Guest Post: ' 3 Quick Tips to Go From Crumbs to the Full Meal' by Raquel Whiting Gilmer
3 Quick Tips to Go
from Crumbs to the Full Meal – Improving Your Self-Esteem to Improve Your
Dating Experience
Since I released my novel, Crumbs Aren’t Enough, I’ve been asked by a number of women, “How did
you go from accepting crumbs to demanding the full meal?” My answer is always the same and it’s pretty
simple. I had to first feel better about
myself. And once I improved my self-esteem, I could seek out what’s best for me
in a relationship and demand it.
So how did I improve my self-esteem? Well, I first had to understand where my
self-esteem went off the rails. See I
don’t think any of us starts off with low self-esteem, this is a condition that
we develop and a lot of it comes from outside forces.
When I look at pictures of myself as a young child, I see a
little girl who was fearless and felt great about herself. She thought she was awesome and she was. But, then she heard “you’re fat,” “you need
to lose weight,” “you’re ugly.” These
put downs slowly but surely chipped away at my self-esteem and that little girl
no longer thought she was awesome.
Like Charlie, the main character in Crumbs Aren’t Enough, I felt like I wasn’t good enough and I didn’t
deserve the best from the men I dated. Through
therapy, I re-learned that I am awesome and learned strategies to help me see
myself in a positive light so I could seek out the best for myself.
What types of strategies?
Well, there are probably too many to share in this brief post but here
are three which I think were critical.
1. Say Nice Things About Yourself
I had to combat those negative voices with positive talk
from myself – basically, I had to learn to say nice things about myself to
myself. I don’t know about you, but I am
my toughest critic. I had to learn to
give myself a break and stop saying negative things about me to me. I had to learn to say kind and positive
things to myself. I realized that even
though there were areas in which I could improve, that didn’t make me a bad
person. I was a great person and I had
to tell myself that every day. For
example, the biggest challenge area that affected my self-esteem was definitely
body image. So instead of speaking negatively about my body, I forced myself to
say five nice things about my body. This
was really hard at first. But, by
forcing myself to do it daily, I started to see myself in a more positive
light. I continue this practice today.
2. Write Down Your Strengths
I bet if I asked you to tell me five of your weaknesses, you
would rattle them off to me with no problem, but if I asked for five of your
strengths you would probably have to think about them. It is absolutely crucial to know your
strengths and write them down. I know
when I first heard this I felt like writing my strengths would make me seem
arrogant, but it doesn’t. If you can’t
articulate your strengths, how will anyone else see them?
3. Set Achievable Goals
If you are anything like me, your goals are always
grandiose. I never wanted to lose five
pounds in a month, I always wanted to
lose 20 pounds or so a month, which was unrealistic. Then I would fail and feel
bad about myself, which impacted my self-esteem. Through
therapy, I learned to set more modest goals that were achievable, and learned
to establish realistic time frames. When
I hit these modest goals, I celebrated each success and gained confidence and
trust in myself. This process can work
for you too.
After you start to work on these strategies, you have to
practice, practice, practice. Like Jamie
explained to Charlie in Crumbs Aren’t
Enough, practice makes perfect. When
you first learn a new song on the piano, you have to practice before you are
any good. When you learn a new dance
routine, you have to practice it before you have confidence that you will do it
well. It’s the same notion when you are
rebuilding your self-esteem. It’s not
going to happen overnight because – guess what – it didn’t break down
overnight. So you have to force yourself
to implement these strategies daily.
Once my self-esteem improved, I started to question whether
I was getting the best out of my relationships.
I didn’t just accept what was given to me. Slowly but surely, by building up my
self-esteem, the light bulb went on and I realized I was much happier
unattached and on my own instead of settling for another bad relationship. My
dating experiences improved as my self-esteem improved, too.
More on that later . . .
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Hi, my name is Raquel Whiting Gilmer and I am a wife, daughter, aspiring mother (I don’t have any kids yet but I want them.), sister, friend, small group leader, lawyer, entrepreneur, confidant, advisor, blogger, twitter attempter, soon to be published author, and accepter of crumbs. Well, a recovering crumbs accepter. What’s a crumb accepter? Is it as bad as it sounds? It’s bad, but it’s preventable and curable.
Freedictionary.com defines a crumb as a small fragment, scrap, or portion. And it defines accepter as one who accepts. So a crumbs accepter is one who accepts small scraps. No bueno, right? How did I get like this? Well, I think my low self-esteem was the root cause of it. And I’ve learned that when your self-esteem is bad then you will accept anything including crumbs in all areas of your life. BTW, my biggest crumbs area was definitely my relationships with men.
Things are different now and I have committed myself to Live Crumbs Free. Live crumbs free? Yes, I am committed to not accepting crumbs in any area of my life. But to get to this point, I had to do some work. I first had to work on my self-esteem. And after lots of therapy I got to a place where not only did I have high self-esteem but I started a website, www.perfectlyme.com, and a girls’ program, Perfectly Me Girls to encourage other women and girls to embrace and love who they are and not judge themselves by the world’s standards. Our motto is I’m not perfect, I’m just Perfectly Me.
Once my self-esteem was on the rise, I could start to look at the crumbs in my life. And I knew I had to deal with my personal crumbs and I’m happy to report that after many failed relationships and mounds of crumbs, I met the love of my life and married him. Yay!!! I have the full meal and then some now and it has changed my life. I want everyone to have that full meal and I know how bad the crumbs are so I’ve written my first novel about a woman struggling with relationships who finally figures out that Crumbs Aren’t Enough. I hope you will read my blog at www.raquelwhiting.com, check out my novel, and follow me on twitter, @perfectlyraquel, as I dole out advice and wisdom (my limited wisdom) on keeping your self-esteem high and getting rid of the crumbs.
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