1. Skills that Build, Enhance or Maintain Self-Respect Part 2 Week Eight

2. Topics Forgiveness Assertion Skills Affirmations Branden’s Pillars that Support Self-Respect

3. Forgiveness The downside of withholding forgiveness –Perpetuates the illusion of power over vulnerability –Has a punitive or wounding intent –Can become blaming or shaming

4. What Forgiveness is Not Forgiveness is not condoning unkindness. Forgiveness is not forgetting that something painful happened. Forgiveness is not excusing poor behavior. Forgiveness does not have to be an otherworldly or religious experience. Forgiveness is not denying or minimizing your hurt. Forgiveness does not mean reconciling with the offender. Forgiveness does not mean you give up having feelings. Forgiveness does not exclude or preclude justice. From Dr. Fred Luskin's Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness

5. What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is the peace you learn to feel when you let go of unresolved grievances. Forgiveness is for you and not the offender. Forgiveness is taking back your power. Forgiveness is taking responsibility for how you feel. Forgiveness is about your healing and not about the people who hurt you. Forgiveness is a trainable skill just like learning to throw a baseball. Forgiveness helps you get control over your feelings. Forgiveness can improve your mental and physical health. Forgiveness is becoming a hero instead of a victim. Forgiveness is a choice. Everyone can learn to forgive.

6. The Stanford Forgiveness Project Nine Methods for Practicing Forgiveness 1.Know exactly how you feel about what happened and be able to articulate what about the situation is not OK. Then, tell a trusted couple of people about your experience. 2.Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else. 3.Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation with the person that hurt you, or condoning of their action. What you seek is finding peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the "peace and understanding that come from blaming that which has hurt you less, taking the life experience less personally, and changing your grievance story." 4.Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes—or ten years—ago. Forgiveness helps to heal those hurt feelings.

7. The Stanford Forgiveness Project Nine Methods for Practicing Forgiveness 5.At the moment you feel upset, practice a simple stress management technique to soothe your body's flight or fight response. 6.Give up expecting things from other people, or your life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the "unenforceable rules" you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, peace and prosperity and work hard to get them. 7.Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt, seek out new ways to get what you want. 8.Remember that “a life well-lived” is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who caused you pain power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty and kindness around you. Forgiveness is about personal power. 9.Amend your grievance story to remind you of the heroic choice to forgive. Frederic Luskin, Ph.D.; http://www.learningtoforgive.com/steps.htm

8. Bill of Assertive Rights You have the right to… … judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for the initiation and consequences upon yourself. … offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior. … judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people's problems. … change your mind. … make mistakes-and be responsible for them. … say, “I don't know.” … be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them. … be illogical in making decisions. … say, “I don't Understand.” … say, “I don't care.” YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY NO, WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY Taken from: When I Say No, I Feel Guilty, by Manuel Smith

9. Assertion Skills 4 skills for positive assertion –Broken Record –Workable Compromise –Free Information –Self-Disclosure 3 skills for asserting for your self-respect –Fogging –Negative Inquiry –Negative Assertion From “When I Say ‘No’, I Feel Guilty” by Manuel Smith

10. Assertiveness Exercise The dreaded door-to-door salesperson… –Passive dialogue –Assertive dialogue

11. Affirmations All humans make meaning of their interactions with the conscious world through an internal dialogue Part of that process involves adding meaning to neutral events, in the form of “attributions” Applying attributions accurately requires two elements –Realistic self-evaluation –A rich vocabulary for describing emotions and subjective appraisals Most “training” in attributions, self-evaluation and emotional vocabulary are provided through our family; as such, the skills and vocabulary may be inadequate or dysfunctional Affirmations provide an alternative or expanded vocabulary for self-description

12. Branden Chapter 3: The Face of Self-Esteem Rationality –Working with concrete facts –Non-contradiction Realism –What “is”, is; and what “is not”, is not –Those low in self-esteem tend to underestimate or overestimate their abilities Intuitiveness –complex, super-rapid integrations that occur beneath conscious awareness –scanning data for supporting or conflicting evidence –a mind that has learned to trust itself (efficacy) is more likely to rely on this process

13. Branden Chapter 3: The Face of Self-Esteem Independence –taking full responsibility for one’s own existence Willingness to admit (and correct) mistakes –correcting an error is esteemed above pretending not to have made one –those with low self-esteem experience a simple admission of error as humiliation and even self- damnation Benevolence and cooperativeness –If I am secure in my right to exist, confident that I belong to myself, unthreatened by certainty and self-confidence in others, then cooperation with them to achieve shared goals tends to develop spontaneously –my relationship to others tends to mirror and reflect my relationship to myself.

14. Branden Chapter 5: The Focus on Action What must an individual do to generate and sustain self-esteem? Families in which reality is often denied and consciousness often punished place devastating obstacles to self- esteem Every value pertaining to life requires action to be achieved, sustained or enjoyed The six pillars of self-esteem are all operations of consciousness

15. Branden Chapter 5: The Focus on Action Practice – implies a discipline of acting in a certain way over and over again, consistently Self esteem is a consequence, a product of internally generated practices