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Self Limiting Beliefs: The following story illustrates how our life is controlled by our self limiting beliefs.
A scientist took a flea and put it in a glass jar. With one jump the flea could come out of the glass jar.Now the scientist put a lid on the glass jar. Now whenever the flea jumped, it hit the lid of the glass jar. Hitting the lid hurts. So after a few hits, the flea reduced its jumping height. It started jumping to a height that was just short of the lid.
After several such jumps, the scientist removed the lid. Now the flea could again jump out of the jar and escape. But it did not. It continued jumping to such heights that were just short of the lid of the jar. It thus remained confined to the glass jar. It never regained its potential and never attained its freedom.
In exactly the same way, human beings cannot perform beyond the boundaries that their low self esteem has imposed upon them.
Let us now see some characteristics of people with low self esteem.
Such people are generally gossip lovers. They simply love sensational stories which do not have any base.
They are born critics. Appreciation of any kind is foreign to them. Their own sense of deficiency makes them criticize everything.
They are egoistic and arrogant. They attempt to hide their sense of inferiority behind arrogance. They pretend to know everything when in fact they may be ignorant of many things.
These people have closed minds. They feel inferior to accept knowledge from others. They think that whatever they know is sufficient and that there is no need of knowing anything more. New ideas, new concepts are a no-no to them.
They are self centered. All their thinking and actions are oriented towards the self, without any thought for others. Due to poor self esteem, all they seek is to pamper their own self.
They are experts in excuses. They have a reason for all their failures. It is as if they want to fail in an endeavour for the sake of presenting an excuse.
Naturally, such people shirk away from taking responsibility. If they have failed at anything, it is always due to somebody else or something else. They are expert blame game players.
They are always waiting – waiting for things to happen. Making things happen or creating opportunities is alien to them. They believe more in destiny than in free will. In this respect, they are the exact opposite of George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote: “You see things and say why. I see things and say why not?”.
They wallop in jealousy. Due to negative self esteem they probably feel that they cannot achieve what others have, hence jealousy is their only feeling.
A person with an open outlook, if criticized, will often take the brickbats thrown at him and built a house with them. That is how criticism is meant to be taken – constructively. But these people are unable to take criticism positively. They will immediately go on the defensive and try to rationalize their actions.
Low self esteem leads to lower standards of decency. Such people are more likely to display vulgarity in public in the form of behaviour, stories, jokes, etc. They are unable to draw the line and often end up making a mess of themselves.
There is a saying that ‘You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.” People with poor self esteem don’t have genuine friends because they themselves are not genuine.
In every walk of life, these people will make promises that they cannot keep. In personal relations, for example when proposing to a girl, they will promise her a millionaire’s life style when having only a few dollars in their pocket.
It is not difficult to overcome low self esteem. A fulfilling and happy life awaits us when we do so.
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