Low self esteem days busted by... guilt?

Sometimes, as everyone has, I have a low self esteem day. Usually they come about out of thoughts of inadequacy for some reason - my two most common are "not pretty enough" (fairly common I think) or "came from a boring culture" (this probably arises from having a very eclectic group of friends, all who have some kind of background they can share - I represent the just Canadian, whatever that means). One way I've discovered to bust out of these spiralling downward type of thoughts is to think of my parents and then feel guilty... motivating me to think positively and thus allowing me to forget my grievances and be thankful for what I have. To deny my own beauty is to say to my my mom "mom your genetics are ugly!" which is obviously not the case. I come from a long line of good looking! To think I am from a boring culture is to tell my dad I am ungrateful for everything he's taught me and the experiences my family has had together. My parents are definitely not ugly, so how could any combination of them come out that way? Everyone is unique and I am no exception. I represent a combination of two different people's DNA, a miracle that it could happen at all. I grew up and had my own experiences just as my friend's did. My parents and family taught me what they know and what they've learned through their lives as Canadians. In conclusion, when I notice myself falling into a low self esteem cycle I think of my family and how they would feel if they knew I had those thoughts. It's like a kick in the butt - or a voice telling me to stop being so ungrateful and think of how thankful I am for my parents and how much I love them.

This thought has further intrigued me to wonder what the results of a study on the differences in self esteem in individualistic cultures and collectivist cultures are... a small amount of research in this area revealed that it seems as though collectivist cultures are more likely to avoid "self - enhancement" behaviours while individualistic cultures score higher in this area... hmmm is this blog evidence I come from a individualistic culture? Here a link to a text regarding cultural effect on personality, etc. HERE

Meant to SEA

A book I was reading about becoming psychic (hey, who doesn't want psychic powers? come on people) told me that in order to improve my intuition I should record moments in life where a divine hand seemed to be at work. This is the story of how I came to have Great Big Sea tickets for this October.

It all started a few weeks ago when I heard the song "When I'm up" on the radio. I had forgotten about Great Big Sea, seeing as they haven't produced many hits since I was about thirteen, but none the less was happy to hear an old song. Being on a "positive thinking" kick for quite some time now combined with a yearning to re-visit the east coast, the song rekindled some happy feelings and I decided to remember a few more of their songs, like Ordinary Day and Consequence Free. Oh how happy. So I downloaded them to my ipod, and before long decided I should search ticket master in the event that they might be touring... what are the chances? Pretty good actually - like 100%. There next concert is October 27th in Calgary. To my dismay, they were sold out. So I looked on eBay for some scalper tickets at a reasonable price but could only find some that were a bit too much for me to justify it. So sadly I decided it must not have been meant to be. This was about a few weeks ago.

A few days ago I was looking for a specific email and found it in my junk mail. I clicked the "move to inbox" option and my screen reloaded to the next junk email - opening a giant picture of Great Big Sea with huge letters reading "Presale tickets" and a password. I was confused and read further. It seems they made another concert on October 28th. The pre sale happened September 8th at 10am. WTF. Awesome. So I went on the computer at 9:55am yesterday morning and bought some Great Big Sea tickets. Thank God the next email in my junk folder happened to be that one or I never would have known of a second concert date, much less received the password for presale tickets and the date to buy tickets. Holy smokes, lucky me. It seems as though some higher power approves of me seeking out positive music. :-)