Day Shift — Stopping Low Self Esteem

"Today, I’ll choose presence over self-judgment."

I recently talked here about surrender—about letting go of my ideas of my own limited nature, letting go of my ideas of my own lack of deserving, what some would call a lack of self-love or low self-esteem.

Self-esteem is a funny thing. When I really think about it, the only way I can have any kind of self-esteem, low or otherwise, is to not be who and what I am. In order for me to look at myself and see myself as coming up short, I have to be “out here” someplace. And if I’m “out here” someplace, I am immediately in speculation. I am saying, "If I were one of those people who has the capacity to judge, one of those people who’s better than me, one of those people who raised me, or who taught me in school, or who broke up with me—if I were someone else—how would I see myself?"

And then, what I’m looking at is the whole circus here: not just what I do, and how I do it, and how I am in the world, but also how it feels to be me and how it thinks to be me. Most of the thinking I have that I call low self-esteem is based on me taking these feelings, making sense of them in here, and then telling myself a story about why I have these feelings and why I’ll continue to have them.

Those stories are all something like this: a feeling arises, an "ugh" feeling, and I go into my thinking, or I’m just still in my thinking. I go, "Ah, that feels bad," and the thoughts go, "Yeah, it feels bad. Of course it feels bad—you are bad. Here’s how you’re bad." And it brings up this, and this, and this, and this—it might be that thing I said last night, or last month, or last year, or that thing I did when I was five years old. Bad, bad, bad, bad. And then I build a case against myself so that when I jump out here to speculate on what this thing is worthy of, it’s a foregone conclusion that it’s worthy of nothing. Worthy of nothing but punishment, despair, and hopelessness.

So why not have a cookie? Or another joint? Or a drink? Or, or, or—something, just to take the edge off, something just to allow a moment of grace, a moment of peace, a moment of comfort.

But we’re not meant to live like that. We’re meant to enjoy ourselves. We’re meant to know that we are worthy of love and worthy of life, and worthy of stepping forward into the unknown with the idea that there’s a reason for us to be here.

The whole idea of mindfulness is just to get out of here (the thinking mind) and come back to here (the present). Drop into the space within which all this happens, and then put our attention out into the world rather than into our thoughts about the world. Put our attention on each other, not to see how someone else is thinking about me, but to see how they’re doing. And if we’re having a moment of grace ourselves, to offer a sympathetic ear, to nod at the right time, and to say, “God, yeah, I know—I was there just yesterday or just an hour ago, and now I’m not.”

That means everything. That means the world.

So go out and offer someone today the idea that they belong here, and that their thoughts about themselves are made up from whole cloth.

It’s far more valuable to be here and to do one right thing than to write the book on why I don’t even have one right thing to do. I’ve read that book. It doesn’t end well.

Thanks so much for reading. Have a great day.

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Jeff Kober is an accomplished actor, photographer and vedic meditation teacher. He has had regular roles in notable series like The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, and NCIS: Los Angeles, and has appeared in numerous films including Sully and Beauty Mark. Kober is also a writer and artist, and has previously penned screenplays and co-authored the book Embracing Bliss.