Something to do for Low Self Esteem

Today is my first "Thankful Thursday" post.  I'm not certain about the name yet, so I'll give it a go as long as it works. Today we are going to talk about a Thankful Journal.  Maybe you have heard of this before and maybe you haven't.  I first heard of the idea when I was in Junior High.  Teenagers are mean, and when you have a funny looking face (like I did, because of the tumor I was born with) but seem pretty normal, they can be downright ruthless.  I was having a particularly hard time with self esteem because of the teasing and a friend told me about a project he had started in Africa called a "Thankful Circle."  As a community they were suffering great depression and sadness, my friend suggested that they meet once a day and each say 3 things they were thankful for.  It was extremely effective, changing the attitude and productivity of the entire area.

I wouldn't say I was suffering from depression, but I did have low self esteem, so I decided to start my own circle with me, myself and I...and I wanted to remember the things I was thankful for, so I started writing them down.  Every night before I went to bed I would make myself write 3 things that I was thankful for (even if I didn't feel thankful for a single cotton-pickin' thing), and  I soon found that it was so effective in making life seem better that I started writing 3 things I was thankful for every morning too.  Sometimes it was silly like "I'm thankful that I have ink in my pen so I don't have to get out of bed and look for another pen."  Sometimes it was really deep, "I'm thankful for the person who made the nails that hold my bed together.  Other times it was fitting to my situation, "I'm thankful that no one made fun of me today," or "I'm thankful that ______ spoke to me, it made me feel like someone besides my family actually cared about me."

Such a simple thing.  A thankful journal, merely recognizing the blessings around me, was the first important step I took to finding happiness in the midst of those tough teenage years.  It's never too late to look around and be thankful for the things that are around you.

Cherries Have Pits...a parable, of sorts.

As a young child I picked cherries.  We were paid 1 penny a pound if we picked 10 pounds or less, 2 cents a pound if we picked at least 20 pounds and the ultimate...5 cents a pound (for every pound) if we picked 30 pounds or more.  Five cents a pound may not sound like much, but to a six year old who has no other income and wants to buy a new bike (so they can start a paper route) WOOOOIE...What an incentive!

You might be thinking, "Ummmm, that's neat Jeanne, but what has it got to do with foot zoning?"  Well, I learned a very important life lesson up on those trees that I want you to know, and never forget...Cherries have pits.  They are tempting, delicious (depending on the variety, haha), juicy morsels of delight...but if you bite directly on the center of them with all your might, you may brake a tooth, and even worse, if you don't notice it during the momentary celebration in your mouth, you might swallow the pit and...DIE (thank you Grandma Liston, who always ended fun stories with extreme lessons in life, like the dad on "Meet the Croods.")

One of the simplest lessons you can learn and teach your children, but often we think that rather than teach someone about simple things it will be easier, or faster to protect them from it.  I thought I needed to hide the cherries or remove the pits to protect my sweet daughter (who just turned 3...TODAY).  You know what?  That smart little whippersnapper found the bowl of cherries and figured it out all on her own. "Hey Mom, look...there is something inside.  I don't want to eat it, will you bring me the garbage?"

Moral: Life is full of tempting circumstances that look, see, and feel amazing.  Some people may try to protect us from harm or disappointment by hiding or removing the unpleasant parts but remember that self esteem and independence are developed from the lessons learned by knowing about and taking responsibility when the unpleasant things arise (aka, removing the pits ourselves).

For Students:
How to translate what we find in the foot: When I am giving a foot zone and come to a "pit in the foot" I contemplate the area that corresponds with the exact location on the foot and ask my client what they know about that organ, bone, muscle or tissue.  When we have discussed what they know I educate them on what I have learned about the function/purpose of the same thing, including symptoms that can arise if it is not working properly.  Then we discuss what a "pit" means to them and we apply it (emotionally) to life.  The word "pit" can mean a hole, crater, bump, rock, obstacle, inconvenience or a whole lot of other things to different people, so it important that we coach them through, but let them choose their own definition.  Now that you have discussed what the area is important for, and what a pit is to them, weave them together to discover why it is showing up in the signals of their feet at this particular time.

When life gives you cherries...You just gotta spit out the seeds!