How Can I Avoid Overwhelm?

There are two key antidotes to the overwhelm caused by low self-esteem:

• Learn to value what you already know
• Take action

* Value what you already know

Look at the successes you have had so far in life. How many of them were really the result of listening to “experts” and following what they said? Did they come about because you uncovered that one unique gem of information that drastically changed your life, your finances, or your relationships? Or did they come about because you applied yourself, trusted yourself enough to make decisions, take action, and learn from the resulting feedback?

To allow yourself to value what you already know it helps to keep the following in mind:

• It is an almost universal human trait to devalue what you know and value what everyone else knows. This is the intellectual version of “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” You know what is in your mind – you don’t know what is in someone else’s mind – therefore it must be better.
• We are trained from birth to believe that others know best – first our parents, then our teachers, then our bosses, etc. We continue to accumulate personal knowledge and wisdom as we grow but it never occurs to us to shift our perspective to listening to ourselves - to believing that we might have the right answer.
• In most cases you know a lot more than you give yourself credit for.
• Much of the information that is out there is not actually “new”; in fact, a good portion is previously discovered wisdom that has simply been “rediscovered” or re-purposed to apply in a different domain than the one it was originally intended for.

If you don’t value what you know it will be difficult to take action – and if you aren’t willing to take action you might as well give up, because taking action is the second critical factor.