You don’t have low self-esteem, you just attached your esteem to the wrong thing…

Imagine this. A three-year-old girl returns home from nursery one day with a piece of artwork she has created.

Mum and dad take the piece of artwork, look at it, and say "wow, that's amazing, I love it, I'm so proud of you. come here give me a hug. You are just brilliant”.

Later that week the little girl goes to her first party. She puts on a beautiful dress. 
"Look at you" says dad “ just gorgeous".

This same act is repeated over and over and over and over throughout her childhood. Of course it is, any loving parents would do the same.

Of course the little girl; trying to ascertain her place in the world, has learned two things. Her value is determined by the things that she produces, and the way that she looks.

Of course it wasn't the parents intent, but it is what has happened nonetheless. Now this little girl, keen to be loved as we all are, looked after how she looked, looked after her health, and worked hard to produce the best work possible.

Fast forward 20 years, she is a beautiful and successful woman. She meets a man who tells her how beautiful she is and how smart she is… they have a child.

And something goes horribly wrong.

She loses the work that made her so successful. She loses the body that made her so confident and so beautiful. And she spends her time looking after a child and, even on the best parents best day, looks like a failure after failure after failure.

She feels alone. And the one thing that motivated her to look after herself to strive forward, to do her best.

Her self-esteem. Has been taken away.

And the worst thing. Nobody is talking about it.

Nobody told her she wasn't supposed to get her figure back straightaway. Nobody told her that children were supposed to be raised by tribes not just by parents. Nobody told her that she is not what she looks like and she is not what she produces. She is and always has been what's in her heart.

Her parents forgot to tell her that it wasn't the artwork that they loved. In fact it was pretty crap, they just loved that she tried. That she put her heart into producing something and without fear, shared it with the world.

Her parents forgot to tell her that beautiful as she was in that dress, the beauty was in her innocence and her purity of heart- it was what we call ‘what’s inside'.

We don't love our children for how they look or what they produce. We love them because they wear what's on the inside, on the outside, and we wish that we had the courage to do the same.

The amazing thing is that our children, have this built in at birth. They don't see us at all, they see inside us. They love us as we should love ourselves. They truly have no love at all for the things that we produce or how we look.

Stop measuring yourself by what you produce.

See yourself as your child sees you. As you see your child.

Then start speaking that language and your self-esteem will start to grow, and this will catapult you towards the things you desire and you will be the model for your child as they are for you.

You ARE still you.

Awesome you.

You were never the way you looked
You were never your work

Let your inside light up the outside again

Just a thought

Ed Ley