The famed scientist, David Suzuki, tells the parable of a test-tube of bacteria, starting with a single cell that doubles in population every minute, so that by the end of an hour, it has filled the test tube and exhausted its food supply and air. He points out that, at 59 minutes, the test tube is only half full, and at 58 minutes, just 25% full.
He imagines the debate the bacteria at 55 minutes:
"We're running out of space, we're running out of time, we're running out of air and food."
"Nonsense! Look! We have nearly all the tube left. There's plenty for all of us!"
This was the image that popped into my head while watching Obama's speech last night, particularly at this passage:
"Time and again, the path forward has been blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor," Obama said. "The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight."
"We cannot consign our children to this future," he added. "The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America's innovation and seize control of our own destiny."
Indeed, the time may be past to salvage any chance of a future as we've imagined it. When just one oil company spends more on drilling in the US-- one of the less promising resources for oil-- than the nation spends on energy research, we've got a major problem.
In the past, I've pointed out an optimal solution to train the guns of America and the world on renewable energy, and it's one I still haven't seen a serious "player" suggest, so I'm throwing it out there again: offer a government stipend, a grant of one billion dollars with no strings attached beyond the competition. If you can develop a truly renewable energy resource, one that doesn't pollute and can be harnessed with minimal environmental footprint, and have it produce BTUs at the rate of fossil fuels, you win the prize.
But I digress...
Obama termed the oil spill an "epidemic" and this is an excellent analogy. It's not a devastating attack like 9/11 was. It's not an act of God that swept through the Gulf, like Katrina was. This was foreseeable, preventable, and once unleashed, should have been containable.
That it wasn't contained is the real story here, one the media refuses to tell honestly. Obama's popularity has wrongly taken a hit here. It was the Bush administration that approved the license, it was the Bush administration cronies that allowed BP to dummy up inspections and set their own rules, and it was the Bush administration that, yet again, killed that region of the nation. BP, and if the testimony before Congress is any indication no oil company, should not have been allowed to drill without a massive contingency plan for the worst case scenario.
We have a chance now to set in motion not only our energy policy for the next few years, but for decades to come. We can wean the nation off oil and onto something healthier and safer for us all. We've done this before, heck, we've done it often, from whale oil to coal to crude, and from CFCs in the atmosphere to even better propellants and refrigerants. We've beaten back challenges. We will continue to do so.
Geology is the study of pressure, and time. Right now, epochal forces are acting on the American people. We can crumble into dust, or we can turn into diamonds.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The Impact of Lacking Self-Esteem on Your Personal & Professional Life
Studies show that more than 85% of the world's people suffer from some degree of lacking self-esteem. Although one might think that such challenges are only characteristic of the poor, uneducated, or lower socio-economic members of society, people from all walks of life can suffer situational or more widespread challenges resulting from low levels of self-esteem.
Many very successful people lack self-esteem in some areas of their lives. Perhaps they feel socially challenged or they have difficulty establishing close or intimate relationships. Perhaps they experience low self-esteem with regard to their physical appearance or their health. Perhaps they are not having any fun in their lives, maybe devoting too much attention to their work.
Many "successful" people are driven to succeed. They compensate for feeling deficient in other areas of their lives by working harder or finding places they can excel. This provides them with a new focus where they can win but it doesn't fulfill their neglected needs in other areas like relationships, recreation, personal and spiritual development, health and appearance and their ability to lead balanced, fun, and fulfilling lives.
It's not that there is something wrong with finding a niche where one can be successful and feel good about oneself. However, many of those lacking self-esteem in other areas find themselves driven to accomplish, driven to prove their worth. When they an area where they can shine, they neglect other areas to focus excessively on this.
However, since their actions are built upon the erroneous belief that they are somehow not good enough, somehow defective or unworthy of being fully loved and accepted, there is little lasting satisfaction even in the arenas where they can excel. It's as though they are climbing a ladder with the top of the ladder in the clouds. They think that if they can just climb high enough, they will be successful. They will have proven their worth. They will find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.
However, as they climb higher and higher, they never seem to arrive. There are always new goals and objectives challenging them to prove their worth. The more they achieve, the more they have yet to go. Try as they will, they never seem to fully measure up. Or, if they do, it is short-lived and fleeting at best. There is no arriving to the point where they find what they long for so badly - the peace of mind that comes from self-love and self-acceptance.
Because the foundation of their ladder is grounded on quicksand, they often find themselves sinking as rapidly as they climb. In fact, from their perspective, they will never reach the perfection they seek so badly. They will always find evidence to highlight their flaws and reinforce their fears of being unworthy, unlovable, defective in some way.
In addition to the cost of never finding true happiness, long-term fulfillment, or peace, lacking self-esteem impacts people in many other ways. For example, by not getting to the source of their self-esteem issues, they sacrifice their personal power, their ability to best pursue their life purpose and fully manifest their gifts in the world. If our energy is spent by being preoccupied with our weaknesses or being incomplete with our past, we can never be fully present to today and so we sacrifice our true potential to be our very best.
Our relationships suffer as we will misinterpret the words and actions of others in a way that invalidates us and has us feel badly about who we are. We may be so driven to prove we are good enough that we sacrifice our personal effectiveness and charisma by focusing on ourselves and our deficiencies rather than on the wants and needs of others.
We may play small and hide out in social situations or whenever the possibility of looking bad or "being found out" comes up for us. Or, we may overcompensate and turn to workaholic tendencies out of a desire to prove our worth to others or to ourselves. Because of this misdirected focus, we trade our ability to impact others maximally and to best contribute our gifts to the world.
By raising self-esteem, we will realize a wide variety of benefits in our personal and professional lives. Those with high self-esteem are more effective in their communication and more likely to establish richer, more rewarding relationships. People with greater self-confidence possess a more positive expectation for the future. They feel good about their ability to accomplish a result and so they are more proactive, are in more focused action, and have less of a tendency to sabotage themselves along the way as those lacking self-esteem typically do.
Those believing in their abilities are less driven to prove themselves as worthy and so they are less prone to burnout. They relax more and tend to have fun more often and are less stressed since they have less to prove. With a higher self-image, they are also more likely to savor their accomplishments rather than find ways to invalidate them.
In their personal lives, people with elevated esteem tend to be more at peace. Couples possessing high self-esteem typically fight less with each other and tend to do better in sustaining long term relationships. Because they are less likely to be invalidated at the slightest provocation and are less likely to fear being dominated by their peers, they tend to get along better with others. Being less scarcity-based, they tend to make time for both work as well as recreation and passions rather than being driven to prove themselves worthy in those areas where they feel deficient.
The message of The Self-Esteem System is simple. No one needs to settle for a dimmed existence due to a lacking sense of self-worth. Most people either make up or buy into thoughts that there is something wrong with them, that they are somehow inadequate, not good enough and not worthy of being loved and accessing all the good things that life has to offer.
If they are willing to examine their past to get to the source of their resignation and diminished self-esteem, they can reinterpret what happened to them in such a way that they can heal and complete the past and eliminate negative self-talk while making a conscious decision to live their lives from a decision to strive for excellence and contribute to others. By developing a firm belief that they can impact people and the world around them and that they are, in fact, very worthy of receiving life's blessings, they will manifest happiness and fulfillment.
The answer to escaping the vicious cycle of lacking self-esteem, diminished confidence, and the never-ending, frustrating quest for fulfillment lies in the 3 step process as laid out in detail in The Self-Esteem Book. The process starts with healing one's past so that it no longer robs us of energy and consumes our attention. We do this by reinterpreting the upsetting events of our childhood in a way that involves empathy, forgiveness, and gratitude.
We create empathy for those who said or did things that hurt us and caused us to lose esteem by asking the question "What could it have been like in this person's world for them to have acted as they did?" This is not the same as condoning hurtful behavior. It is simply making the observation that they acted in alignment with how they viewed the world. As a child we gave these happenings meanings that resulted in our decision that we did not measure up in some way to the standards of perfection we set for ourselves.
We can then make a conscious decision to both forgive those who hurt us and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. And lastly, rather than focus on our weaknesses, we can decide to be grateful for our strengths and gifts. We can learn to acknowledge ourselves for the things we do well and for the unique, special gifts we bring to the world.
Once the pull of past ghosts is complete, we can then turn our attention to properly analyzing our present state of affairs. We can identify what's working in our lives and what's missing to support living an upset-free life in choice, a life that honors our most important values and inspires us to live passionately.
We can analyze each of the six predominant areas of our lives: our health and physical appearance and makeup, our occupation or life's work, our wealth and finances, our relationships and family, our spiritual and personal development, and our fun, recreations, and passions. We can highlight our strengths and decide to work to improve upon the things that we see as lacking in each area.
And finally, we can take that magic wand that is our birth-right, wave it over our lives and design our future deliberately. We can choose to do so in a way that excites us, as we cast off that gloomy state of low self-esteem, unhealthy resignation and self-pity that no longer supports us. We can create a vision for who we are and the qualities for which we wish to be known.
We can choose how we will spend a typical day at work or at play. We can envision the things that we will have around us in our lives, including such things as where we will live and with whom. And we can decide how our lives will be spent so that we honor our most important values, who we will contribute to, and what passions and gifts we will focus on manifesting.
We can commit to read such a written vision daily and replace our negative self-talk with powerful affirming statements that support our self-worth. In short, we can live with the intention to honor our God-given magnificence and lead happy, fulfilled lives that fully contribute to others as we embrace our humanity and share the unique and special person we are with the world.
Many very successful people lack self-esteem in some areas of their lives. Perhaps they feel socially challenged or they have difficulty establishing close or intimate relationships. Perhaps they experience low self-esteem with regard to their physical appearance or their health. Perhaps they are not having any fun in their lives, maybe devoting too much attention to their work.
Many "successful" people are driven to succeed. They compensate for feeling deficient in other areas of their lives by working harder or finding places they can excel. This provides them with a new focus where they can win but it doesn't fulfill their neglected needs in other areas like relationships, recreation, personal and spiritual development, health and appearance and their ability to lead balanced, fun, and fulfilling lives.
It's not that there is something wrong with finding a niche where one can be successful and feel good about oneself. However, many of those lacking self-esteem in other areas find themselves driven to accomplish, driven to prove their worth. When they an area where they can shine, they neglect other areas to focus excessively on this.
However, since their actions are built upon the erroneous belief that they are somehow not good enough, somehow defective or unworthy of being fully loved and accepted, there is little lasting satisfaction even in the arenas where they can excel. It's as though they are climbing a ladder with the top of the ladder in the clouds. They think that if they can just climb high enough, they will be successful. They will have proven their worth. They will find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.
However, as they climb higher and higher, they never seem to arrive. There are always new goals and objectives challenging them to prove their worth. The more they achieve, the more they have yet to go. Try as they will, they never seem to fully measure up. Or, if they do, it is short-lived and fleeting at best. There is no arriving to the point where they find what they long for so badly - the peace of mind that comes from self-love and self-acceptance.
Because the foundation of their ladder is grounded on quicksand, they often find themselves sinking as rapidly as they climb. In fact, from their perspective, they will never reach the perfection they seek so badly. They will always find evidence to highlight their flaws and reinforce their fears of being unworthy, unlovable, defective in some way.
In addition to the cost of never finding true happiness, long-term fulfillment, or peace, lacking self-esteem impacts people in many other ways. For example, by not getting to the source of their self-esteem issues, they sacrifice their personal power, their ability to best pursue their life purpose and fully manifest their gifts in the world. If our energy is spent by being preoccupied with our weaknesses or being incomplete with our past, we can never be fully present to today and so we sacrifice our true potential to be our very best.
Our relationships suffer as we will misinterpret the words and actions of others in a way that invalidates us and has us feel badly about who we are. We may be so driven to prove we are good enough that we sacrifice our personal effectiveness and charisma by focusing on ourselves and our deficiencies rather than on the wants and needs of others.
We may play small and hide out in social situations or whenever the possibility of looking bad or "being found out" comes up for us. Or, we may overcompensate and turn to workaholic tendencies out of a desire to prove our worth to others or to ourselves. Because of this misdirected focus, we trade our ability to impact others maximally and to best contribute our gifts to the world.
By raising self-esteem, we will realize a wide variety of benefits in our personal and professional lives. Those with high self-esteem are more effective in their communication and more likely to establish richer, more rewarding relationships. People with greater self-confidence possess a more positive expectation for the future. They feel good about their ability to accomplish a result and so they are more proactive, are in more focused action, and have less of a tendency to sabotage themselves along the way as those lacking self-esteem typically do.
Those believing in their abilities are less driven to prove themselves as worthy and so they are less prone to burnout. They relax more and tend to have fun more often and are less stressed since they have less to prove. With a higher self-image, they are also more likely to savor their accomplishments rather than find ways to invalidate them.
In their personal lives, people with elevated esteem tend to be more at peace. Couples possessing high self-esteem typically fight less with each other and tend to do better in sustaining long term relationships. Because they are less likely to be invalidated at the slightest provocation and are less likely to fear being dominated by their peers, they tend to get along better with others. Being less scarcity-based, they tend to make time for both work as well as recreation and passions rather than being driven to prove themselves worthy in those areas where they feel deficient.
The message of The Self-Esteem System is simple. No one needs to settle for a dimmed existence due to a lacking sense of self-worth. Most people either make up or buy into thoughts that there is something wrong with them, that they are somehow inadequate, not good enough and not worthy of being loved and accessing all the good things that life has to offer.
If they are willing to examine their past to get to the source of their resignation and diminished self-esteem, they can reinterpret what happened to them in such a way that they can heal and complete the past and eliminate negative self-talk while making a conscious decision to live their lives from a decision to strive for excellence and contribute to others. By developing a firm belief that they can impact people and the world around them and that they are, in fact, very worthy of receiving life's blessings, they will manifest happiness and fulfillment.
The answer to escaping the vicious cycle of lacking self-esteem, diminished confidence, and the never-ending, frustrating quest for fulfillment lies in the 3 step process as laid out in detail in The Self-Esteem Book. The process starts with healing one's past so that it no longer robs us of energy and consumes our attention. We do this by reinterpreting the upsetting events of our childhood in a way that involves empathy, forgiveness, and gratitude.
We create empathy for those who said or did things that hurt us and caused us to lose esteem by asking the question "What could it have been like in this person's world for them to have acted as they did?" This is not the same as condoning hurtful behavior. It is simply making the observation that they acted in alignment with how they viewed the world. As a child we gave these happenings meanings that resulted in our decision that we did not measure up in some way to the standards of perfection we set for ourselves.
We can then make a conscious decision to both forgive those who hurt us and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. And lastly, rather than focus on our weaknesses, we can decide to be grateful for our strengths and gifts. We can learn to acknowledge ourselves for the things we do well and for the unique, special gifts we bring to the world.
Once the pull of past ghosts is complete, we can then turn our attention to properly analyzing our present state of affairs. We can identify what's working in our lives and what's missing to support living an upset-free life in choice, a life that honors our most important values and inspires us to live passionately.
We can analyze each of the six predominant areas of our lives: our health and physical appearance and makeup, our occupation or life's work, our wealth and finances, our relationships and family, our spiritual and personal development, and our fun, recreations, and passions. We can highlight our strengths and decide to work to improve upon the things that we see as lacking in each area.
And finally, we can take that magic wand that is our birth-right, wave it over our lives and design our future deliberately. We can choose to do so in a way that excites us, as we cast off that gloomy state of low self-esteem, unhealthy resignation and self-pity that no longer supports us. We can create a vision for who we are and the qualities for which we wish to be known.
We can choose how we will spend a typical day at work or at play. We can envision the things that we will have around us in our lives, including such things as where we will live and with whom. And we can decide how our lives will be spent so that we honor our most important values, who we will contribute to, and what passions and gifts we will focus on manifesting.
We can commit to read such a written vision daily and replace our negative self-talk with powerful affirming statements that support our self-worth. In short, we can live with the intention to honor our God-given magnificence and lead happy, fulfilled lives that fully contribute to others as we embrace our humanity and share the unique and special person we are with the world.
Studies show that more than 85% of the world's people suffer from some degree of lacking self-esteem. Although one might think that such challenges are only characteristic of the poor, uneducated, or lower socio-economic members of society, people from all walks of life can suffer situational or more widespread challenges resulting from low levels of self-esteem.
Many very successful people lack self-esteem in some areas of their lives. Perhaps they feel socially challenged or they have difficulty establishing close or intimate relationships. Perhaps they experience low self-esteem with regard to their physical appearance or their health. Perhaps they are not having any fun in their lives, maybe devoting too much attention to their work.
Many "successful" people are driven to succeed. They compensate for feeling deficient in other areas of their lives by working harder or finding places they can excel. This provides them with a new focus where they can win but it doesn't fulfill their neglected needs in other areas like relationships, recreation, personal and spiritual development, health and appearance and their ability to lead balanced, fun, and fulfilling lives.
It's not that there is something wrong with finding a niche where one can be successful and feel good about oneself. However, many of those lacking self-esteem in other areas find themselves driven to accomplish, driven to prove their worth. When they an area where they can shine, they neglect other areas to focus excessively on this.
However, since their actions are built upon the erroneous belief that they are somehow not good enough, somehow defective or unworthy of being fully loved and accepted, there is little lasting satisfaction even in the arenas where they can excel. It's as though they are climbing a ladder with the top of the ladder in the clouds. They think that if they can just climb high enough, they will be successful. They will have proven their worth. They will find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.
However, as they climb higher and higher, they never seem to arrive. There are always new goals and objectives challenging them to prove their worth. The more they achieve, the more they have yet to go. Try as they will, they never seem to fully measure up. Or, if they do, it is short-lived and fleeting at best. There is no arriving to the point where they find what they long for so badly - the peace of mind that comes from self-love and self-acceptance.
Because the foundation of their ladder is grounded on quicksand, they often find themselves sinking as rapidly as they climb. In fact, from their perspective, they will never reach the perfection they seek so badly. They will always find evidence to highlight their flaws and reinforce their fears of being unworthy, unlovable, defective in some way.
In addition to the cost of never finding true happiness, long-term fulfillment, or peace, lacking self-esteem impacts people in many other ways. For example, by not getting to the source of their self-esteem issues, they sacrifice their personal power, their ability to best pursue their life purpose and fully manifest their gifts in the world. If our energy is spent by being preoccupied with our weaknesses or being incomplete with our past, we can never be fully present to today and so we sacrifice our true potential to be our very best.
Our relationships suffer as we will misinterpret the words and actions of others in a way that invalidates us and has us feel badly about who we are. We may be so driven to prove we are good enough that we sacrifice our personal effectiveness and charisma by focusing on ourselves and our deficiencies rather than on the wants and needs of others.
We may play small and hide out in social situations or whenever the possibility of looking bad or "being found out" comes up for us. Or, we may overcompensate and turn to workaholic tendencies out of a desire to prove our worth to others or to ourselves. Because of this misdirected focus, we trade our ability to impact others maximally and to best contribute our gifts to the world.
By raising self-esteem, we will realize a wide variety of benefits in our personal and professional lives. Those with high self-esteem are more effective in their communication and more likely to establish richer, more rewarding relationships. People with greater self-confidence possess a more positive expectation for the future. They feel good about their ability to accomplish a result and so they are more proactive, are in more focused action, and have less of a tendency to sabotage themselves along the way as those lacking self-esteem typically do.
Those believing in their abilities are less driven to prove themselves as worthy and so they are less prone to burnout. They relax more and tend to have fun more often and are less stressed since they have less to prove. With a higher self-image, they are also more likely to savor their accomplishments rather than find ways to invalidate them.
In their personal lives, people with elevated esteem tend to be more at peace. Couples possessing high self-esteem typically fight less with each other and tend to do better in sustaining long term relationships. Because they are less likely to be invalidated at the slightest provocation and are less likely to fear being dominated by their peers, they tend to get along better with others. Being less scarcity-based, they tend to make time for both work as well as recreation and passions rather than being driven to prove themselves worthy in those areas where they feel deficient.
The message of The Self-Esteem System is simple. No one needs to settle for a dimmed existence due to a lacking sense of self-worth. Most people either make up or buy into thoughts that there is something wrong with them, that they are somehow inadequate, not good enough and not worthy of being loved and accessing all the good things that life has to offer.
If they are willing to examine their past to get to the source of their resignation and diminished self-esteem, they can reinterpret what happened to them in such a way that they can heal and complete the past and eliminate negative self-talk while making a conscious decision to live their lives from a decision to strive for excellence and contribute to others. By developing a firm belief that they can impact people and the world around them and that they are, in fact, very worthy of receiving life's blessings, they will manifest happiness and fulfillment.
The answer to escaping the vicious cycle of lacking self-esteem, diminished confidence, and the never-ending, frustrating quest for fulfillment lies in the 3 step process as laid out in detail in The Self-Esteem Book. The process starts with healing one's past so that it no longer robs us of energy and consumes our attention. We do this by reinterpreting the upsetting events of our childhood in a way that involves empathy, forgiveness, and gratitude.
We create empathy for those who said or did things that hurt us and caused us to lose esteem by asking the question "What could it have been like in this person's world for them to have acted as they did?" This is not the same as condoning hurtful behavior. It is simply making the observation that they acted in alignment with how they viewed the world. As a child we gave these happenings meanings that resulted in our decision that we did not measure up in some way to the standards of perfection we set for ourselves.
We can then make a conscious decision to both forgive those who hurt us and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. And lastly, rather than focus on our weaknesses, we can decide to be grateful for our strengths and gifts. We can learn to acknowledge ourselves for the things we do well and for the unique, special gifts we bring to the world.
Once the pull of past ghosts is complete, we can then turn our attention to properly analyzing our present state of affairs. We can identify what's working in our lives and what's missing to support living an upset-free life in choice, a life that honors our most important values and inspires us to live passionately.
We can analyze each of the six predominant areas of our lives: our health and physical appearance and makeup, our occupation or life's work, our wealth and finances, our relationships and family, our spiritual and personal development, and our fun, recreations, and passions. We can highlight our strengths and decide to work to improve upon the things that we see as lacking in each area.
And finally, we can take that magic wand that is our birth-right, wave it over our lives and design our future deliberately. We can choose to do so in a way that excites us, as we cast off that gloomy state of low self-esteem, unhealthy resignation and self-pity that no longer supports us. We can create a vision for who we are and the qualities for which we wish to be known.
We can choose how we will spend a typical day at work or at play. We can envision the things that we will have around us in our lives, including such things as where we will live and with whom. And we can decide how our lives will be spent so that we honor our most important values, who we will contribute to, and what passions and gifts we will focus on manifesting.
We can commit to read such a written vision daily and replace our negative self-talk with powerful affirming statements that support our self-worth. In short, we can live with the intention to honor our God-given magnificence and lead happy, fulfilled lives that fully contribute to others as we embrace our humanity and share the unique and special person we are with the world.
Many very successful people lack self-esteem in some areas of their lives. Perhaps they feel socially challenged or they have difficulty establishing close or intimate relationships. Perhaps they experience low self-esteem with regard to their physical appearance or their health. Perhaps they are not having any fun in their lives, maybe devoting too much attention to their work.
Many "successful" people are driven to succeed. They compensate for feeling deficient in other areas of their lives by working harder or finding places they can excel. This provides them with a new focus where they can win but it doesn't fulfill their neglected needs in other areas like relationships, recreation, personal and spiritual development, health and appearance and their ability to lead balanced, fun, and fulfilling lives.
It's not that there is something wrong with finding a niche where one can be successful and feel good about oneself. However, many of those lacking self-esteem in other areas find themselves driven to accomplish, driven to prove their worth. When they an area where they can shine, they neglect other areas to focus excessively on this.
However, since their actions are built upon the erroneous belief that they are somehow not good enough, somehow defective or unworthy of being fully loved and accepted, there is little lasting satisfaction even in the arenas where they can excel. It's as though they are climbing a ladder with the top of the ladder in the clouds. They think that if they can just climb high enough, they will be successful. They will have proven their worth. They will find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.
However, as they climb higher and higher, they never seem to arrive. There are always new goals and objectives challenging them to prove their worth. The more they achieve, the more they have yet to go. Try as they will, they never seem to fully measure up. Or, if they do, it is short-lived and fleeting at best. There is no arriving to the point where they find what they long for so badly - the peace of mind that comes from self-love and self-acceptance.
Because the foundation of their ladder is grounded on quicksand, they often find themselves sinking as rapidly as they climb. In fact, from their perspective, they will never reach the perfection they seek so badly. They will always find evidence to highlight their flaws and reinforce their fears of being unworthy, unlovable, defective in some way.
In addition to the cost of never finding true happiness, long-term fulfillment, or peace, lacking self-esteem impacts people in many other ways. For example, by not getting to the source of their self-esteem issues, they sacrifice their personal power, their ability to best pursue their life purpose and fully manifest their gifts in the world. If our energy is spent by being preoccupied with our weaknesses or being incomplete with our past, we can never be fully present to today and so we sacrifice our true potential to be our very best.
Our relationships suffer as we will misinterpret the words and actions of others in a way that invalidates us and has us feel badly about who we are. We may be so driven to prove we are good enough that we sacrifice our personal effectiveness and charisma by focusing on ourselves and our deficiencies rather than on the wants and needs of others.
We may play small and hide out in social situations or whenever the possibility of looking bad or "being found out" comes up for us. Or, we may overcompensate and turn to workaholic tendencies out of a desire to prove our worth to others or to ourselves. Because of this misdirected focus, we trade our ability to impact others maximally and to best contribute our gifts to the world.
By raising self-esteem, we will realize a wide variety of benefits in our personal and professional lives. Those with high self-esteem are more effective in their communication and more likely to establish richer, more rewarding relationships. People with greater self-confidence possess a more positive expectation for the future. They feel good about their ability to accomplish a result and so they are more proactive, are in more focused action, and have less of a tendency to sabotage themselves along the way as those lacking self-esteem typically do.
Those believing in their abilities are less driven to prove themselves as worthy and so they are less prone to burnout. They relax more and tend to have fun more often and are less stressed since they have less to prove. With a higher self-image, they are also more likely to savor their accomplishments rather than find ways to invalidate them.
In their personal lives, people with elevated esteem tend to be more at peace. Couples possessing high self-esteem typically fight less with each other and tend to do better in sustaining long term relationships. Because they are less likely to be invalidated at the slightest provocation and are less likely to fear being dominated by their peers, they tend to get along better with others. Being less scarcity-based, they tend to make time for both work as well as recreation and passions rather than being driven to prove themselves worthy in those areas where they feel deficient.
The message of The Self-Esteem System is simple. No one needs to settle for a dimmed existence due to a lacking sense of self-worth. Most people either make up or buy into thoughts that there is something wrong with them, that they are somehow inadequate, not good enough and not worthy of being loved and accessing all the good things that life has to offer.
If they are willing to examine their past to get to the source of their resignation and diminished self-esteem, they can reinterpret what happened to them in such a way that they can heal and complete the past and eliminate negative self-talk while making a conscious decision to live their lives from a decision to strive for excellence and contribute to others. By developing a firm belief that they can impact people and the world around them and that they are, in fact, very worthy of receiving life's blessings, they will manifest happiness and fulfillment.
The answer to escaping the vicious cycle of lacking self-esteem, diminished confidence, and the never-ending, frustrating quest for fulfillment lies in the 3 step process as laid out in detail in The Self-Esteem Book. The process starts with healing one's past so that it no longer robs us of energy and consumes our attention. We do this by reinterpreting the upsetting events of our childhood in a way that involves empathy, forgiveness, and gratitude.
We create empathy for those who said or did things that hurt us and caused us to lose esteem by asking the question "What could it have been like in this person's world for them to have acted as they did?" This is not the same as condoning hurtful behavior. It is simply making the observation that they acted in alignment with how they viewed the world. As a child we gave these happenings meanings that resulted in our decision that we did not measure up in some way to the standards of perfection we set for ourselves.
We can then make a conscious decision to both forgive those who hurt us and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. And lastly, rather than focus on our weaknesses, we can decide to be grateful for our strengths and gifts. We can learn to acknowledge ourselves for the things we do well and for the unique, special gifts we bring to the world.
Once the pull of past ghosts is complete, we can then turn our attention to properly analyzing our present state of affairs. We can identify what's working in our lives and what's missing to support living an upset-free life in choice, a life that honors our most important values and inspires us to live passionately.
We can analyze each of the six predominant areas of our lives: our health and physical appearance and makeup, our occupation or life's work, our wealth and finances, our relationships and family, our spiritual and personal development, and our fun, recreations, and passions. We can highlight our strengths and decide to work to improve upon the things that we see as lacking in each area.
And finally, we can take that magic wand that is our birth-right, wave it over our lives and design our future deliberately. We can choose to do so in a way that excites us, as we cast off that gloomy state of low self-esteem, unhealthy resignation and self-pity that no longer supports us. We can create a vision for who we are and the qualities for which we wish to be known.
We can choose how we will spend a typical day at work or at play. We can envision the things that we will have around us in our lives, including such things as where we will live and with whom. And we can decide how our lives will be spent so that we honor our most important values, who we will contribute to, and what passions and gifts we will focus on manifesting.
We can commit to read such a written vision daily and replace our negative self-talk with powerful affirming statements that support our self-worth. In short, we can live with the intention to honor our God-given magnificence and lead happy, fulfilled lives that fully contribute to others as we embrace our humanity and share the unique and special person we are with the world.
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Single currency of 16 European countries and the second world currency, the Euro is trading with record short positions. The fear of another recession is strong as this time it is not the companies, but the Governments at risk of defaulting.
The sovereign debt crisis has spread from Greece to Spain & Portugal, and is threatening other countries like Ireland, Italy, UK etc
The German Regulators have banned naked short selling of certain securities and debt. There have been various packages doled out , many statements made by officials in US, Europe and IMF …Agencies have been downgrading the countries and assets in Europe. The feeling is that all the plans are not well thought out and are half baked and are uncoordinated. And the result more ‘ Euro selling’
The currency started the year with 1.43 and has seen lows at 1.21 Vs the Dollar, making 4 yr lows Vs USD, 8 yr lows Vs China yuan and all time low Vs Swiss Franc, And is trading negative Vs many other currencies as well for the current year.
The talks about Euro being at parity to dollar are fast catching up. Also being talked about are the problems with the currency itself. The Euro is not just a currency for 16 nations , it also represents the state of economy for these countries , as all other currencies represent. And that is where the problem is , because while all these European countries have their own budgets and deficits and growth rates and trades , they still have one currency to show for themselves The Euro.
So where is the currency headed.
If you look at the trade part of it./ the currency has been oversold and the short positions are at record high..so any good new out of Europe will have many buyers for the euro , giving them chance to cover their positions, or creating new buys as it has been hit hard , giving opportunity for knee jerk reactions.
On the medium term to long term basis though the europe concerns are far from over. The country is coming up with bailout packages at a time when most other developing and developed nations are withdrawing them. So the problem in Europe is expected to stay for longer and recovery slower and delayed.
The sovereign debt crisis has spread from Greece to Spain & Portugal, and is threatening other countries like Ireland, Italy, UK etc
The German Regulators have banned naked short selling of certain securities and debt. There have been various packages doled out , many statements made by officials in US, Europe and IMF …Agencies have been downgrading the countries and assets in Europe. The feeling is that all the plans are not well thought out and are half baked and are uncoordinated. And the result more ‘ Euro selling’
The currency started the year with 1.43 and has seen lows at 1.21 Vs the Dollar, making 4 yr lows Vs USD, 8 yr lows Vs China yuan and all time low Vs Swiss Franc, And is trading negative Vs many other currencies as well for the current year.
The talks about Euro being at parity to dollar are fast catching up. Also being talked about are the problems with the currency itself. The Euro is not just a currency for 16 nations , it also represents the state of economy for these countries , as all other currencies represent. And that is where the problem is , because while all these European countries have their own budgets and deficits and growth rates and trades , they still have one currency to show for themselves The Euro.
So where is the currency headed.
If you look at the trade part of it./ the currency has been oversold and the short positions are at record high..so any good new out of Europe will have many buyers for the euro , giving them chance to cover their positions, or creating new buys as it has been hit hard , giving opportunity for knee jerk reactions.
On the medium term to long term basis though the europe concerns are far from over. The country is coming up with bailout packages at a time when most other developing and developed nations are withdrawing them. So the problem in Europe is expected to stay for longer and recovery slower and delayed.
Don’t let yourself go bankrupt
I recently came across some statistics about bankruptcy rates in the US and UK. The slowdown in these markets over the last couple of years has deeply impacted income for individuals, many of whom have not taken steps to safeguard themselves.
A startling part of these studies, conducted independently in the two countries, was that the reasons leading up to bankruptcies were universal. They applied to not just the US or UK markets but also to the trends that we have been observing among people with rising aspirations in developing countries
Here are some of the common pointers that you need to act over (if you don’t want to end up filing for bankruptcy) -
1. Contingency Planning
I cannot stress on this enough. Contingency planning is the single most important component of safeguarding yourself against future problems. You need to create a plan for yourself now; one that will cover all possible problems that you can think will affect you. Common risks that people plan for include job loss, unforeseen medical expenses, untimely death, etc.
2. Debt Management
People sometimes tend to be lazy or ignorant about their finances. Adopting a “If you don’t see a bill you don’t have to pay it” attitude only makes debt pile up and tougher to deal with at one go. Make managing finances a part of our regular routine. Do not wait for the situation for the situation to go out of your control.
3. Lure of Easy Credit
Credit cards make life simpler; they ease your woes of going to an ATM every time you need cash. However, the simplicity of swiping your card for every purchase comes along with an increased probability of over-spending and buying things you do not really need. It does not take long before you are suddenly facing a bill running into lakhs on your credit cards with no way to repay the money.
4. Investing in only one medium
This is one of the few avoidable traits of investing which is generally caused due to lack of adequate knowledge. Often one starts investing in a fund or medium where we feel we can get the best returns. A close friend of mine used to rely heavily on investments in the share market. When the market crashed in 2008, all his saving were wiped off. He ultimately had to sell his house to pay off his debts.
5. Lack of Financial Planning
Ultimately is all boils down to this… most people do not realise the importance of creating a financial plan or charting financial milestones for their future. The high of spending money overtakes all other desires. Create a financial plan to know where you can splurge and where you need to save. It will give you a clear picture about how you can manage your money and set goals for yourself.
Don’t go bankrupt… make you nurture your finances and stay away from debt piling tendencies…
A startling part of these studies, conducted independently in the two countries, was that the reasons leading up to bankruptcies were universal. They applied to not just the US or UK markets but also to the trends that we have been observing among people with rising aspirations in developing countries
Here are some of the common pointers that you need to act over (if you don’t want to end up filing for bankruptcy) -
1. Contingency Planning
I cannot stress on this enough. Contingency planning is the single most important component of safeguarding yourself against future problems. You need to create a plan for yourself now; one that will cover all possible problems that you can think will affect you. Common risks that people plan for include job loss, unforeseen medical expenses, untimely death, etc.
2. Debt Management
People sometimes tend to be lazy or ignorant about their finances. Adopting a “If you don’t see a bill you don’t have to pay it” attitude only makes debt pile up and tougher to deal with at one go. Make managing finances a part of our regular routine. Do not wait for the situation for the situation to go out of your control.
3. Lure of Easy Credit
Credit cards make life simpler; they ease your woes of going to an ATM every time you need cash. However, the simplicity of swiping your card for every purchase comes along with an increased probability of over-spending and buying things you do not really need. It does not take long before you are suddenly facing a bill running into lakhs on your credit cards with no way to repay the money.
4. Investing in only one medium
This is one of the few avoidable traits of investing which is generally caused due to lack of adequate knowledge. Often one starts investing in a fund or medium where we feel we can get the best returns. A close friend of mine used to rely heavily on investments in the share market. When the market crashed in 2008, all his saving were wiped off. He ultimately had to sell his house to pay off his debts.
5. Lack of Financial Planning
Ultimately is all boils down to this… most people do not realise the importance of creating a financial plan or charting financial milestones for their future. The high of spending money overtakes all other desires. Create a financial plan to know where you can splurge and where you need to save. It will give you a clear picture about how you can manage your money and set goals for yourself.
Don’t go bankrupt… make you nurture your finances and stay away from debt piling tendencies…
Friday, February 5, 2010
Strategical Reality and Misbehavior of Markets
"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line".
"Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce".
It does not matter whether you have heard of the name of the author of the above two quotes, but it matters if you are dealing with finance and financial markets.
Benoit Mandelbrot, author of the above two quotes, has had a remarkable career which includes seminal work in theoretical and applied mathematics. Mandelbrot might be largely unknown to the wider world, but for the beautiful pictures that can be produced on a computer using the fractal equations he popularized (including the famous Mandelbrot set, named after its discoverer).
Most people who work in mathematics write for an audience of their colleagues. The majority of Mandelbrot's writing falls into this category. He recently published Fractals and Chaos (Springer-Verlag, 2004), which is a collection of some of his papers from 1979 onward. Mandelbrot's papers can be difficult reading for anyone who is not a skilled mathematician. Mandelbrot has also written for a more general audience. His book The Fractal Geometry of Nature (Freeman, 1982) can be read by anyone who has a solid high school math background and patience with an academic writing style.
But his latest book, selling like hot cake, The (Mis)behavior of Markets Mandelbrot is writing for the general reader, who usually has no tolerance for mathematical equations.
The roots of the book The (Mis)behavior of Markets go back to 1961 when Mandelbrot was a new researcher at IBM. Among other things, he was working on using computers to analyze the distribution of income in a society. Mandelbrot's work echoed the work of Vilfredo Pare to and showed that many economic factors, including wealth, are distributed according to an inverse power law. Most of the economists have claimed that the change in market prices followed a Gaussian distribution. This distribution describes many natural features, like height, weight and intelligence among people. The Gaussian distribution is one of the foundations of modern statistics. If economic features followed a Gaussian distribution, a range of mathematical techniques could be applied in economics.
The behavior of markets reflects a complex system and fractal mathematics. In The (Mis)behavior of Markets Mandelbrot argues that the Gaussian models for financial risk used by economists like William Sharpe and Harry Markowitz should be discarded, since these models do not reflect reality. Mandelbrot argues that fractal techniques may provide a more powerful way to analyze risk.
But can Fractals Explain What's Wrong with Wall Street?
Individual investors and professional stock and currency traders know better than ever that prices quoted in any financial market often change with heart-stopping swiftness. Fortunes are made and lost in sudden bursts of activity when the market seems to speed up and the volatility soars.
According to Benoit Mandelbrot, the classical financial models used for most of this century predict that such precipitous events should never happen. A cornerstone of finance is modern portfolio theory, which tries to maximize returns for a given level of risk. The mathematics underlying portfolio theory handles extreme situations with benign neglect: it regards large market shifts as too unlikely to matter or as impossible to take into account. It is true that portfolio theory may account for what occurs 95 percent of the time in the market. But the picture it presents does not reflect reality, if one agrees that major events are part of the remaining 5 percent. An inescapable analogy is that of a sailor at sea. If the weather is moderate 95 percent of the time, can the mariner afford to ignore the possibility of a typhoon?
The risk-reducing formulas behind portfolio theory rely on a number of demanding and ultimately unfounded premises. First, they suggest that price changes are statistically independent of one another: for example, that today's price has no influence on the changes between the current price and tomorrow's. As a result, predictions of future market movements become impossible. The second presumption is that all price changes are distributed in a pattern that conforms to the standard bell curve. The width of the bell shape (as measured by its sigma or standard deviation) depicts how far price changes diverge from the mean; events at the extremes are considered extremely rare. Typhoons are, in effect, defined out of existence.
Do financial data neatly conform to such assumptions? Of course, they never do. Charts of stock or currency changes over time do reveal a constant background of small up and down price movements-but not as uniform as one would expect if price changes fit the bell curve.
According to portfolio theory, the probability of these large fluctuations would be a few millionths of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth. (The fluctuations are greater than 10 standard deviations.) But in fact, one observes spikes on a regular basis-as often as every month-and their probability amounts to a few hundredths.
Modern portfolio theory poses a danger to those who believe in it too strongly and is a powerful challenge for the theoretician. Though sometimes acknowledging faults in the present body of thinking, its adherents suggest that no other premises can be handled through mathematical modelling. This contention leads to the question of whether a rigorous quantitative description of at least some features of major financial upheavals can be developed. The bearish answer is that large market swings are anomalies, individual "acts of God" that present no conceivable regularity. Revisionists correct the questionable premises of modern portfolio theory through small fixes that lack any guiding principle and do not improve matters sufficiently.
Mandelbrot claims that variations in financial prices can be accounted for by a model derived from his work in fractal geometry. Fractals-or their later elaboration, called multifractals-do not purport to predict the future with certainty. But they do create a more realistic picture of market risks.
A fractal is a geometric shape that can be separated into parts, each of which is a reduced-scale version of the whole. In finance, this concept is not a rootless abstraction but a theoretical reformulation of a down-to-earth bit of market folklore- namely, that movements of a stock or currency all look alike when a market chart is enlarged or reduced so that it fits the same time and price scale. An observer then cannot tell which of the data concern prices that change from week to week, day to day or hour to hour. This quality defines the charts as fractal curves and makes available many powerful tools of mathematical and computer analysis.
A more specific technical term for the resemblance between the parts and the whole is self-affinity. This property is related to the better-known concept of fractals called self-similarity, in which every feature of a picture is reduced or blown up by the same ratio-a process familiar to anyone who has ever ordered a photographic enlargement. Financial market charts, however, are far from being self-similar. In a detail of a graphic in which the features are higher than they are wide-as are the individual up-and-down price ticks of a stock-the transformation from the whole to a part must reduce the horizontal axis more than the vertical one. For a price chart, this transformation must shrink the timescale (the horizontal axis) more than the price scale (the vertical axis). The geometric relation of the whole to its parts is said to be one of self-affinity.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Necessasity and importance of art education
Whenever education budgets get tightened, art programs are the first to get cut. Like the enduring popularity of reality TV, this never ceases to amaze me. So much evidence points to art's importance in a child's development - and not just in the development of abstract thought. Art is a critical component in a well-rounded education. Art is the level playing field - no matter how rich or poor, tall or short, pretty or ugly to the bone, if you can draw, you can find personal fulfillment and build self-confidence. Art is the highest achievement of mankind. And, when art is suppressed, so is the civilization that suppresses it. Remember the monumental Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in the months leading up to 9/11. Remember the suppression of art in Nazi Germany.
Studies show that art-centered schools outscore non-art-centered schools in academic achievement scores. Art education can actually help the brain to rewire itself, to make stronger and more plentiful neural connections, and can help build memory skills. Self-discipline, intuition, reasoning, imagination, and dexterity are just a few of the other benefits of an art-filled education, especially for primary school students. According to First Lady Michelle Obama, "Learning through the arts reinforces critical academic skills in reading, language arts, and math, and provides students with the skills to creatively solve problems."
So, how is it that, when it comes to art education, California comes in dead last out of all 50 states - even below Guam? According to State Councilman Bobby Shriver, California's public schools no longer even offer arts education.
This is why, my personal love of art aside, Stewart and I have made a point of supporting P.S. ARTS, an organization dedicated to providing arts education to students attending under-served public schools. We were so impressed with the program that we've made it a part of our educational programs in the Central Valley in California , where many of our employees' children attend school. For many children in California, English is a second language, but art is a universal language.
Seeing some of the recent work from these budding Picassos and O'Keeffes prompted me to share with you their progress. The P.S. ARTS program was founded in 1991, and has been in the Central Valley since 2003. We've watched these children's imaginations blossom since their first few classes, and their progress has been inspiring.
If art means as much to you as it does to me, or even if you're just exploring the art world for the first time, I invite you to turn off the boob tube, pry the Wii controllers from your kids' hands, and drag them to a museum. You may be surprised to learn that many museums have weekend activities geared to families, and almost all museums now have or are planning hands-on exhibits and playrooms specifically geared towards their younger visitors, which help to enrich the museum-going experience. Your kids might feel more apt to try some art of their own after viewing contemporary works that are far less intimidating than those of the Old Masters.
Art is a great way of appreciating the other cultures in our society. When viewing the great art traditions of the Middle East, you may find a new respect for this ancient culture. Or when children view the historical works of their own culture, it builds pride in one's heritage. Art builds bridges of understanding.
Once you reconnect with the freedom and openness that come with art, you just might recall how satisfying it was to finish a paint-by-number or to bring home your macaroni opus to hang on the fridge. Memories of personal fulfillment aside, artistic expression has been proven to stimulate brain activity, and in our age of Tivo, iPhones, and technological doodads, we could all use some good old-fashioned cerebral stimulation. The next time your local school puts its arts program on the chopping block, I hope you'll consider all that's at stake: It's so much more than construction paper and pipe cleaners. It is the doorway to a whole new world of expression.
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