Children’s Rights Initiative for Sharing Parents Equally

“Self-esteem - an estimation of who I am apart from what I do.” - Nathaniel Brandon

Self-esteem - What is it?   Webster’s defines self-esteem as: belief in oneself; self-respect. This meaning can be expanded to include terms like self-confidence and pride. Self-esteem is the combination of self-confidence and self-respect - the conviction that you are competent to cope with life’s challenges and are worthy of happiness. Self-esteem is the way you talk to yourself about yourself. Self-esteem has two interrelated aspects; it entails a sense of personal efficacy and a sense of personal worth. It is the integrated sum of self-confidence and self-respect. It is the conviction that one is competent to live and worthy of living. Our self-esteem and self-image are developed by how we talk to ourselves. All of us have conscious and unconscious memories of all the times we felt bad or wrong - they are part of the unavoidable scars of childhood. This is where the critical voice gets started. Everyone has a critical inner voice. People with low self-esteem simply have a more vicious and demeaning inner voice. (name calls and degrades) People with high self-esteem: Have confidence in themselves. Have ability to solve problems rather than just worry about them. Have the ability to confront or eliminate the things that frighten them. Have the ability to take reasonable risks and take those risks. Nurture themselves. Psychologist say that almost every aspect of our lives — our personal happiness, success, relationships with others, achievement, creativity, dependencies, even our sex lives — are dependent on our level of self-esteem. The more we have, the better we deal with things. Positive self-esteem is important because when people experience it, they feel good and look good, they are effective and productive, and they respond to other people and themselves in healthy, positive, growing ways. People who have positive self-esteem know that they are lovable and capable, and they care about themselves and other people. They do not have to build themselves up by tearing other people down or by patronizing less competent people. Our background largely determines what we will become in personality and more importantly in self-esteem. Where do feelings of worthlessness come from? Many come from our families, since more than 80% of our waking hours up to the age of eighteen are spent under their direct influence. We are who we are because of where we’ve been. We build our own brands of self-esteem from four ingredients: fate, the positive things life offers, the negative things life offers and our own decisions about how to respond to fate, the positives and the negatives. Neither fate nor decisions can be determined by other people in our own life. No one can change fate. We can control our thinking and therefore our decisions in life. Positive self-esteem is not to be confused with self-centeredness, machismo, being a braggart, or acting superior, all of which are attempts to hide negative feelings of self. “You are important as long a you act tough, accomplished, or smart” is a negative, unhealthy central message around which to organize one’s life. “You are a worthwhile person” is a positive, healthy message. We are all capable of increasing our self-esteem, no matter how high or low we may feel on any given day. The good feelings we can generate about ourselves are limitless. Most important, these feeling are within our control, independent of how the rest of the world view us. The first step in building self-esteem is to accept yourself now as is before you attempt to improve. Self acceptance and self knowledge is the key to creating positive self-esteem. When you know and accept yourself you feel better. When you feel better, you do more. When you do more, you accomplish more. When you accomplish more, your self-confidence zooms. As your self-confidence increases, so does your self-respect. With more self-respect, your overall level of pride increases. And when you have more pride, self-respect, and self-confidence, you can confidently say that you have more self-esteem. You feel more comfortable with yourself. You can’t like others if you first don’t like yourself, and other can’t like you, either. Self-esteem informs every relationship you have. It’s not only the “real” you who lives in your relationships - it’s also the self-esteem within you. A good, strong self-esteem shows off the best of you; a low self-esteem underscores the worst. Nurturing your relationship with yourself is the first essential step in nurturing your relations with others. Even if you were lucky enough to have grown up in a family that make you feel worth, many of you still emerge into adulthood with self-doubts — about how pretty, smart or capable you are. This is when the choice factor comes in: You can either let those self-doubts tell you who you are, or you can work through them, by improving the things you can change and accepting those you can’t. You can choose good beauty and health habits. You can change a negative attitude to positive. And you can begin liking, loving, supporting and having fun with the person you’re becoming and working on the most important relationship you’ll ever have: your relationship with yourself. Inner strength is like any other kind of “muscle” and has to be exercised in the same way. If you like yourself, it shows. You contribute to your work, social engagements, friends and family in a strong and healthy way. You don’t depend on others, but learn to depend on yourself. At the same time, you encourage others to be independent as well, and not to depend on you. You can say yes. You can say no. You live up to your own demands, not the demands of others. You’re in control. Choose joy, choose curiosity, enhance your life with new interests and experiences and new relationships will follow. It’s your life, and no one can fill it but you. There’s plenty of self-help information available for building self-esteem, and professional help if you feel you need it. Make the choice to do good things for yourself. Make the choice to push self-doubts aside and walk into a room looking your absolute best and confident about who you are. Deserve good relationships; expect good relationships. Become a person you can believe in, and then believe in yourself.

Make this a Positive Day…unless you’ve made other plans! Dr. Jim Wendling The Wendling Group

Posted on August 8th, 2008 by Semper Fi
Filed under: Misc., Family Court, Parental Alienation | 1 Comment »

 Message from Lary Holland: 

Don’t forget the http://dcfestival2008.com  This August 15th and 16th!

prediction for 2008? I definitely need your help.
Posted by: “Lary Holland” laryholland@sbcglobal.net   

Here is something to consider: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I have been trying to help all invent a future where we have equal access to our children and help as many as possible individually as possible. I don’t really talk about my case, my children, or much of anything other than focusing on the public policy issues and legal issues surrounding cases.

For the attention deficit folks… There is a short PSA that is included near the bottom of this message in PURPLE. So many of you think you have no control over what is happening to you. It is all about a personal case here or a personal case there, everyone’s personal case is going to solve the problems by “winning.” Hell many of you can’t even make it up to this sentence before you stop reading because is not about your personal case. I have a prediction if you continue down the path of one, you will end up as one.

My daughter’s birthday is Friday, August 1, 2008 (Esilanna) and she won’t be with me. I already missed my son’s birthday on May 20, 2008 (Lary Jr.) because of this system and my unwillingness to accept being just a visitor a couple of times a month. Her room was pink and his room was orange, we spent all weekend painting their rooms those bright colors one weekend. They are going to ask me later… Dad, why couldn’t you win, why couldn’t we be with you, why couldn’t you change the laws? My answer… I honestly don’t know at this point my friends. All I know is that we are losing by default of inaction and allowing special interests to be much louder than us.

A lot of detail and confidence has been put into this movement to allow for a DC event to move forward. What is your prediction since YOU are in control of the future. A friend of mine, philosophy PhD used to tell me:

Conceptualize, Visualize, Materialize

What is your prediction? Well, you might say… “I am not going or I am not getting involved” because I don’t think it will have a huge turnout. Do you see the irony in such a silly statement? Many of you have not even posted in a local forum, a local newspaper, or engaged in any public debate outside of the typical yahoo groups that are not made of general public but people flocking together for helping themselves. Who is contributing work product and who is just benefiting from such hard work?

How many of you have spread information to other sites about the national dc event? Post it back to the group so that people know OUTSIDE action is taking place. Provide links, provide information of OUTSIDE activities, show people that you are thinking outside the my case my case my case box.

I was just contacted that someone was going to run this ad on our behalf on a Michigan Radio station that covers a huge imprint. A slight variation of what we are going to be running around Washington DC when each state meets their meek minimums at this link. Maybe you think the ad below sucks, but what is your contribution and what are your suggestions? What public announcements, press releases, and outside interaction are you doing while hiding in your room confined by psychological barriers that don’t really exist?

“Nothing is more rewarding than spending
time with our children, however millions of children are prevented from
equal access with their own parents. As a result of divorce, legal separation, or false allegationschildren are caught in the cross-fire. Help remind our government that parental rightsare to be respected
and protected by all. In observance of the
importance parents play to society, a family
preservation festival at Upper Senate Park in Washington DC is to honor and provide free help to parents in need. Contact 800-883-9619or visit dcfestival2008.org to get involved.”

Fixing the issues begins with raising the awareness level, professionally, and persistently. Griping about something you don’t like is rarely as effective than promoting the importance of something. Are you going to help predict that this is going to be successful? Or are you part of the problem with why things are not getting fixed? You decide. It doesn’t always take money, it takes action. Please tell us what actions you are taking and how you want to get involved. So many things to do, so little time… my children are growing up fast and so are yours.

Lary
“It is infinitely more valuable to fight for the rights of others than to fight for your own.” I’m mad as hell and I truly won’t and can’t take it anymore.
DCFESTIVAL2008

Posted on August 3rd, 2008 by Semper Fi
Filed under: Legislation, CRISPE Trips, Misc., Family Court, Military, Parental Alienation | 1 Comment »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkQGo7fTceM

Here is a great video made by Tawnya at Split-N-Two to remind you of the DC Festival 2008 coming to Washington DC this August 15th and 16th.

Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Semper Fi
Filed under: Legislation, Family Court, Parental Alienation, Elections | No Comments »

DC Rally is coming this August.  Don’t forget to make your plans a head of time!

Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Semper Fi
Filed under: Legislation, CRISPE Trips, Family Court, Military, Parental Alienation, Elections | No Comments »

Posted on June 18th, 2008 by Semper Fi
Filed under: Legislation, CRISPE Trips, Family Court, Parental Alienation | No Comments »