self-esteem

YouTube Video TRANSCRIPT Daily Taoist 24:

Okay. Here we go.

Welcome back to another episode of The Daily Taoist. Yeah. I like that. I just put that name on here. I decided, “Hey. These are so much fun… Maybe I should make a show out of this. The Daily Taoist.

Anyway, let’s go. Let’s continue on.

NUMBER 13 by Lao Tzu. But we’re working from my book. There’s a better picture of the cover back there. My book, The Tao of Taoism – Using the Dao Te Ching to Improve Your Life. Otherwise, why use it all? Seriously. [laughs]

Okay. Here we go. I’m on page 24 and this is #13b of what Lao Tzu wrote. Now there’s 80 paragraphs. I’ve got 40 in this book. Okay, #13b is what I’m numbering this one.

Self-esteem is the appreciation of one’s own subconscious identity.
This self-love creates a pride that is dependent upon the opinion of others.

Hmmm. Okay. Let’s read that again. Maybe break it down a little bit.

Self-esteem— (Confidence. What you think of yourself. Self-esteem is supposed to be a positive thing. Esteem.) —Is the appreciation of one’s own subconscious identity.

Ah. Subconscious. Most of the self-esteem we think of is things we consciously do in our life. But according to Lao Tzu, if I’m getting this right, he’s saying that your real self-esteem is what your subconscious really–appreciates. Okay. So. It’s not the way you act as an actor. An actor might enjoy playing murderers. Okay? And everybody knows this person as a murderer. That’s all they ever see is this guy shooting guns and killing people all the time. So is his self esteem to be appreciated as a murderer? He’s a great murderer. He murders people so good on camera. He looks so cool doing it. And everybody enjoys watching you kill people. So he’s a professional murderer? Well, is his self-esteem supposed to be based on that? His ability to murder? Okay?

Or is it still his own subconscious identity that hopefully is not a murderer. It’s his conscious identity that’s a murderer. He’s consciously out there killing people and getting paid for it. But his subconscious identity may have nothing to do with that at all. It may just be that he wants to be an actor. He wants to be loved and appreciated. Or he wants to be able to pull off some sort of impersonation. It impresses people and he feels proud of that.

So subconsciously he may have a totally different goal than going out there and being the best murderer on the planet–in the movies. [laughs] Just an example.

Here we go. Continuing.

The second sentence: This self-love. (Okay. Which in this case we’ll say is the love of being an actor. You know, being able to flexible at changing your identity to make other people happy. Kind of like wearing costumes.) This self-love creates a pride. (So you practice at it. You get good at it. You must’ve done it a whole bunch of times successfully. So now you can be proud of yourself. You have pride.) That is not dependent upon the opinion of others.

Ahhhh. I didn’t get that ‘NOT’ the last time quite as clearly. Okay. The idea here is you know that you’ve done a good job. In fact, maybe a whole bunch of other people know you did a good job. But right now, you’re in a movie and you do really crappy. And everybody thinks you’re a crappy actor. But you know you’re a good actor because you’ve done good before. You’re just maybe in a role you can’t fathom. You can’t understand this person. You can’t pull it off.

So you’re not a bad actor. You’re just in the wrong place. And so your self-esteem should pull you through that. Otherwise, if you didn’t believe in yourself–you’d be heartbroken and you’d give up acting and that’d be foolish because you’ve already proven you’re a great actor. You just made a mistake. Got the wrong role perhaps.

Okay? So anyway. I’ll read the whole thing again. And then we’ll blast down the page and see how towork it into our life.

Self-esteem is the appreciation of one’s own subconscious identity. This self-love creates a pride that is NOT dependent upon the opinion of others.

I like that.

Okay. NUMBER ONE: Are you angered by insults?

Okay. So I’ll read each question twice. And you read them. I’m not going to expand on this.

Okay. Here we go. Are you angered by insults?

Do you ever want revenge?

Do you ever want revenge?

What are kinds of revenge that you consider?

If you said you’ve never thought of being vengeful–you’re lying. [laughs] Even me. Nicest person on the planet. It’s not that the thoughts don’t go through my head. I just never get to where I’d think I’d ever even consider them being realistic. But the thoughts– You’ve got to acknoledge the thought going through your head.

Um. What are the kinds of revenge that you consider?

You know, if I was to vengeful, you know… My revenge is like saying, “Hey, I’m not gonna put you in my movie. [laughs] Ooops. I said it. See, but that’d be like– that would be to be– That would be vengeful.

I’d probably wouldn’t want to– Hopefully, without knowing they were unappreciative of me. Hopefully their talent wouldn’t have garnered them having that role anyway. Because I would not want to actually deny anyone a worthy thing just because of my personal attitude. So I do try to keep that in check. My prejudice. My attitude.

Even if I don’t like someone– Some of those people turned out be really good friends. Oh God. During the homeless life I avoided people for years. And then after a couple of years you start running into this person– I have a conversation. Aaaah. A couple of people turned out to be decent friends. I mean I got along with them real fine. It’s like, yeah. It’s not that I regretted avoiding them. But it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought.

Okay. Anyway.

What are your identity weaknesses? Weight problems? Big Nose?

Seriously. I’ve got problems. Me, I’ve got a crooked nose. I got beat up when I was a teenager. Beat up really bad and they didn’t straighten my nose when they broke it. I’ll always have a crooked nose. For what that’s worth. [laughs] But I just accept it. In fact, sometimes when I’m shooting a bunch of videos I’ll actually take a minute and look at the lighting. And say, “Yeah–which angle do I look best at?” Cuz they’re totally different. Cuz it’s like bent this way. So maybe this way it looks smaller. And over here it looks bigger. Because of the way it’s bent. So anyway.

If I was a professional actor I’d have that memorized and probably always know how to always cheat the camera. But I’ll always still look. But I don’t think of it actually. But close–almost. Am I a professional actor?

What do you hide from people?

What do you hide from people?

What do you want to be that you doubt you will be?

Is that doubt based on your realistic understanding of yourself? Or is it based on the fact that other people couldn’t do it, or they doubted you. Or they couldn’t envision it and they just made you doubt it. Even though it could be real easy for you.

What do you want to be that you doubt you will be?

So put them all into that category and you can separate them out later.

When you lose or make a serious mistake do you scold yourself?

I’m gonna read that once again and then I’ve got to interject.

When you lose or make a serious mistake do you scold yourself?

Okay. I’ve got to give credit to somebody else. Dan Millman. I think that’s his name. Shout out! Great guy. Great author. Great books. I don’t know much about him personally but I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen and read. I’ve given away his books as presents and a couple of my students have been impressed by him and given books to my kids that were written by him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he wrote that book.” You know. Anyway. Great guy. Dan Millman

But he’s the one who hammered this into me. It was one of his first–the WARRIOR ATHLETE maybe. That book. I got that when I was at UCLA. And he said something. He was an Olympic trainer. And he said something that’s always stuck with me. “Thank you Dan.”

He said– And I kind of already knew this. But it resonated and I want to give him credit for it. He said that when he was training people, if they got angry or you know mad at themselves for making a mistake– he would always say, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” And his philosophy was, and I agree with him 100%. I’ve been a physical trainer ever since. I just started teaching Kung Fu about that same time. So for what? 35 years I’ve been proving him right.

And he said that, “When you make a mistake and then you punish yourself–you’ve balanced the field.” You’ve evened everything out. Now nothing’s going to change. You’ll make the same mistake. You’ll punish yourself again. It’ll just be the same. That’s your balance.

He said, “Create an imbalance.” He said, “Make a mistake–Ah–But don’t punish yourself.” Now you’ve gotta figure out to fix it.

Okay. Next. Do you ever say–(and pardon me for cussing)–“Damn it.” Okay? I never say that. [laughs] I had to apologize before I even said it. But here we go again.

Do you ever say, “Dammit.”

I’m going to interject something. This is a little whacky. This is going a little far for most people but, I’m gonna throw it out there anyway. I think that when you use that– I take it very literally. I’m kind of like that. I’m not like that guy in –that Avengers movie where one of the heroes he’s all tattooed with red tattoos. And he takes everything really literally. They don’t give him good lines unfortunately. The people who write for him don’t really grasp his character completely. I do. I kind of like him. Anyway, when you say, “Damn it,” you’re damning it. You are sending it to Hell. You are saying, “You are damned to Hell.” And that’s what you’re saying every time you say, “Damn it.” You’re sending that thing to Hell–as if you had the power. But still, that means you have the will, the desire… do whatever it takes. “I’ll bribe someone… I’ll talk to the Devil… I’ll…” You’re doing evil. That’s very evil to damn something. To make it go to Hell. Not your job.

So sorry. [laughs] I’m totally against that expression.

Here we go. Next, last one for this page.

Do you ever call yourself names or say, “I’m so stupid.” Or, “I’m a klutz.” Or, “I’m clumsy…” Any of those negatives? Do you ever say things like that?

Go back to Dan Millman. Dan Millman’s going to be your guide on that one. Let him tell you what to do on that.

One more time: Do you ever call yourself names? Like say you’re stupid or any negative names.

Obviously, I think you can tell where I’m going. [laughs]

Daily Taoist. Buddha Zhen, getting out of here.