Philosophical coaching to cope with undesirable repetitive thoughts concerning the sense of lack of self-worth

Philosophical and spiritual training could also help treat depression and anxiety

How to cope with undesirable repetitive thoughts concerning the sense of lack of self- worth?

Here is an example of implementation of philosophical coaching in order to cope with one of the most common emotional problems prevailing in the western world.

The thoughts crossing in the heads of people suffering from low esteem – are very persistent, arriving out of uncontrolled urge, and generate strong emotional pain – and seem to be impossible to get rid of.

It is almost totally impossible to stop these thoughts once they are already up in our heads – at which stage we can only lower somewhat their intensity.

The more effective and profound way to handle this problem, is by tackling it in an earlier stage, before the thoughts rise in our heads.

Here we can tap on insights of the Buddhism and other eastern wisdom traditions that presented to the world an important piece of truth:

Which is that the main source of the human suffering is ignorance, namely: mistakes, lack of knowledge, and inadequate and imbalanced view of life.

The most harmful and damaging type of mistaken and erroneous view of life, is created by perceiving ourselves as being Objects (bodies and persons) and not as consciousness or souls which are observing everything that happens in life, which are aware of everything: the faculty in us that is behind our cognition, perception of truth, love, and beauty.

Or in short: that in us which is behind all of our perceptions and our life experiences.

If we examine our life experiences, we will be able to notice that we can see in us – in every single one of us – 3 dimensions:

- The physical body

- The personality (thoughts and feelings and behavioral patterns)

- And the 3rd one: Consciousness: (the awareness, soul, creativity, and intuition, the inner voice, that in us that perceives everything in our life)

This third dimension is actually what we actually truly see as who we are when we stop to consider it! When we use the word "I" we don't really consider this "I" to be our face or our body or even our brain – but rather that in us that witnesses and perceives everything that we experience (consciousness).

This dimension in us is enabling the experiencing of truth, beauty, love, joy, and peace.

Our cultural conditioning made us identify ourselves with our personality, as if it is who we are in our essence, while it seems to be much more true to identify ourselves with our consciousness.

Our life would become much nicer and pleasant, if we started seeing ourselves as an awareness that has a body and mind, rather than a body that has a consciousness.

This consciousness – which is who we truly are – is the source of everything that is good in our life!

And then, if we are able to see it and know it: Why is it so important to have strong managerial capabilities? How good looking we are? What is our earning capacity?

After all what truly matters is only our capacity to experience beauty, love, joy and peace… and this capacity exists in our consciousness and not in our personality…

It is not argued here that there is no value and benefit to the qualities of our personality.

Our personality is an effective instrument for survival and material advancement in our life, but it can sometimes harm our emotions and the way we experience life, and cause us pain, if it generates thinking around self esteem.

The only way to uproot the source of our negative thoughts revolving around our low self-value, is through the elimination of our core belief that what we are in our essence, is our personality.

The best and most effective way to accomplish this is by starting to perceive ourselves as consciousness and not persons.

But, even if we can only see ourselves as an entity having these two dimensions, and not just as a person, this would still lower in us the importance in our eyes of how "great and special" are our bodies and personality traits, and then what happens around them will cause us less pain.

And for this to take place, there is a need for intensive coaching, because for the purpose of creating lasting changes in our perceptions and life experiences, it is not enough to just reach deep insights, because what is needed here is also to internalize these insights, and turn them into the way we experience life.

Because, this is about a change of a deeply seated mental habit, and whenever this is the case, the key to a successful change is long and repetitive practicing.

This is the objective and the nature of the philosophical coaching.

How to Stop Creating Suffering (Eckhart Tolle)