The Valued Self: Five Steps to Healthy Self Esteem
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About this ebook
Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum
Dr. Elliott Rosenbaum is a board certified clinical psychologist and master life coach. He received his master’s level training at Johns Hopkins University and his doctorate from The George Washington University. Dr. Rosenbaum served as a psychologist in the U.S. Navy where he received recognition for his innovative service to active duty service members, helping them reconnect with their life purpose and goals using evidence-based techniques. Dr. Rosenbaum is currently a life coach and psychologist in private practice and he directs the American School of Professional Life Coaching (ASPLC), which trains professionals and lay people in the art and science of transformational life coaching.
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The Valued Self - Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum
Part I
The Valued Self©
1
My Journey
It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.
~Author Unknown
Let me share with you a snapshot of a trend that I noticed in my life a number of years ago. It may seem somewhat familiar to you.
When I was in Eighth grade, the key to popularity was basketball. The kids who were good at basketball were cool.
I really wanted to be cool, but alas, since I was not good at basketball—I was not cool. When I was in Tenth grade, being popular with girls was the way to achieve popularity. Since I was popular with girls, I was cool
and as a result of this, my self-esteem soared. After high school, a high level of value was placed on being accepted to an Ivy League
university by friends and family. I was not a very conscientious student at the time, and was lucky to be accepted to a non-Ivy League school. As a result, I did not feel very good about myself. After college, status appeared to come from how much money one made, and since I was broke, my self-esteem suffered.
I could give many examples of experiences throughout my life that impressed on me some specific standard with which I was supposed to measure my self-worth. I know now that this process caused me endless anguish, as my self-esteem seemed to shift drastically from environment to environment.
These experiences impressed on me many standards with which I was supposed to
measure my self-worth.
By the time I reached my early twenties, I was emotionally exhausted. I was finding it impossible to satisfy the expectations of all of the different people and environments which had something to say about what makes me valuable—status, looks, money, power, education, you name it. I was trapped and depressed by this prison of impossible expectations and I did not even know it.
My escape came around this time when a friend recommended a therapist who specialized in early adulthood issues. This therapist listened intently to my life story and then asked me to do something that changed my life: he asked me to go home and think about what my life purpose was, and to write it down as a Mission Statement.
After much thought, I wrote on a piece of paper that my mission in life is to use my talents to help others come closer to their life purpose.
This defining moment brought into focus the fact that I had been a slave to the many masters of others’ expectations and that I had allowed these expectations to bully me into submission. As I began to fashion my life around this newfound purpose, I was able to slowly stop carrying the expectations that my environment sought to impose on me, especially those that were not relevant to my life purpose. This freedom brought with it an emotional stability and confidence which I had never known before and which has defined my life ever since.
Over the years, I began to think of this experience as my measuring stick
experience. I realized that the source of self-esteem does not come from others holding you in high regard, as I had previously believed. I have since met many people who are thought of very highly by others, but since they do not think highly of themselves, they have low self-esteem. The reason for this is their measuring stick. We all have a set of standards, or values, which we use to measure ourselves with. Every day we stand next to this measuring stick and decide how we stack up. The result of this self-assessment will dictate how we feel about ourselves. As a sensitive teenager who was aware of what others around him valued, my measuring stick changed from environment to environment. Identifying a life purpose, or Mission Statement, allowed me to reconfigure my measuring stick to a new measuring stick – one that would actually take me towards my deeper self.
I offer you this book as a guide to help you clarify your own life purpose. Your life purpose will guide you as you develop goals for every sphere of your life. You will then learn to measure your self-worth using standards that match your deepest values. The result will invariably be a wonderful gift to yourself and to those you love—your Valued Self.
The next chapter will give you a broad overview of the Valued Self Method, which you will be exposed to again in the second part of this book, the Valued Self Workbook.
2
Overview—The Valued Self
Method in Five Steps
Step 1—Identify Your Self Evaluation System. Here you will take an honest accounting of all the different criteria that you use to measure your self-worth. They will likely be a combination of your true values, or Core Values, and values that you perceive others (including society) expect from you or value you for, or External Values.
Step 2—Identify Your Core Values. You will differentiate between your External Values and Core Values in your Self Evaluation System. You will also add additional ideal Core Values to your Core Values System that are not yet part of your Self Evaluation System.
Step 3—The Mission Statement. You will craft your Core Values into a Mission Statement that encompasses these Core Values. This will be an aspirational statement that describes what you want to accomplish with your life. It will guide your decisions depending on whether the choice in front of you adds or detracts from your life mission. Through repeatedly using this mission as the standard by which you measure yourself, you will develop your Valued Self. External Values and judgments will begin to hold little to no power over you as you integrate this mission into your thinking and allow it to become your primary guide in life.
Step 4—Goal Setting. The next step is to explore real ways to express and fulfill your mission in your life. This means making a list of concrete goals in all areas of your life that will fulfill your values and life