The Good Cupcake: Uplifting Thoughts

INGREDIENTS FOR A GOOD SELF-ESTEEM CUPCAKE

(THE DO'S)

Being Reassured By Others - This means changing the way you think about yourself based on what a trustworthy person tells you.  This means to have a new truth about you.  To give enough trust to another trustworthy person to believe what they are telling you. To be teachable. 

I have a few examples to highlight this point.  If someone is 15 minutes late to an appointment with me and they feel bad about it and apologize, I respond, “It is okay.  We will be fine.  There is no problem.  We will have enough time to be productive or to have a good discussion.” 

The person responds, “Well, I hate to be late.  I think punctuality is important, and I know you have other people to see today.  I don’t want to make you late for your next appointment.”  I answer, “Which part of, ‘It is okay.  We will be fine.  There is no problem.  Did you not believe?’  As soon as I reassured you that there was no problem, you were supposed to give up any bad feelings or guilt about being late.” 

Another example, if my wife walks into a room and says, “I don’t think I look good in this outfit”, I have the ability to say, “It is not my favorite or there are other outfits that are more becoming.”  I would not say, “That is ugly.” 

However, if I tell my wife, “That is very beautiful on you.  You are very attractive in that outfit”, she is supposed to believe that to be true and give up any idea that she did not look good in that outfit.  I am a trustworthy person, and she should take my statement at face value. 

Former clients that I have had success with will sometimes call me on the telephone when they are experiencing a significant amount of anxiety, worry, agitation, or anger.  I will listen to their concerns and sometimes have to say, “I am sorry. This is very bad or troublesome, and I don’t know what you can do about that.” 

Usually, that is not the case.  I usually can see a way for a positive solution.  I tell the person, “I don’t think this has to be as bad as you think, and I think there are solutions for this because of X, Y, and Z.” 

I won’t say, “You are overreacting”, or “I don’t think that is that big of a deal”, or “Just trust me.  It will be okay.”  I actually give the individual specific information on why I think his concerns can be positively addressed and fixed. 

Many times, the person calling responds with the same amount of anxiety, worry, agitation, and anger as if I had not said anything.  I will listen again to make sure I had heard his concerns correctly the first time, and usually I have.  I am a pretty good listener.  I will then respond with the same counsel, comfort, and reassurance that I had provided earlier, and I might even add more detail to it. 

The caller will again respond with the same amount of anxiety, worry, agitation, and anger.  I will go through this process three times, where the person expresses his fears, and I respond with comfort and reassurance. 

This is usually a 20-minute telephone call.  After the third time of my attempting to comfort the caller, I say, “You are right.  Everyone is going to die.  It is all going to hell.”  The caller always responds, “What?  What did you say?”  He had not heard any of what I said previously, so I had to change tracks and ‘fire a shot across his bow’ to get his attention by saying, “You are right.  Everyone is going to die.  It is all going to hell.”  I then ask the caller, “Why are you calling me?  If you want to feel bad, you get to feel bad.  That is your prerogative.  I don’t like it, but that is your choice.” 

The person usually responds, “Well, you were helpful in the past, and I was hoping you could be helpful now.”  I answer, “You are calling me for comfort.  You are calling me for reassurance, and I am giving you reassurance.  You are just choosing not to be reassured.  Again, to be reassured is to change the way you think based on what a trustworthy person tells you.  To have a new truth.  To give trust.  

People often recite two quotes about trust, and I don’t like either of them.  The first quote is, ‘Trust has to be earned.  That is ridiculous.  I can meet with a female client for twelve visits, and she can respond, “Dr. Ottesen, I still don’t trust you.”  How can that be?  I am Mr. Trustworthy.  That is one of my key personal attributes.  I am not Mr. Patient by any means, but I am Mr. Trustworthy.  If trust were earned, I would have earned it within twelve counseling sessions. 

Trust is always given, and I believe it is the second-best gift you can give another person.  The best gift is forgiveness, but the second-best gift is trust.  The second quote regarding trust that many people recite is “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.” 

The first time I heard that quote was when I was working in a correctional center with felons who had been released from prison and were residing at the correctional center for at least one year.  That was one of their favorite sayings. 

The favorite saying of a group of individuals who were often not trustworthy, felons.  Never have your life motto be the life motto of felons.  The saying should be, ‘Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on you.  Fool me a hundred times, shame on you.’ 

A person should never feel dumb, stupid, foolish, naive, needy, clingy, codependent, insecure, or inadequate when they give someone else the gift of trust and that other person mishandles that gift.  It was a great gift and one of the most important gifts for establishing healthy relationships.  The other person just did not recognize the importance of that gift. 

Oftentimes, people only become trustworthy after they have mishandled the gift of trust and then recognize the damage that was done by mishandling the gift (e.g., the apostle Peter betraying Christ before he was crucified). 

Also, people often become great after they have injured someone important to them, and they then decide they won’t be that person again.  They become great.  Peter became a great apostle who would never betray or deny the Savior, no matter what was done to him.    

Anyone in the world who has good self-esteem is excellent at being reassured by other trustworthy people.  Good self-esteem is not based on capability or capacity, but it is based on believing the positive things said about you. 

If you believe God works through people to help other people, then when people tell you positive things about you, and you don’t internalize them, you are actually turning down truths God wanted you to know. 

Believing those truths is how you put your light on a candlestick and not hiding it under a bushel.  Internalizing these compliments and truths is catching chocolate candy in the bag, and it is vital to having good self-esteem and good mental health.

Be Grateful - Gratitude for oneself and one’s good qualities always precedes good self-esteem.  Not taking oneself for granted.  Gratitude precedes happiness. 

You will never meet a grateful, unhappy person.  You will never meet an ungrateful, happy person.  Gratitude decreases worry, depression, anger, agitation, and anxiety.  Lots of people say they are grateful, but I am not sure that is true.  I have always been good at saying “Thanks” to my wife for things she does multiple times a day. 

However, soon after saying “Thanks,” I then have a complaint, concern, or criticism about something else. I realized I was not grateful; I was just polite.  I had good manners, but I was not grateful.  I believe many people who believe they are grateful are not really grateful.  They are just polite, or they exhibit good manners such as saying “Thank you,” but internally are not grateful.

In my church, there are always warnings about “Beware of Pride” and “Pride cometh before the fall,” so people are reluctant to be grateful for their good qualities because they don’t want to be perceived by others as being proud.  They feel that being grateful for their good qualities is a bad thing, but it is not. 

It is necessary for good self-esteem.  People are supposed to be grateful for all their talents and gifts.  I think it is just taking oneself seriously as an instrument of God so that we can “be about doing good” like the Savior did.  Gratitude patches the hole in the bag.

Never Compare - Value yourself whenever you enter a room and be mindful of the tools in your toolbox (i.e., how you make the room better with your Christlike character traits; You don't think you are better than anyone else, but you realize you always bring good stuff with you wherever you go, morning, noon, or night). 

People who gossip are generally people who don’t value themselves.  Gossiping is a way of making oneself look better by making others look worse.  Sarcasm or put-down humor towards others is likely another way of making oneself look better by making others look worse.  Valuing oneself patches the hole in the bag.

Never Second-Guess - Make every decision with the best information possible at that time and then don't look back.  My wife and I got into the stock market by using the Robinhood App.  We invested the amount of money that we would not miss if it did not work out. 

What we learned is that information is always changing regarding the stock market.  A person buys at the wrong time, sells at the wrong time, buys the wrong stock, etc.  Which stocks were sure-fire winners turned out to be dogs, and sure-fire losers were sometimes our best earners. 

A person should not get into stocks if they are second-guessers.  Make every decision with the best information possible at that time, and then don't look back.  Accepting your decisions patches the hole in the bag.

Take Responsibility for Your Actions and Feelings - Taking responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and actions is a primary step leading to change and improvement.  However, acknowledging or recognizing is not enough.  It is not the same as taking responsibility.  It is a step towards taking responsibility.  After one acknowledges his thoughts, feelings, and actions that are incorrect or not helpful, he is then empowered to do something about it, if he so chooses.  Ownership patches the hole in the bag.

Only Personalize How You Treat Yourself and How You Treat Others.  How you treat yourself and how you treat others is the real true indicator of who you are.  What are you like?  Those are your works, your character traits.  Your treatment of yourself and your treatment of others is the best true indicator of who you are, and that is why Heavenly Father uses that standard to judge us. 

Your self-esteem should be based on your character traits.  If that standard of measurement is good enough for a perfect Heavenly Father, it should be good enough for you.  Always care about how you treat yourself and how you treat others. 

You have total control of that.  You have no control over what someone else thinks of you.  People that you are kind to can be quite rude and unappreciative back. 

Traits are stable characteristics, so if you base your self-esteem or happiness on stable character traits, you can be happy even when difficult or disappointing things happen to you or you do disappointing things. 

That is, you can have a good day even when you are having a bad day because there is always goodness in you.  However, you have to be willing to recognize it and be grateful for it.  Personalizing how you treat yourself and others patches the hole in the bag.

Believe You Are as Good as Your Patriarchal Blessing Says You Are- Being reassured by your patriarchal blessing and other blessings you have received always catches chocolate.  In October of  1982, I began serving an 18-month mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I was in the Mission Training Center (M.T.C.) in Provo, Utah, learning Portuguese so I could serve in Curitiba, Brazil. 

A major concern for me was the fear that one of my parents was going to die when I was on my mission.  When I was 9 years-old, my younger brother died of leukemia before he was 6 years-old.  He was on errands with my parents when he died, and I learned the news when my parents arrived home without him.  Before then and more so after then, I was always homesick and felt the need to have my parents close by. 

I always knew I was going to serve a mission, and I knew it was going to be hard, but what made it harder for me was this fear of my parents’ impending death.  One of the other missionaries in our group had his young father pass away while he was in the Missionary Training Center, so this heightened my fear. 

I expressed this fear to one of the counselors in the branch presidency during an interview.  He and another priesthood holder administered a blessing to me, and in that blessing, he promised me (reassured me) that neither of my parents would die during my mission. 

I was comforted (reassured) by this blessing, and my fear of their death went completely away.  Of all the difficult things I later experienced as a missionary, worrying about my parents’ death was not one of them.  Being reassured by blessings patches the hole in the bag.