Self-Esteem problems

[JohnV]

Dear All,

I am 19 now and have been having problems with my self-esteem ever since I can remember. I am constantly in war with my thoughts in my mind and always comparing myself to others. After I meet a certain person I will be thinking about what I should have said and what I should have not and then in turn start fighting these thoughts, which will make me feel even worse.

I have lived like this for so long and then I started this pick up thing, where you approach a girl on the street and try to get her on a date.  When I first started I was expecting that by doing this uncomfortable thing, my self-confidence will skyrocket, which actually has for a while when I started getting my first dates and so.

Then I moved to a foreign country for 6 months and had massive success with this. Some days I felt awesome because I got all this messages from girls and talked to other guys about my success with them. These days when my ego was so inflated I felt like I am above everyone else, which felt great. But other days when I got rejected or a girl would not reply, I even felt intimidated talking to my classmates.

Fast forward 6 months, I came back to my current city where I had lived before and had been used to this "shy" personality around everyone (classmates, grocery store, gym). Furthermore, for some reason I consider people in these country to be perfect and therefore assume myself to be less worthy than them. Therefore, magically all of my confidence and happiness disappeared. I would have problems walking alone around the city or look into other person's eyes. Moreover, I started loosing more hair which enhanced the feeling of unworthiness and depression.

Spent the first two months home without talking to anyone. After which I again started doing the pick-up thing assuming that I'll get some validation and my confidence will grow back and I will feel good again. However, as you could have assumed It has not. I am feeling constantly depresses, assuming that I am less worthy than others around me, always envying other guys if it's their looks, success with women or anything else.

Therefore, I come to this point where I would like to ask you for your advice. I am willing to do anything to grow strong and healthy self-esteem. I have been meditating daily 10 minutes for the past 1 month, have read the six pillars of self-esteem but after a while of doing the stems I stopped because I didn't see it working and also didn't really believe in it. So, in case anyone read through this story and experienced something similar and has some recommendations, which helped him/her, I will be very grateful if you could share it with me.

 

[eskwire]

Hi! I'm sorry you are at a low, because it feels bad, but it is the beginning of something new. 

I understand why people do pick-up, but ultimately, it will not fulfill you. It is an external source of validation and happiness. It is competition, deceit, and concern for the shallow side of life. If this is your sole strategy for achieving contentment and ease, it is doomed to failure.

You say that you do 10 minutes of meditation per day and, to be frank, that's not enough. That's nothing. That's for some relaxation and a little focus, not transformation.

The 6 Pillars sentence stems are meant to bring your awareness to the center, and to write down what is observed/learned through heightened awareness. If your awareness is not heightened through techniques such as meditation, and you are doing the sentence stem exercise in a mechanical way with disbelief, then yes, it could be useless.

Start anew, do something different. 

[JohnV]

A bit late but still thanks for your reply, 

I will try to shift my focus in pick-up from the lays onto just pushing my comfort zone and becoming more out-going.

Regarding the meditations, I tried to do a few of 30 minutes but encountered that when sitting for this long I cannot keep my spine straight since every time I shift my focus on breathing it naturally gets lazy. Then when I notice it I try to straighten it but from what I heard you're not supposed to move during the meditation. So how can I go about this? Should I just give up trying to keep my spine straight or should I keep straightening it whenever I notice it's not?

And about the 6 pillars, should I meditate for a bit longer and then try to do the stems again?

 

Thank you very much for your help!

[eskwire]

@JohnV You're welcome.

Even during a "strong determination sit" - the one where not moving is integral to the teaching - it is allowed to straighten the spine. The point of sitting still is to learn to sit in discomfort without running away from it or running toward a pacifier (like changing positions). Keeping a straight spine is helpful to the practice. 

These rules are also not so hard and fast that you should give up because of them. There is a lot of room to apply these rules judiciously. If a rule is making you stop meditating altogether, loosen up on it. It's ok.

Feel free to try the stems again. Try to understand the purpose and spirit of them (applying awareness) rather than doing them mechanically. 

Godspeed. ✨

[Mendi]

Hi John. Build a solid meditation foundation. It's a game changer for what you are needing. I know it from experience. You can take classes virtually (hackself.org) or in person (tm.org). Just be consistent with it. Thank me later! : )

Edited May 7, 2018 by Mendi