourself or your behavior, and discover for yourself what you value that is missing in the situation.  

How Do You Practice Unconditional Love for Yourself?
What is love? Is it a commitment to support someone in reaching their highest potential, achieving what is important to them in their life, being as happy as they possibly can, ensuring that all of their needs are met, etc.?  

If you agree, then unconditional love can only exist when you‘re able to keep your attention focused on what you truly value and finding ways to create that. You can’t do this if you have your attention focused on using a punishment and reward system to control behavior.

How do you practice this? Let’s say that you fail to arrive for a meeting with someone when you said you would. What kind of thoughts might go on in your head? “I’m so stupid“; “I should’ve left earlier“; “It’s not my fault, there was too much traffic“; “Now they‘re going to be angry and it will ruin the meeting“; or “They probably won’t trust me in the future.”  

How would you feel if you had these kinds of thoughts going on? Does it feel like unconditional love to you?

Now imagine just stopping, taking a breath, and experiencing the discomfort of these thoughts, but without any desire to mentally punish yourself for being late. Consider that these thoughts probably reflect your value for respect, punctuality, consideration, cooperation, and trust. Then realize that your discomfort is being stimulated because these values are missing for you when you show up late.

The next step is simply to start identifying strategies that will help ensure you act more in harmony with your values in the future.  

What could you do to make sure that you left earlier? What could you do to determine whether or not you would run into traffic along the way? If they were angry, how could you help resolve this so you could have a successful meeting? If there was a loss of trust, could you have a conversation with the other person to see if there is anything you could do right now to help restore your relationship with them?

How does it feel when you have your attention focused on what you value and what you can do about it? Does this feel more like unconditional love?  

We realize that it takes much more understanding and many more skills than we can offer in a brief article like this to overcome years of conditioned thinking that may be preventing you from experiencing unconditional love for yourself. To learn more about this and other personal growth and self-help techniques , sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.FocusedAttention.com/cmd.php?ad=081030. .

Each tip offers practical advice for creating the relationships that you really want.

Or visit our blog at: http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com .

Has someone close to you broken your trust by lying? Is it difficult to get back on track and reestablish that trust relationship you thought you had? If so, there is hope!  

It’s possible to get back to having a healthy and satisfying relationship with a person who has been lying. Understanding why they’ve been lying to you, what prevents them from telling the truth and taking responsibility for your part in the relationship breakdown are the first steps to repair your relationship.  

We'll go over the basics and provide clear examples for how to implement the steps in this article.

While it's impossible for us to know the details of your relationship or the specifics of your particular situation, these generic examples can help begin the healing process, even in a complex situation where someone you care about has lied to you.  

Is it Worth the Trouble?  

We are confident, although generic, if acted on, these steps will help guide you in the direction of regaining lost trust and support you in the process of rebuilding your relationship.  

Step #1 for Regaining Trust  

To regain trust, the first thing to do is to let go of any judgment that this person did something “bad” or “wrong“. This kind of judgment only keeps you separate and distrustful.  

This might be hard for you to even consider doing at first. Hard because most people believe that giving up their judgment of someone is the same thing as condoning what they’ve done. We assure you, it is not.

You can only let go of a judgment when you've been able to translate what they've done in terms of what they value.

To help let go of any judgments it is important to know that people only do or say things because they are acting in harmony with something they value, or as an attempt to meet some need.  

Again, without specific examples it’s impossible for us to guess what a person might value or what need they are attempting to meet. So we’ll make up a story to give you an example of what we‘re talking about.  

A Son Who Lied  

Let’s say you have a teenage son and you ask him where he's been.  He tells you he was at the library studying. Later you find out that he actually skipped school and was at a friend’s house all afternoon playing video games.  

Now you might choose to be very angry and upset because he should know better than to lie to you because lying is “wrong“. You might start thinking: “I can’t trust him if he lies to me. How can we possibly have a good relationship if he’s going to lie to me?”  

We agree that lying is not an effective way to create a satisfying quality of relationship or a very successful life. However, we want you to consider that there’s a way to look at the situation that is less painful for you and has the possibility of creating a quality of trust that you long for with your son.  

So let’s look at the situation from a new perspective.  Your son lied to you. Instead of being upset and angry that he’s done something “wrong“, you decide you want to discover what prevented him from telling you the truth in the first place.  

Everything We Do is in Support of Something We Value  

You can only do this after you’ve come to understand that he lied in service of something he values or as a way to meet some need.  

And at this point, you don’t yet understand what that might be. In this case, we believe you‘re upset about the lying because you value a quality of understanding and respect. And because you value this it is exactly what we suggest you focus on in your conversation with your son.

If you‘re are acting from a desire to create understanding and respect it’s much more likely you’ll be able to be curious about why he lied in the first place. It’s likely you’ll be able to see that his lying wasn’t intended as a personal affront to you. Instead, you can focus on your relationship and your ability to support him in getting his needs met in a way that works better for both of you.

Let’s put ourselves in his shoes and try to guess what he values that prevented him from telling you the truth.  

We’d guess that freedom of choice is very important to him—he wants be in charge of his life and decide where he goes. We’d also guess he was lying to protect himself from the upset that telling the truth might create.

Freedom from Judgment is the Freedom to Have What You Want  

Once you‘re able to let go of the judgment that this person did something “bad“, you‘re able to begin exploring the situation to see what prevented them from telling you the truth in the first place. Then you can begin the process of creating agreements about how to best meet everyone’s needs.  

In this case, this would be how to get your needs for trust and a good relationship met, while at the same time meeting his needs for freedom of choice and having more enjoyable interactions with you when he wants something other than what you want.

This process we‘re describing is very different than the common interactions you see between people. And please realize, we‘re just skimming the surface of all of the understandings and skills we teach that are needed for you to shift your perspective and create agreements that would work for everyone in a comfortable way.  

In a nutshell, what we‘re describing is the very first step to regaining trust.  

This first step is to make a commitment to get everyone's needs met. Next you need to shift your perspective from right/wrong thinking.  

After you get the idea that they’ve done something wrong out of your head, you can begin to explore what everyone values, and then start figuring out ways that everyone can be satisfied.

Again, we hope the situation we’ve used as an example will give you specific practices you can use to regain trust as you rebuild your relationships.  

For more useful tips on this topic and other personal growth and self-help techniques , sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.FocusedAttention.com/cmd.php?ad=081030.

This series offers up straight-forward action tips about creating this quality of understanding and agreement that we‘re sure will support you.  

Visit our blog at http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com

Do you ever find it difficult to love yourself because you think you‘re unlovable, you‘re a failure, or you‘re just not worth the time?  Does your inner critic put you down when you fail live up to your own expectations?  

If so, and you‘re looking for a way to win the inner battle with yourself and find true happiness and a sense of self worth, then this article is for you. Read on and you’ll discover important insights about why you‘re so hard on yourself, and more importantly, how you can turn your inner critic into your inner mentor and develop a true caring, loving relationship with yourself.

How can you learn to love yourself unconditionally?
Let's begin by exploring the definition of unconditional *love* . Wikipedia defines this as: "Showing love towards someone regardless of their actions or beliefs."

It's much easier to understand what unconditional love is than it is for us to practice it. But why do some of us struggle so much with self acceptance?

Let's get to the root of the problem by looking at what prevents us from offering unconditional love in the first place. We believe that this is results from the way we’ve been conditioned to respond to other people’s actions and beliefs.  

From a very young age we’ve learned that the most effective way to change someone’s attitude or behavior is to criticize, blame, judge, humiliate, threaten, or punish them. We use these or any number of other tactics that will cause them to fear acting the same way in the future.  

On the flip side, we learn to use rewards to reinforce the behaviors we do like. This punishment and rewards system is basically a “behavior control” technique. It’s the same system used to train circus animals.

The Down Side of Using Punishment to Control Behavior  

What do most people learn from being subjected to these “behavior control” techniques? We quickly learn how to avoid being on the receiving end of the “punishment.” When we‘re caught, most of us learn how to be very, very careful so we don’t get caught again!  

If this is the “right” way to control how others act then it’s not surprising that, at a very young age, we begin to use this behavior control system on ourselves whenever we don’t live up to our own expectations.

To illustrate this, we've put together a video called Be Happy. It describes how this process can happen to us, and how the effects play out later in life. You can find it by going to our website and clicking on the Articles and Videos link on the left hand side of the screen.

The video shows how this process plays out in our relationships with other people, but the process works pretty much the same way in our relationship with ourselves. When you watch the video it won’t be hard to see how the habitual ways we learn to react to situations can hinder our ability to love ourselves unconditionally. (If you pay attention toward the end of the video you’ll actually find an insight into one powerful thing you can do to overcome this problem.)  

The Two Questions
First, it’s helpful to understand how completely misguided these “behavior control” techniques are in achieving the true underlying goals we desire. Answering the following two questions will help you understand why this method is not the best way to accomplish what we want or get people to act the way we hope they will:

The first question is:
What do we want people to do?
If you only consider this first question then a system of punishment and rewards may seem like a very effective system because it does produce the desired results—at least some of the time.

The problem is that when people are only motivated by fear of punishment or promise of reward you’ll likely get the highest prison population in the developed world, and large numbers of company executives defrauding their shareholders. Why? Because people have only learned to focus on avoiding the punishments and getting the rewards.

The second, and much more important question is:
What do we want people's motives to be for doing what we want them to do? (Or: Why do we want them to want to do it?)

So stop for a moment and think about the very basic kinds of things we want other people (and ourselves) to do. It’s easy to understand that we basically want people to be truthful, honest, respectful, kind, considerate, fair, etc. And we want them to act in these ways because these behaviors reflect what we most highly value.  

When you answer the second question it becomes obvious that threatening punishment or enticing with rewards doesn’t foster the kind of inner motivation that would cause someone to adopt these values for themselves. Why? Because punishments and rewards are out of harmony with the underlying values we are trying to promote.

Self Love = Changing Your Inner Punishment and Reward Habit! The way to create unconditional love for yourself is to turn your attention from the system of punishment and rewards that you've learned to use to control your own behavior. Instead, you must learn how to maintain focused attention on what you value most. Acting in harmony with what you value is the best way to love yourself.

You practice this whenever you feel the discomfort that is bound to occur in situations where what you value is missing in what you’ve said or done. These feelings of discomfort are your alarm telling you that it’s time to focus all of your attention on how to create what you value in that situation. This is how you turn your inner critic into your inner mentor who guides you to act in harmony with your values rather than punishing yourself for having done something “wrong.”

(We offer a Values Exercise worksheet that you're welcome to download free from our site. You will find it in the "Free Stuff" section of our website. You can use this exercise any time you want to get clear about what's most important to you in any situation.)

Maintaining focused attention on what you value is the essence we point to at the end of our Be Happy video. What you focus your attention on will grow. This makes it essential for you to learn how to dig below any disappointment in yourself or your behavior, and discover for yourself what you value that is missing in the situation.  

What Is Love
If you agree that love is a commitment to support someone in reaching their highest potential, ensuring that all of their needs are met, being as happy as they possibly can, and achieving what is important to them in their life, then unconditional love can only occur when you‘re able to keep your attention focused on what you truly value and finding ways to create that. You can’t do this if you have your attention focused on using a punishments and rewards system to control behavior.

As an example: Let’s say that you fail to arrive to meet someone when you said you would be there. What kind of thoughts might be going on in your head? “I’m so stupid I should’ve left earlier.” “It’s not my fault there was so much traffic.” “Now they‘re going to be angry and it will ruin the meeting.” “They probably won’t trust me in the future.” This is your inner critic at work.

How do you feel with these kinds of thoughts going on? Does this feel like unconditional love?

Now imagine just stopping and experiencing the discomfort of these thoughts without mentally punishing yourself for being late. Consider that these thoughts probably reflect your value for respect, punctuality, consideration, cooperation, and trust. Then realize that your discomfort is being stimulated because these values are missing for you when you show up late.

Focus Attention on What You Do Want
The next step is simply to start identifying strategies that will help ensure you act more in harmony with your values in the future. What could you do to make sure that you left earlier? What could you do to determine whether or not you would run into traffic along the way? If they were angry could you do anything that would help resolve this so you could have a successful meeting? Could you have a conversation with the other person to see if there is anything that they would like you to do in order to restore these values in your relationship with them?

Think about it. How does it feel when you have your attention focused on what you value and what you can do about it? Does this feel more like unconditional love?

We realize that it takes many more understandings and skills than we can offer in a brief article like this to overcome years of conditioned thinking that may be preventing you from experiencing unconditional love for yourself. We hope this article provides some value for you as you seek new possibilities for how to love yourself unconditionally.

Consider showing yourself some love right now by learning more about this and other personal growth and self-help techniques by signing up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.focusedattention.com/cmdphp?ad=081030

Visit our blog at: “ http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com

Nobody wants to settle for a life without the things they really want, but what if you're still unsure of what those things are for you? How do you move forward to create a life that fills you with joy?  

A deeper look may reveal things you never knew about yourself—and without being clear about those things, you may never discover how to find true, authentic happiness. Read on to find out how to determine exactly what you need to be happy now. And in this article you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that this time it's not all about finding "your life’s purpose.”

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself any of these questions:  

? What is the purpose of my life?
? Why am I here?
? What do I really want?  

If so, you‘re on the right track. Asking yourself these types of questions is an essential first step in creating a life you love. At the same time it's also the cause of much confusion and frustration for many people.

As with any questions, there are many ways these can be answered, and no question is ever as straightforward as it seems. So with that said, we would like to start with the understanding that you will REALLY WANT many things as you live your life. A common frustration many people have comes from believing that “by now” they should have figured out “THE” thing that will give their life meaning—the one thing they were meant to be, do, or have.  

We suggest that you begin looking at your life as a glorious, never ending stream of opportunities (or whatever metaphor works for you). Realize that what you REALLY WANT changes with time and from situation to situation. What you really wanted when you were younger is probably very different that what you want now. What you really want in your professional life may be very different from what you want at home or with friends.  

To get clearer about this we suggest you start investigating different areas of your life to discover what’s deeply important to you, what might be missing for you, and what would be the most wonderful way to spend your time. The clearer you become about this, the clearer you will become about the things you really want. Once you begin letting go of the idea that there’s only one thing that you want, you‘re freed up to notice an abundance of opportunities for creating a meaningful life.

If you‘re like most people, more than anything else you want to be happy. Authentic happiness usually comes when our lives have a sense of meaning and purpose. If this is true for you, then the question becomes, how can I figure out what is most meaningful to me and how can I live my life in ways that make me truly happy?  

This is not about finding your “life’s purpose.” In fact, we think that “life purpose” is often just a strategy you choose that best helps you to live in harmony with your core values. It’s more of a means to experience what you value than an end. If this is the case, can you see how knowing your core values would help you find purpose and meaning in your life that would be very satisfying?  

To discover your core values we suggest you start by answering questions like these:  

? What do I love to do?
? How do I love to spend my time?
? What makes me feel good?
? When am I most passionate?  

Answering these questions will help you start identifying w hat’s most important to you—what you truly value.  

To support this process you can download our free Values Exercise, which you can find by visiting our website and clicking on "Free Stuff".

Once you identify what you truly value, we suggest you start investigating different areas of your life. Notice if you experience these values in those areas. If they are easy for you to spot then celebrate—you already have what you really want.  If you‘re not experiencing them as much as you’d like, this is an opportunity to figure out concrete ways that you can start to experience more of what you value most.

This is the beginning of figuring out what you REALLY WANT.  The more you practice this the more you will start living a values driven life. The more your life reflects your values the happier you are—which turns out is what most of us REALLY WANT in the first place.

Uncover more ways you can find authentic happiness in your life now by learning more about this and other personal growth and self-help techniques . Sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.FocusedAttention.com/cmd.php?ad=081030.

This series offers profound yet practical advice for how to create the life you really want - and find authentic happiness along the way.

Or visit our blog at: http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com