A belief pattern many of us juggle with involves creating a smaller, alternative version of self to accommodate others.

We can create a box for ourselves, consciously and/or subconsciously, through multiple self-deprecating actions.

By encouraging our self to think others are more worthy, more deserving or more important than us, we place them above our self thus enabling self-seeding cycle of low self-worth and low self-esteem.

It isn’t only humans we utilise to concrete these belief patterns either.

Any opportunity to discover ‘perfection’ in another, immediately and effectively limits and ‘boxes’ our own expanse of existence.

We subconsciously or consciously create ‘faults’ with our own self and can try to ‘shrink’ ourselves in an attempt to constrict or limit the effect of our perceived faults on others.

When we do this, we hand over our self’s power. We allow our self to be led by others. Not guided, but unquestioningly led. We limit, or even totally release, any self-belief in our own abilities and strengths to become reliable upon another we see as more worthy, more knowledgeable or more important. We contain ourselves within known comfort zones, effectively releasing and handing over responsibility and control of our own lives.

By placing anyone else on a pedestal, whether sky-high or just 5mm up, we diminish and belittle ourselves.

The first, baby step to change is awareness. Become aware of ‘shrinking’ or adapting your self to accommodate others. Realise your worth, your abilities and affect your world accordingly.

Begin, today, to reprogram your belief patterns and stand alongside others.

This message, received during a recent forest stroll, resonated strongly with this awareness and is one I felt to share to enable understanding for others.

“There is no hierarchy in life.
It’s a simple sentence but so profound when we actually contemplate its true depth.
There’s no hierarchy within species, between species, between food groups; the food pyramids.
There’s no food that is top of the pyramid. It’s what each individual is needing at that time.

Within species, no one being in a species is more important or better than the other. 
It’s the same between species. No species is better or more important than another.

We each have our purpose, we each have our role, our job; our own responsibly to be here and work together. 
Maybe the work you do is perceived in society as more important but it’s not. Without it, society may struggle but that is the same for every role, every purpose within humanity.

Consider the ants, the bees; so, so important. Very different roles to us. They each have their own roles but without them this world would not function.
Ecosystems would break down.

We are all even, all as important, all as functional, all in that ‘hierarchy’ on an even keel.
It’s just belief systems and society’s belief systems that create the self-importance and allow us to put others on pedestals so that we can make ourselves feel less worthy, putting us into our own comfort zones.

When we realise we are just as vital, just as important as all those roles society and ourselves see as as ‘most important,’ we realise we are critical, we realise our self-worth.

We can get the jelly legs to put ourselves up there but, hey, jelly sets hard.
Come on guys, let’s find ourselves.

It’s time to step up.
Step outside that ‘safe’ place, that self-created little box of security. A false security designed by the mind, only providing a stop-gap of stagnancy and slow/no-growth.

Declare your presence. Claim you, your space. Create your world, your reality.
You’re here.”