With the start of a new year, how about setting a goal, as one of your main goals, to boost your self esteem? The reason why I am suggesting this is because when you feel good about yourself, you are more confident in your own abilities to achieve whatever you want. The greater your self confidence is, the more successful you are likely to be in the rest of the goals that you set for yourself.

Do you find yourself having such thoughts often?

1. I can’t do anything.
2. I will never be good at it anyway; no matter how hard I try.
3. I’m born unlucky.
4. No one believes I can do this.
5. I’m no good at doing this task.
6. Others are brighter than me.
7. I am stupid.
8. I will never be as good as somebody else.

If you do, then be aware that these thoughts are doing you no good. How you feel about yourself is based on the person you think you are. You can have positive beliefs that strengthens you or negative beliefs that tear you down. A weak sense of identity invariably results in a poor attitude, difficulty in assertiveness and an inability to cope well under stress.

When you do goal setting, you need to be able to visualize that you are able to achieve your goals. You do not want to set goals that are too easy nor would you want to set goals that you do not feel possible to achieve. You must believe that you can have all that you need to make your goals a reality. Unfortunately, if you have a low self esteem, your negative subconscious thinking will sabotage your intent in reaching your goals.

With a low self esteem, you will find that you tend to give up easily, every time when you hit upon challenges along the way. Nothing is ever one hundred smooth. How you deal with challenges depends very much on your attitude. If you start to question your abilities, you are unlikely to be able to succeed.

So it is best that you find ways to boost your self esteem first. If you make a commitment in addressing your low feelings about yourself, then achieving your other goals will be much easier.

A strong self confidence can be nurtured in a child and encouraged by parents and caregivers. When children feel good about who they are and what they can achieve; they grow up to be confident, happy adults who believe in what they can do to improve themselves.

However, it is never too late to work on building good self-esteem. Hence, for goal setting this year, make it a point to include this as one of your aims. Make a note to give yourself credit for every little achievement or success that you achieve. Celebrate your wins! Take time off to nurture yourself and know that you deserve it!

Evelyn Lim publishes tips about using self help tools for the law of attraction to work. She strongly advocates wealth consciousness in favor over poverty consciousness, for overall success. For more of her articles, please visit http://www.AttractionMindMap.com

Remember Teri Hatcher doing those impossible splits right on the studio floor on Oprah? Or Carmen Electra positively gushing about what exotic dance has done for her body and bedroom tactics? A large number of celebrities have recently taken to a sexy alternative to working out, from pole vaulting they have leapt straight to pole dancing at the S Factor. And they aren’t stopping at pole-dancing, our celebrity pin-up girls have been everywhere and done everything, from Strip-Aerobics to Exotic Dance Work Outs, the motto this season is ‘Everything sexy goes’!

If all this sudden gush for sex is making you blush, you go ahead and click your tongue and hang your head in shame, no one will begrudge you. “SEX SELLS” and we are being sold it morning, noon and night through every possible channel. It screams at you from gigantic billboards featuring gorgeous demi-love-gods, pierces into your fantasy’s through the television and fondles your imagination with semi-naked bodies scattered all over the net. Living in the USA is in itself like one giant, prolonged orgasm…and as a woman you are expected to idolize those models and endeavor to look like one.

Sure you wanna be Carrie from ‘Sex and the City’ and moan and groan and roll around on your bed with a different guy every night, seven nights a week turning your life into a series of fantastic sexual escapades….but you’ll snap out of it, after all life is not a TV show, and learning how to embrace your sexuality takes time and effort.

In America amongst the glamour of the TV shows and the supposed sexual abandonment, the skin and the G-Strings, we women have to deal with mixed messages, guilt trips, religious dogma, body image, and misinformation. Sure getting your hymen snapped by 16 is a must, but so is regretting doing it by 25. Beneath all our external frills, getting laid is an issue we women deal with badly.

The concept of ‘Positive Sex’ is an idea not many of us have managed to fathom yet. Fornication is still, essentially a male domain, where we women participate like whimpering goats, hesitating and interestingly enough feeling insecure about our role in it all.

A majority of women I know swear by making love in the dark. ‘It’s romantic’ they coo when I ask them the point of that. Here’s what I KNOW, most of us are ashamed of our body. Nudity is a concept we haven’t been taught to handle well. Seeing ourselves naked freaks us out, and knowing that someone else is watching us naked, desiring our body for itself, brings to life our worst fears. This is the gaze our parents warned us against, this is what Church lessons have told us to avoid. So off goes the light, plunging everything, from ourselves, to that desirous gaze, to our insecurities, into comforting darkness.

The truth is that the darkness serves as a warm invitation to what Susan Bremer calls our ‘Shadow” side. ‘Every woman wants to take a trip to their wild side” she explains, ‘We all yearn to seduce. But we’ve been told over and over again that to rejoice in our body is immoral, yet the wish to feel powerful in our sensuality, to express our sexuality remains.” Susan, a proud ‘Gentleman club’ dancer considers her sexual prowess to be her way of establishing her role in a world hounded by men. “When I’m at work,” she says “I’m surrounded by men in coats and ties — bosses and underlings, jocks and nerds. All of them are the kinds of men who made me feel small. But now I can reduce the top dog to a lapdog by staring at him, opening my top, and smiling”.

This sense of power probably needs some delving into. As women all of us suffer from our own insecurities. It’s a cliché by now but we all know that the world belongs to the testosterone thugs. They keep us down everywhere, be it in our boardroom or our bedroom. And slowly we grow used to being kept down, such that we soon we are conditioned to not reversing the situation at all.

A positive sex-image, whether you use it or not, can and will alter all this most miraculously. Your sexual achievements in the bedroom can give you the kind of omnipotent confidence which oozes out from your personal to public sphere. For any woman with low self-esteem, the act of embracing your sexuality serves as a miracle tool for believing that she can have that effect on other people, in a non-sexual environment too.

The thing is, much as we try to shake it off, we are all sexual beings, sex is important to us and it has the power to make us feel good. 65% of women in the US do not, at their heart of hearts, take this idea seriously. Good sex and an attempt to have good sex for them is still a nudge-nudge-whisper-whisper issue. This attitude gets transferred from them to their kids and grandkids and so on, such that each generation of these young women grow up with the idea that every time they are making love they ought to feel guilty about it. This mystifying of the subject is harmful for a lot of reasons. For starters it gives us a lifelong baggage of guilt, every time we think about sex, every time we fantasize or our hands itch to masturbate we feel like a criminal. The constant feeling that sex is wrong or dirty leads to a negative self-image as a person. That misinformation means that when we are in the act it can be hard to enjoy it, leading to severe sexual frustration, not a feeling you’d like to carry around with you.

This discussion might go on and on, because of our trouble to face the fact that we like getting laid. But let’s just say, it all has a very easy solution. Get in to your sexiest lacy underwear, devote tonight to unleashing the temptress in you and for once really enjoy it without hang-ups. You will like the results tomorrow morning.

by Adryenn Ashley
A provocative, ambitious, and engaging producer, Adryenn Ashley has taken the independent film community by storm with groundbreaking documentary and feature projects. She has never been shy about tackling a hard subject or a controversial fire storm.

When Ashley’s early acting career was cut short by an injury, the tenacious Northern Californian stayed in the game seeking original independent projects to produce. Her first feature, “Metal”, was shot in just 8 days in the rough neighborhood of Hunter’s Point, San Francisco. Ashley’s production of this gritty and dramatic portrayal of a poor black family in turmoil went on to receive stellar reviews and awards at festivals worldwide. It premiered, and was a critical favorite, at the Mill Valley Film Festival, won the Jury Prize at the Pan African Film Festival, and Best Picture at the Seattle Underground Film Festival.

With a whet appetite for juicy projects, Ashley is presently in post-production on Felicia Giouzelias’ film “My Sexuality”, a documentary exploring the relationship between a woman’s self-esteem and her view of her sexual-self. A heartwarming and fun glimpse into the transformation of 5 average women into sexy vixens through classes and make-overs, Ashley is sure to win over audiences with this witty and intelligent project.

At present, Ashley has four features in pre-production with her company, 21st Century Pictures Group, and is venturing back in front of the camera for three acting roles in 2007. In between movies Ashley is starting her book series, “Every Girls Guide To…”.

What Are The Symptoms Of Low Self-Esteem? People with low self-esteem rarely live their life to the full. They distance
themselves from others, and are thus denied their love and support. They rarely,
if ever, make full use of their abilities. Instead, they end up brooding about
the injustices of life. Such people are a loss to themselves, their family and
to society. Some of them even take to crime, alcohol and drugs.


Invariably, people with low self-esteem are uncomfortable with success.
They tend to believe that they don’t deserve success, and they have no clue as
to how to savor success. At the same time, they do not hesitate to blame
themselves if things go wrong. They take sadistic pleasure in telling the world
that they knew things would go wrong. This is an important symptom of low
self-esteem, and needs to be treated at the earliest.

People suffering
from low self-esteem also have the habit of putting themselves down. They
repeatedly tell themselves that they are not good enough and that they are bound
to fail. Over a period of time this negative self-talk turns into a negative
self-belief. More than that, they try and implant these seeds of negativity in
people around them. They also gravitate towards people who suffer from similar
problems. The end result is that they feed on each other’s negativity, and
become much poorer individuals than they initially were.

A high level of
dissatisfaction is another indicator of low self- esteem. There are people who
spend all their time complaining. They neither see a positive thing in others
nor in themselves. This cynicism eats away their self-belief, and erodes their
self- confidence. In contrast, people who value their abilities enjoy high
self-esteem.

Also, people with low self-esteem spend most of their time
brooding about the past and worrying about the future. They don’t spend enough
time living in the present. As a result, they don’t enjoy the present, even
though it may be full of success. The net result is that they prevent themselves
from enjoying life, and make themselves unhappy. It finally becomes a vicious
cycle that feeds upon itself, and prevents them from breaking out of their
negative mould

such people are rarely relaxed and at ease. They keep
looking for different jobs and lines of work. The reason why they are always
looking for something else to do is that they are lack self- confidence. They
drift from one crisis to another, and blame fate for their woes.

A few
of them take to alcohol, drugs, food, sex etc to get a temporary “high”. But
this rarely helps them in the long run. They fail to generate a sustainable
feeling of happiness and contentment.

People with low self-esteem also
have problems getting close to others. They are not comfortable with intimacy
and create barriers to prevent people from coming close to them. They don’t like
to open up to people and to reveal their innermost thoughts. They may be nursing
some old bad experience with someone who caused them a lot of pain or who let
them down when they were most vulnerable. By forcing themselves to live in a
world of self-denial they are doing a great damage to themselves. They fail to
benefit from the company of others, and keep entrenching themselves deeper and
deeper into their negative world. They may ultimately reach a stage where they
may be declared beyond salvage.

But this is not good for society. People
with low self-esteem must be helped. Their symptoms must be diagnosed, and help
provided if they have to be turned into useful members of society. This help can
be given by family members, friends, teachers or by trained psychologists.



by Emmanuel Segui
Emmanuel Segui

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If a person is anxious or shy with people does it mean they have social anxiety? It’s perfectly fine to feel anxious and nervous sometimes; meeting someone for the first time, getting interviewed for a job, or giving a work presentation. So how do we know if we are suffering from social anxiety disorder?

Social anxiety sufferers find social experiences tremendously fearful. Fear of humiliation and embarrassment are possible reasons. To avoid embarrassment they often try and avoid social situations that requires them to do something.

If they have to face a social situation they feel absolutely terrified with thoughts of making a fool of themselves in front of everyone. They end up sabotaging themselves with negative self talk only increasing anxiety. When they come to face their fear, they might stutter, turn red, choke and feel utterly humiliated.

They are likely to experience physical anxiety symptoms such as difficulty breathing, trembling, chest pains and a pounding heart. Sufferers will often replay the experience in their head over and over afterwards. A sufferer is going to feel really humiliated and avoid any kind of similar experience.

Treating social anxiety successfully is possible with the various treatments available. Medication is not a cure for social anxiety disorder but it can help combined with therapy. The root cause of anxiety can not be treated with medication. Benzodiazepines, antidepressants and beta blockers are commonly prescribed.

Make sure that you are aware of the side effects and potential dangers of medication. It’s best to speak to a qualified professional before considering medication. Many people choose not to take medication because of the possible risks involved. There are other alternatives to consider.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a therapy that has been used successfully to treat anxiety symptoms. Simply relaxing is a great way to unwind and ease away built up tension and stress. Stress and anxiety can often spiral out of control. Give yourself a break by learning to relax properly. Breathing exercises a few times a day can help you forget about the day and put things in perspective.

Playing some relaxing music can help you get into a relaxed state. Focus on slow and deep breaths ensuring that you relax your muscles. A slow stretch is a great way to loosen up and get you ready.

There are social anxiety books, audios and self-help courses that can be highly effective. Take the first steps in beating this disorder and start enjoying a social life. Go to the panic symptoms help blog and find out how to overcome social anxiety.