Optimist Club Creed

I found this among my notes. I do not remember where I got it from, but I want to share it with you.



Optimist Club Creed


To be strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something of value in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only the best, to work for only the best (when you get older), and to expect the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget about the past mistakes and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every creature you meet a smile.

To give so much time to the improvement of myself that I have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, to noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit presence of trouble.

Healthy Self-Esteem

Having a healthy self-esteem is very important for all areas of your life. The sooner you work on your self-esteem the better things will be for you not just now, but when you get older. The following are just a few areas in which a healthy self-esteem will determine good outcomes and a low-self-esteem can be bring unecessary pain, heart break, sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.


Your Appearance:

Healthy Self-Esteem:You look your best and you treat your body with love- that means exercising it and feeding it healthy foods.

Low Self-Esteem: Too chunky, dumpy, frumpy, and lumpy, is one way an author described the appearance of people who have low-self esteem. Unless you have some kind of medical condition and you have problem with weight, it could be your self-esteem. People who have low self-esteem tend not to have such a good relationship with food. Either they are very controlling so that they do not gain any weight or they use food as comfort and are chunky.

Dumpy is this look of deep sadness people with low-esteem carry with them always. Shoulders are hunched over, no eye contact, and they do not say much.

Frumpy/Lumpy- How do you dress your body? This one could be hard when you can not buy your own clothes. I completely understand, when I was a teen we were poor so I had to wear hand me downs and whatever my parents could afford to get me. Which was sometimes frumpy/lumpy embarrassing clothes so I had to get creative. Especially when I noticed that my best friend always looked sharp even though her family was in the same economic level my family was. I do not mean buy name brand or expensive clothes to look better than anyone else. What I mean is dress your best (does not have to be expensive) so that you feel good about yourself.


Your relationships:

Healthy Self-Esteem: You tend to attract people who are a positive influence in your life and have an upbeat, optimistic, attitude. You also have healthy boundaries. You do not allow people to use nor abuse you. You stand up for yourself if the need arises using peaceful communication.

Low Self-Esteem: You attract lower energy people. This means the angry, sad, anxious, selfish, negative, mean people. Possibly even a bully. People take advantage of you or mistreat you because they know they can.


School:

Healthy Self-Esteem: You recognize that while you may have trouble in some subjects it does not mean you are stupid or not capable of getting better. You do not beat yourself up for setbacks in school because you know it only means that on the subjects that do not come easily to you, you need to put an extra effort.

Low Self Esteem: You believe that any setback in school is proof that you are not good enough or your are stupid. Sometimes it may not even have anything to do with you, it could be the teacher or school administration. Yet you assume that the problem is you. I say this because of my own experience and also when I tutored in high school there was a girl who kept saying she was stupid because she did not get the math problems. Well, when I went to her class to tutor her I noticed that her teacher had some serious issues. She was especially mean to the girl I was tutoring. The girl was not stupid either. I tutored her and within a short time she mastered what she had so much difficulty with. She even said, "This is so easy, why did the witch make it look so complicated?"


Life Challenges:

Healthy Self-Esteem: People with a healthy self-esteem know that life challenges are normal as long as we are living. There is a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I never read it myself, but the point is that bad things happen to everyone. People with a healthy self-esteem know this and do not perceive themselves as bad when unwanted things happen. Instead they find a way to rise above the challenge.

Low Self-Esteem: Every challenge or setback is taken personally by people with low-self esteem. They feel there is something wrong with them and they must be bad to be attracting bad things or causing mistreatment from others.They do not recognize that bad things happen to everyone.


As I mentioned in the beginning I was just going to list a few areas in life in which self-esteem is important. A couple more areas are (which will come later in life, but you should still keep in mind): You need a healthy self-esteem to get a good job and to attract a healthy, loving, fulfilling. romantic relationship. If you do not work on your self-esteem you will get what is left at the bottom of the barrel.

Neglected Love

According to Dr. Doreen Virtue, author of Losing Your Pounds of Pain, the most common form of abuse is neglect. Doreen says that whether the intentions are good or bad it is still considered abuse. Neglect is very hard to detect because it is so subtle and usually parents are not even aware they are neglecting their child. In fact, the reason for the neglect is usually because the parent is doing things that they believe is for the good of the children.

Here is story from Dr. Virtue's book of a woman who experienced such neglect in her childhood:


- When Melanie recalls her childhood, she has an image of her mother vacuuming and cleaning-constantly. "Every minute, she was cleaning the house," remembers Melanie. "She was always in a rush and in a bad mood because she was cleaning after my brothers and me. I remember feeling guilty when she'd wash the dishes right after we ate."


Dr. Doreen Virtue adds:

"Melanie's mother exhibited perfectionistic and compulsive tendencies toward housework.. The woman rationalized that she was being "a good mother and wife" by keeping the house spotless. That was a strong cultural notion then, one that continues today. But there is a difference between maintaning a neat, sanitary home and spending every moment scrubbing and polishing. In the latter situation, the homemaker is usually attempting to keep busy to avoid human contact. Compulsive housekeeping, like workaholism and other addictions, is a way to avoid such intimacy.

Now, since children require emotional connectedness with their parents, those who are raised by 'super housewives' are often confused. They seem to have the perfect mother, one who makes great meals and irons their clothes. In the eyes of the world, it may seem that this type of mother is perfect because she keeps an immaculate home and cooks like a French chef. Yet children who grow up in these households are left with the emptiness triggered by the lack of emotional mothering (as opposed to physical mothering) they receive.

As these kids mature, they try to fill this void with things such as food, which temporarily makes them feel full and numb; and material goods, which are often purchased compulsively. Others may even use people to fill this vacuum, as is in the case when women 'collect' boyfriends instead of engaging in one monagamus, intimate relationship."

Like Dr. Doreen writes in her book, "..these definitions are not designed to point fingers at parents, or label someone a 'bad person'- that would serve no usefeul purpose.We are just trying to know ourselves...and know our histories."

Learning about my own self-esteem issues and how they began has helped me understand why my father had a alcohol addiction.

He grew up in a farm in Mexico with about eight or ten siblings (a few died). He was second to the last child born and at a very young age (I believe four years old) he was forced to work the farm. His mother was busy with household chores and died when my father was still young. His father was busy with the farm and if he had a moment to spare for my father it was used to beat him. He'd hang him from a tree and whip him. To make matters worse, one of his male siblings would beat him up too. Not only was he beaten at home, but at school the teachers would beat him for not having spotless hands (he'd wake up at dawn to do his farm chores before going to school and often he'd would not have time to clean out some of the dirt under his fingernails).

Knowing this about my father's childhood fills me with pain. I often wish I would have known this stuff before his death so that I would have showered him love every day and perhaps he would finally have experienced being loved unconditionally. Sometimes I am in awe that my dad was still able to be a good father when he was sober. Unfortunately being a product of "neglected love" and corporal punishment kept him addicted to alcohol until the end of his life.

This is why I focus so much on sharing with others the importance of self-esteem. Children who are neglected (even if it's not intentional), struggle with many issues throughtout their adult life that stems from having low self esteem.

Several psychologists and *authors have written that Adolf Hitler became who he was because of neglected love and because of the corporal punishment he endured as a child. Which is not very different from what my father experienced in his own childhood. The difference is that instead of hurting others like Hitler did, my father hurt himself. Although my father also hurt others when he was drunk, if not physically for sure emotionally.

This is not to excuse adults who hurt others. Just want to illustrate the importance of ensuring that your children are raised in environments that are conductive to core self-esteem.

* Alice Miller in her book, For Your Own Good, writes about Hitler's childhood if you are interested in finding out more about how his experience as a child of neglect and abuse produced a monster.