A Rather Longer Video on Self-Esteem

Well good morning everyone and welcome to Hawaii. It’s an absolutely beautiful morning here and what you can hear behind me is the sound of the ocean crushing into an amazing sea cave.

So I thought today, that I would talk about self-esteem. We’ve been doing some kind of market research to find out what it is, that the problems that people would like Huna to help them with. And one of the ones that has come up many, many times to many people, is self-esteem.

So I thought today, in this short talk, I’d talk a little bit about this and what, from a Huna perspective, you can do in terms of developing your self-esteem. Huna’s very clear, there are three things you need to know about yourself.

Where you came from, where you are now and where you’re going. So where you came from, where you’re born, your history, your family history, where you are now, where you are right now, and sometimes that’s literally where you are physically, like right now, I’m here in Hawaii, sitting on a sea cliff, and where you’re going, your vision for the future.

What’s your vision for the next five years, the next 10 years, and how do you wanna get there? Because self-esteem is very much about knowing who you are. And it’s difficult to know who you are if you don’t know where you’ve come from and you don’t know where you’re going.

The late, great John Ka’imikaua, who was one of our teachers, he used to talk about Pono. Pono is being about right with yourself, right with the universe, right with the planet and everything on it. And John used to say that to be truly centred, in flow Pono, you need to be Pono in all directions, and particularly Pono with yourself, Pono with who you are. Know who you are.

I think for many of us in the West, we lose the sense of knowing who we are. And some of that comes because we don’t have a clear sense of purpose, we don’t have a clear sense of direction. When I was doing my clinical depression stuff, one of the things that kept me trapped in clinical depression was I didn’t believe, I didn’t even understand, that all I needed to do was to change my thinking.

I was so fixed in my own stories, my stories of I was bullied, I was the poor girl in a rich girl’s school, all that stuff. I had a fiance who was a compulsive liar, all that stuff. I was so fixed in it that I let my past, I let who I used to be, trap me and hold me in that space so I couldn’t really step into who I am.

Once I let go of that stuff, to a large extent, by letting go, by changing my thinking, and by doing some release work on beliefs and emotions that I had been holding onto, once I did that work, then it became to possible to step into me as I really am. Me, this is who I am.

What you see is what you get. If you don’t like it, , please forgive me, but this is who I am. And when you’re in that space, self-esteem, sure, we have doubts, I have doubts. There are times when I’m thinking, oh my god, you know, why did I do that? I still do, sometimes do, am I good enough? But it’s not like it used to be, because I’ve learned to resolve the emotions, resolve the baggage, change the thinking.

That’s been absolutely critical, change the thinking. You can have as much self-esteem as you want if you’re willing to change your thinking. It’s that simple. Okay, sometimes you have to change some of the people that you hang out, because they can keep you down, that’s true. But it’s that simple. So that’s my video today, that’s my talk for today.

I hope you enjoy the sound of Hawaii and I look forward to talking to you very soon, again.