We've been searching for esteem and respect since humans became civilized creatures. We still search for them today. Why have they proven so elusive?
Respect and esteem are elusive for one reason - if we glean it from others we will always be wanting it. We cannot rely upon others to provide us the respect we seek and deserve so it must, therefore, stem from another source. And you have but one consistent, reliable source of respect and esteem - yourself.
Fortunately, you have a ready reservoir of self-esteem and self-respect - your sense of humor. And you are also fortunate to have a veritable medicine chest full of resources that turbo-charge your sense of humor. My Fun Commandments, the cornerstones of my unique Fun Factor Prescription, allow you to simply and easily maximize the amazingly powerful natural medicine of humor that you were born with and still carry inside you.
One of my Fun Commandments, for example, is to Allow Your Mistakes. Allowing your mistakes is not only a ready-made formula for adding abundant humor and joy to your life, it is also an insanely powerful method of creating and fostering self-esteem and self-respect. As my patients and clients continue to discover, you should be prepared to feel up to 60% better about the person who greets you in the mirror each morning once you begin allowing your mistakes on a daily basis.
First of all, if you allow your mistakes you will find that you're a very amusing person. You are a perfectly imperfect creation, a living breathing contradiction, full of frailties and foibles. You may soon enjoy your mistakes enough to make them on purpose - like the great Johnny Carson famously did on the Tonight Show to keep himself fresh and on his toes.
Secondly, if you allow your mistakes you will become what we psychiatrists call a self-actualized person. The self-acceptance and self-respect found through believing that your mistakes are okay delivers massive amounts of self-confidence; the self-assurance of knowing that you are just like you're supposed to be is finally here! Not only will you quit worrying and second-guessing yourself, but you must learn to temper yourself lest you create jealousy in others.
A great way to begin allowing your mistakes is to follow Johnny Carson's lead, make small ones on purpose. Press the wrong button on the elevator, wear mismatching socks, transpose the names of your pets - anything silly and harmless will do. You will immediately notice how naturally silly you are, how making mistakes causes no irreparable damage, and how ridiculous it was for you to expect perfection from yourself in the first place!
Actually, in the long run, you will discover that you are perfect - perfectly imperfect - and born to make mistakes. You'll finally unlearn the greatest lie that our seriousness ever told us - that mistakes are bad - because you'll realize that mistakes are our greatest teachers! You will set free the natural medicine of humor; you'll throw off the shackles of fear and seriousness that've help you back as you realize that a person who doesn't make mistakes isn't living!
In 1871, Walt Whitman said that in America, where our form of government promotes a uniformity among the citizens, one of our unique anxieties would be a constant struggle for "individual self-respect based upon social approval." Little did Whitman know how prophetic his words were. But you are a more fortunate soul; the more you understand that respect and esteem come from yourself, the sooner you stop denying yourself the natural medicine of humor as only my Fun Commandments can deliver it to you!
See you at my website, where you will learn about all my Fun Commandments - for free.
Cliff Kuhn, M.D.
The Laugh Doctor
The Natural Medicine of Humor
"Discover a unique, FREE, and incredibly powerful prescription created out of desperation by a (formerly) stressed-out Kentucky psychiatrist"
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