Personal Growth Planet Blog

The word “unconditional” is thrown around quite a bit. It is often assumed that parents love their children unconditionally. Lovers are expected to love one another unconditionally. To boost self esteem, a person is encouraged to accept him or herself unconditionally.

I don’t know about you, but truly accepting or even loving unconditionally is not as easy as it sounds.

If any of us are completely honest with ourselves, we’d probably discover that there’s not a whole lot of unconditional loving or accepting going on.

I don’t think I know a single person who is ambivalent about Valentine’s Day.

When I hear people talk (and I’m sure there are exceptions), there is generally aversion or excitement to February 14th. There’s rarely anything in between.

Some look forward to passionate celebrating with the one they love.
Others scowl and rant about how this is yet another Hallmark-created holiday.
Yet others grimace at this reminder of how alone or heart broken they feel.

I tend to be a romantic kind of person and so I fall into the “looking forward to it” category. However, like many people, Valentine’s Day is fraught with traps and turmoil for me too.

During my high school and undergraduate years, I remember looking forward to being a full-fledged adult. Part of the allure of getting older was the promise of no longer caring about what others think of me.

Now that I am most certainly a “full-fledged” adult, I am a bit disappointed to see that this desire for acceptance and approval has not magically evaporated. It’s still there even if it takes different forms and is mellower (at times).

I’ve heard plenty of people claim that a benefit of growing older is that you don’t care what anyone else thinks about you anymore. Unfortunately, I have not found that to be true in my experience.

This time of year there’s generally a lot of advice being offered about how to stick with your New Year’s resolutions and how to make changes. I’ve joined in and blogged about this topic in the past few weeks too.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with noticing something about your habits or your life that you’d like to improve upon. In fact, as humans, we tend to constantly be pulled to expand and grow. If we resist this urge, stagnation can result.

Guilt can crop up in our lives at just about every turn.

You might feel guilty because you’ve strayed from your diet.
You may feel guilty because you forgot the birthday of a dear friend.
You could feel guilty because you spoke harshly to your spouse.
You may feel guilty because you aren’t as kind, generous, reliable, eco-friendly, productive, religious or spiritual…. as you think you should be.

It seems that we humans are hard-wired with a propensity to feel guilty.

Why would anyone want to spend any time or energy returning to those hormone-racing, pimple-filled, angst-ridden teenage years?

Precisely because for just about every one of us there’s a lot that is unresolved about them.

Each of our raging inner teens come barging into our lives from time to time leaving us scratching our heads wondering…

Where did that reaction come from???

When you go inside and help your inner teen to heal, it’s quite likely that you’ll find a greater sense of peace, a boost in confidence and self-esteem and the space to be and do what you keep meaning to be and do.

By Amy Phillips-Gary

In the final scene of the movie “The Darjeeling Limited,” three brothers who have experienced a quirky and arduous journey together through India run for their train that’s already in motion. They carry several pieces of luggage that once belonged to their father. At one point mid-run, each brother throws aside his suitcases and shoulder bags and finally leaps upon that departing train.

Have you ever felt weighted down by your low self esteem?

By Amy Phillips-Gary

When I was in high school, I had the honor of being in many plays and musicals*. It was wonderfully creative and fun to be up on stage singing, dancing and acting with friends.

And it was also a gut-wrenching experience.

Before and after each show I usually assessed my performance. Almost every time, I honed in on the mistakes I made (or expected to make)– lines out of order, missteps or voice slightly off-key.