Reverse Psychology; A guide for your body, mind and soul

Quick test: Before starting the reading about self-esteem, think about ten good qualities about yourself and write them down on a piece of paper. 1.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  2.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  3.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  4.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________   5.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  6.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  7.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  8.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________   9.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________   10.I am__________________________________________________________________________________________________  All done. If you are reading, but haven't finished the first task yet, you're getting a zero score. Go back and give them a chance to the test. Write at least five qualities if you can't think about ten. It is quick, I'll wait for you to finish. If you have finished, but couldn't write ten and wrote only five lines, don't worry. The reason for this quick test is simple, it is to convince you to write things about yourself and see what you are thinking now about yourself. When you're part of a group of people who can not write down a thing about themselves, this is not a good sign and it means one thing; Low self-esteem, in other words, you don't trust and love yourself. It can also be that someone doesn't think much about themself and has difficulties saying good things to others too. You're afraid of being happy and are trapped in a world without facing challenges, and overcoming obstacles and this is what leads us to the UNIVERSE OF NO! THE " NO WORLD "  Ask ten people if you are smart, what is the chance of at least one of them answering you with a yes? And what is the chance of them saying you're funny, cool, brave or athletic? 5%? 10%? 25%? If you think the chances are low, you're not alone. Young people who feel like they are not capable of doing something, are often the best people to ask about self-esteem. If a person feels that way and comes out stronger on the other side, they can give us hope. They can show us what we can and can not do with our lives and keep our heads up away from pondering, and wondering. If you want to become mature, confident, determined, strong and safe. Want an example? Well, read some situations below from people that have passed through hard moments and which advice they can give us. "I had a friend and she always got bullied at school. She always loved to ride a bike to forget everything about her hard relationship at school and at home. Her family was very aggressive, she told me she always got threatened by her stepfather and her mother always left the house to work. There was no one than me to comfort her. One day, one day we were riding a bike together side by side and suddenly a group of boys from school surrounded us and challenged her to ride her bike crossing an old bridge and after completing the challenge, they would be nice to her and become friends. I told her not to do it, but she did it impulsively because she wanted to prove how brave she was and not a coward. In the end, she crossed half of the bridge, it started shaking and the bridge collapsed down tih her. That was not an ordinary and any safe bridge, it was a bridge to cross over an abyss from one mountain to other. Everything I saw that day was my friend dying for nothing and the boys, they were not sad or feeling guilty for that, they just ignored it and left. In the next day, I wouldn't want to go to school and kept thinking about what happened, but thinking about that wouldn't change the fact that she died and she can't reborn either. My advice for you is, even if you are bullied, don't let others make you think that you are useless and don't worry about status while at school. Be yourself and try to make friends with classmates from other classes too, not only from your class. A true friend will accept you as you are and will never let you down. " (Giovana Carneiro) " I was born with a stomach problem and to take off what always caused me pain, I had surgery to fix it. But the doctors wrongly sewed up my belly and my body position became strange. I have a wavy spine, everything down looks normal, but from my belly to up, it is crooked and nothing can fix it. I had passed many difficulties because of this event and took time to get used to it. With time I decided to accept myself as who I am now and grateful for not suffering pain anymore. Today I have two beautiful daughters and there was no difficulty at all carrying them into my womb. I don't regret doing the surgery because it was for the best." (Roberta Meirelles) "I don't know what I would do without them. In the beginning I was spirited and motivated, but after I found out the truth, I started asking questions to myself; Why have they abandoned me? Or maybe she dumped me? Why am I with them if they are not my biological parents, and I am not their biological son? Who do they think I am? I stand up days and nights, rebelling aggressively, I didn't want to talk about it with them because they had never give a moment to talk about it with me. Until I found another reason for me to be there, they have never had the chance to breed and have their own kid and they decided to adopt one. At that time there was no surrogacy, so the only option was to adopt someone. Usually they adopt more babies and less kids from orphanages, and I am sad for it too. But when I saw how hard and immature I was with them, I got ashamed. I didn't know anything about them from the beginning, but they took care of me and this is why I am here. I am thankful for it. " (Fernando Carcará) The ¨NO Universe¨ is a name given by people with depression and low self-esteem. This is something you usually carry for your entire life. Young people, such as teenagers always are at ¨NO Universe¨ for a long time and forget about one thing: There is no such place called "NO Universe". When you live at "NO Universe", it means you are bewitched. You are trapped in a world that looks real, but is totally fake. It is a place where our mind can live and do whatever it wants freely. But if we stay there for a long time, the "NO Universe" becomes the only safe place in the world for you. This fantasy place is inside many people, mostly inside teenagers. Each one has their own version of it, but the mood is always a shame. People can see themselves, but see themselves as less than they really are. They feel incapable, weak, lost, helpless, boring or less than others, in many ways. An example to understand better are the kids and teenagers suicide cases, they usually choose a closed or abandoned environment, but the truth is they don't see the good side of life which is the love of your families, your parents always wanted a child and you're their son/daughter, the result of love between one and other. If you are adopted, it is not a problem either, because who adopted you also wanted more love in their family. Some parents act rudely with their children and we start thinking that maybe they think you are annoying, spoiled, but in some situations they are right and you will see that when you are in an unexpected event, and the words "I told you so" will come in your mind. But if you don't feel comfortable with your parents treatment, there are many people who can still help you and give love; grandparents, uncle, aunt, godmother, godfather, a friend, not all of them look at you saying "You are not worthy, you are grounded." HOW DO PEOPLE GET THERE?  People who end up in the shame cycle never really wanted to get there. Researches about how people act during different stages of their lives have interesting things to tell us. As an example, think about where you were when you're seven or nine years old. What kind of person you were? If you look like as the research says, it is easy and one hundred percent sure that you will say you were nice, liked to learn, tried new things, had a great humour, felt like you could face the world easily. But there was a time in your life that you changed, right? You started to worry with your appearance, behaviour, status, how they see you. If you are and think this way, you are as the researches concluded after talking with different people about how they feel. The great discovery about these investigations were how people changed quickly and drastically. The worries in people's minds are always about world affairs to superficial things, such as appearance and other people thoughts about them. For most of them, this makes them tense because they feel that they are not capable of living up to expectations. Suddenly, they look in the mirror and start to feel unreliable. They look around and worry that they can't fill in terms of intelligence, physique, friends, dating, hobbies or talent. What happened to them? They are in the ¨NO Universe¨. Again they are frozen by worries about not being able to do things and have success. They are always saying; ¨I am not good enough.¨  ¨I am not smart enough.¨  ¨I am not tall enough.¨  ¨I am not wealthy.¨  ¨I am not interesting enough.¨  ¨I am not athletic enough.¨  All the sentences have something in common, the words "not" and "enough", with the same meaning. And these small details start to mess up the life of a person who was good with itmself, but began to suffer and close itself in its world, decreasing even more and creating an entrance to the ¨NO Universe¨ that does not exist. A SHORT STORY ABOUT GIRLS Let's observe the sudden changes in a girl's life. The best way to explain to you about insecurity is going back to the 1950's. So let's travel back in time and understand about it. These days, in the 21st century, the photographs of girls from the past are almost always seen as jokes, because they are black and white photographs. A mother busy cooking culinary delights decorating a meatloaf with her pointy b*a, sweater and matching high heels seems hilarious to us these days. We can not forget the long and antique dresses that the rich people of the Mansion also wore during that time, which also became a joke. This is how 50's looked like, women were the mothers of American culture. Men were the worker bees. Men supported the family and the women were housewives, had many children, cleaned the house, raised the children and made sure everything was in order. The white smile you see on so many girls featured in photographs from the 1950s means how proud mothers felt of their daughters. It was up to them to keep things in order. That kind of perfect girl left the scene when the 60's arrived. That was the hippie generation and the beginning of women's fight for equal rights across America. From the streets to the jobs, women wanted a chance to succeed. To them, make a sandwich and clean up the house, never and enough. And inventions like washing machines, concealer, makeup, credit or debit cards, hair dryers, windshield wipers, purses, wallets, hairbrushes, everything to ease up the daily routine. They wanted to enter America's workforce. And they wanted to be treated equally when they got there. Later in the 1970s, women continued on the path of conquering equality. In that decade, a movement called Feminism started. This movement focused on achieving equality for women in different stages of their lives, such as entering politics or earning the same amount of money as men to perform the same task. Feminists fought to give women the right to be themselves, to make their own choices and determine their own futures. With the feminist movement fighting for women's equality, the 1970's saw girls advance in different fields, depending on how they thought women should go about achieving equality. So a group of feminists decided to teach women not to consider the fact that they are determined to do some things and not others. For example, not all women should stay at home and be mothers. If a girl doesn't want to start a family because she's right in the middle of a professional career, she doesn't have to, even if she gets pregnant. And it is here, in the 1970s, that the abortion debate started to get more interesting. Radical feminists were fully committed to the right of girls to do whatever they want with their bodies, no matter why. Other women's groups fought for equality, but focused on other issues. These feminist groups disagreed with women from radical groups, such as abortion rights, focusing on social and personal issues. As the 1980s arrived, women began to carry out activities that used to be done by men, and nowadays it seems that the role has been distributed, but women are in charge of everything now and some complain that men are not gentlemen in doing their part. , which used to be very different. Women in the 1980s began to occupy positions of power in companies, earning more money than ever before. They chose when and where they wanted to work and what kind of lives they wanted to have. They could choose between living a life of the 50's or living a different life with the new rules of the 70's and 80's. I wasn't born at that time, but a friend of mine called Ludmila Kate was five years old at that time and she said that her mother always admired the women of the 80s, because it was an intense and unique feminist movement. We finally are in 1990s, you imagine that women were more motivated and confident. Women in the 70's and 80's have made serious progress since the time when women didn't choose to be mothers and stayed at home. Wasn't that a great victory? According to psychologist Mary Pipher, the answer just might be "NO". She wrote a book in the 1990s called Reviving Ophelia, which told how, in fact, the situation for girls is not improving despite all the progress made. Equal rights, equal pay, and a growing sense of independence were all good things. Because of this, girls face cultural pressures that can force them to shift their focus. One half of you wants to remain faithful and true to who you've always been. The other half tries to be that person among society's cultural terms. This is the half of the girl who always tries to live up to expectations, who awakens insecurity and a feeling of shame. When we look around us, it's easy to see that Mary Pipher was right. As 21st century teenagers, we can feel more than confused about all these different reactions. It's like women owe it all while being beautiful, athletic, professional, future mothers of the year, chefs of amazing kitchens, cheerleaders. And that's why there are many groups with unique and specific characteristics at schools, colleges, and even religions. All this is an example of how difficult it is for people who live in our society to fit in, due to social inequalities. These pressures are what intensify this feeling of shame in girls mostly, rarely for boys. Sometimes we can get so confused about what we're supposed to be that we start thinking we've failed in every way. LIVING IN FEAR If you are a teenager, there are many chances of you'd been in ¨NO Universe¨. Maybe you haven't gone there yet, but probably will be someday, at least one time in your life. This is the line you can't change, but you can overcome these insecurity feelings. You feel this feeling as you are pushing away your true self. You know what you are thinking and you are the only one who can control it. GETTING AWAY FROM YOUR TRUE SELF Confident and aware of your abilities? This is how it starts when a person feels like using their true Self to face the world. The opposite of that is just hiding, depression, worry, and all those bad feelings because you can't manage it. When you feel this way, it can lead you to make decisions that you really don't want to. You can act in a way that's not you(jealous, revenge,...), you can dress just the same as everyone else's because you're afraid of being rejected(appearance), you can eat something you don't like just to please someone else, but deep down you're just looking for yourself and rejecting. You start agreeing with things you don't believe in, pretending you don't know the answers to questions, or pretending you don't have a good opinion of things so people don't make fun of you. Either way, when doubt and worry start to make you act differently than you normally would, you end up moving away from your true self. Since then, the first time you say "yes" or "no", you are moving away from your Self. And this is a very serious problem. Some people, however, try to pretend that this is not the case. They think that people who talk and do things their own way are just different. They imagine that these people are just different, that they were born confident or something like that.  But it's not about you being born confident or not, it's about something that made you question. Something made you think about things like ¨I'm not good enough¨, ¨Other people are better¨ or ¨I shouldn't try¨. If you've said things like that to yourself, then now is the time to make some changes, nothing that affects the real you. Start first with small actions: Watching your thoughts like a hawk. Try counting the number of times during the day that you don't feel good about yourself. Write down the thought that was in your mind and the situation that made you feel that way on the lines below. At the end of the day go through your list and assess which things on the list don't matter and let the ones that really matter understand more about it. You'll probably find that only a few of them really matter and that most are superficial, like feeling fat or not feeling cool enough to get a guy. Value the little things, like appearance, the main topic that sends people into an insecurity cycle. Don't let yourself get into that spiral. If you're already inside it, make a U-turn as fast as you can. THOUGHTS                                                                                       SITUATIONS   ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________