First Aid for your Self Esteem

It's easy to spot a woman with high self esteem. She projects a calm, positive inner confidence.  She is assertive about her needs, opinions, and feelings without being pushy. She is comfortable forming relationships and looks after her health and well being. Self aware, she is open to receiving feedback from others and actively looks for ways to learn and improve her behaviour and performance.  

Wa..Hey ! - wouldn't it be great if we could all be like that - all the time?

The reality is that in our high pressured world it's all too easy for our self-esteem to take a serious battering. I, like many other women, often feel pulled in so many different directions its very difficult at times to remember who I AM. Daily I juggle the roles of wage earner, business woman,  partner, mother, daughter, financial manager, carer, cook, cleaner, best friend, gardener, decorator, DIY specialist, personal shopper, hostess.... and many more.  

Even the strongest and most capable of women can be knocked back. We can be down so low that the journey back to strong self-esteem and belief in our abilities doesn't seem worth the effort. It can seem so out of reach it's easier to give up and console ourselves with self pity. However, if we do nothing about it, it may be a very long time before we accept that by not attending to our own self-esteem we sabotaged our own potential.  Ouch :-(

So how does it happen? Well, very, very easily actually. It may well be a single major factor which does the damage. The death or loss of a loved one, a serious personal injury or illness, redundancy or the failure of a business. All of these can tear down our belief in ourselves and our own value at a single stroke. 

Often, it's the cumulative effect of lots of minor setbacks - each one manageable on its own - that does more harm. And the worst thing is that we don't realise its happening until it's too late. We are so conditioned to leap from one hurdle to another sorting, mending and tackling as we go, we fail to appreciate how much of a battering our self esteem is taking until we are brought up short. Then we realise it's lying down badly injured and gasping for attention.

Rapid First Aid is called for!  Our internal self esteem needs to be nursed back to health and treated in future as the valuable inner resource it is.   

Your First Aid Programme
So whether your self esteem is chronically low, or you are just going through a dip you NEED to take action. For your own sake.  Alternatively, if you see a girl friend in trouble, please administer First Aid fast. She may not know how poorly she is.

Step 1
Check out my Tips to Tackle the Wobbles on this Blog

Step 2
Join our Go Wild for a Change residential break and meet like minded women giving their self esteem batteries a powerful boost. Follow the link to my website.

Step 3
Read and comment on my Blog to keep your self-esteem batteries fully charged in future

Step 4
Browse my Favourite Reading List and select a book or resource to keep you on track.

I hope you find building your own self-esteem as empowering and rewarding as I do. I'd love to hear how you are doing.

Good Luck

Mighty Mouse and the Windmills

Last weekend Mighty Mouse came to stay.

She arrived in a tiny powder blue Micra which rattled cheerfully over the cattle grid then bounced up the track to the duck pond. Curious lambs stood spellbound before skittering off in all directions. A solitary Welsh Black cow raised her head at the commotion. “Wow, Wow and Wow again”, said Mighty Mouse – pausing to take in the breathtaking 360 degree view. “Hey Hey - you can see the whole of the world from up here.” Her grin stretched from ear to ear. Then her little car negotiated the gate by the cow barn, puttered down the drive past the pine woods and finally rolled to a stop outside Magpie Hill – at Wild Women HQ and a rural escape with a difference.

Lest you think Mighty Mouse is a cartoon character – think again. Mind you - in full flow she is hugely hilarious. She is one of the original wild women; a feisty, fifty plusser who has bounced back from more life setbacks than you or I care to imagine with good humour and an infectious zest for life. She came to Magpie Hill for a breath of fresh air, for a respite from some of her own personal challenges and to lend us her support. Her story is the inspiration for our new Go Wild for a Change residential programme.

Mighty Mouse has been wrestling with cancer in one form or another for over 10 years. Each time she thought she’d sent it packing – it snuck back again. – trying ever more devious ways to sabotage her life and sap her spirit. Has it won? – has it heck! This diminutive woman has dealt with divorce, separation from her children, invasive surgery, chemotherapy and losing her chance to work – all without giving up or giving in. Why? Because she refuses to give the little ‘blighters’ - those corrosive cancer cells - the satisfaction of winning. Blessed with formidable sense of self and a spirit that refuses to stay down we are all the richer for having her in our lives.

Living with inoperable cancer is tough; coming to terms with its constant presence takes some doing. However, once you get your head around it, you gain a new perspective. What’s important in life becomes crystal clear. Self esteem and joy come from the simplest of pleasures; the company of loving friends, sexy red shoes, riding pillion on a Harley Davison, having a great haircut, wearing your favourite Issy Miyake perfume just for the hell of it and of course hugging a windmill.

Yes, you did read that correctly – hugging a windmill!

Now where we live in Powys it’s not called-Paradise of Wales for nothing. Wind turbines and wind farms are currently very dirty words. Those of us who live here do not want our serene and peaceful countryside stalked by invading armies of wind turbines and pylons. However, Mighty Mouse had never been up close and personal with a wind turbine and it appears that hugging a windmill was on her Bucket List. Say no more – we were off to the Top of the World!

OK, OK – so it’s not the Himalayas. Grant me a little artistic licence… plu-eeease. Nonetheless, it is but a short and bouncy 4 x 4 ride from Magpie Hill to Bwlch–y-Frridd and a stunning walk along wonderfully accessible bridle paths across the Top of the World. With the wind ruffling your hair you can gaze across to majestic Cader Idris silhouetted against the sky, spot fluffy bog cotton blowing in the breeze and watch buzzards lazily circling on the thermals way above your head. Then again, if you have a mind to, you can choose to hug a wind turbine as there are 17 of them up here. All stood to attention and waited patiently for Mighty Mouse to make her choice.

In fairness she didn’t actually hug one. By the time we’d picked our way through the boggy bits, hopped from one tuft of elephant grass to another and been diverted by a botanical discussion on the medicinal properties of whortle berries (bilberries to you) we were quite relieved to find our way barred by a fence.

Discretion proved to be the better part of valour. So we stood and stared in awe as the wings of these leviathan towers whoomphed, whoomphed and whoomphed - pulsing steadily above our heads. Just to prove she did it we took photographic evidence.

Mighty Mouse was so elated that anything else we did was bound to be a bit of a come down – wasn’t it. Hey hey. I had a cunning plan up my sleeve. What if we could knock another one off the bucket list? I handed the keys of the 4 x 4 to Mighty Mouse. How about you take us off roading?

“I can’t…….. ! “Pardon - run that one by me again!” Wild women don’t do “I can’t”. They do “I CAN, I AM and I WILL.” So she jolly well did!

Grinning like a jack in the box as the bobbled about on the front seat half hidden by the steering wheel, Mighty Mouse took us off across country, over stony fields, down tracks which the rain had washed away, past a flock of sheep who rushed at us thinking we were the farmer come to feed them and finally splashed through a ford with a great squeal of delight. “You must get more women doing this - it’s fantastic!”

It was - and I will !

We celebrated that night with a glass of champagne.

Mighty Mouse has returned home and back to hospital for yet more topless photographs. She is such a poser girls. However, she will be back and joining us on our next Go Wild for a Change programme on June 11th – 12th sharing her personal tips for bouncing back from life’s setbacks and making you hoot with laughter as she does it.

If you’d like to join us or if know a female friend or colleague who could benefit from our residential programme – please visit our website www.womengowildoutdoors.com or contact Lesley by phone or email 0845 094 8486. lesley@womengowildoutdoors.com