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Sentence Completion Exercises for Self Esteem Enhancement

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I've just finished reading The Psychology of Self Esteem and wonder if anyone has tried the excercises from the last chapter. If so:

1. Did you do them the next day or re-read the book and study it, making notes etc?

2. Were they helpful?

3. How quickly did you notice your self esteem improve if it did so?

I also own Mind over Mood by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky, and found it very useful in identifying my emotions and understanding them. The problem is that I am very private and have not carried out the exercises for quite a while, I fear people (family) will see them and I don't want them to know how I feel. Through the book I identified that I suffer from anxiety (I actually experienced it today and had no idea why), guilt, shame and have suffered depression.

My self esteem has always been low, while growing up as a child I never felt competent in my thinking and always felt nervous when handing school work in, never being sure I was right. Even now I am not always 100% certain in my thoughts, even in basic every day use. Through Branden's book mentioned above, I identified that I do evade and rationalize my thoughts, I may repress also but I am not sure as I did not study the book, I just read it and intended to re-read and study it later.

I recently purchased An Introduction to Logic by Lionel Ruby and have found it very clear and understandable, by carrying out the excercises at the end of and throughout each chapter I have applied what I have learned, it raises my self esteem to a certain degree as I know that I am certain I am right.

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I haven't done the sentence completion excercises from that book, but I've done some other ones (from How to Raise Your Self Esteem) and found them helpful. I'd say within a few hours I started to realize premises I didn't know I had but that I'd been acting on, and within a few weeks was able to translate them into better premises and better action and therefore better self esteem.

Since then (several years ago), when I'm feeling unsure about courses of action I'm taking or emotions I'm feeling, I sometimes create my own sentence completion excercises, and I've found that to be an effective way to root out hidden emotions and premises that are effecting my actions (hidden, I think, because they're not usually well thought out, so it's hard to trace back to them logically).

I wonder if you're familar also with Ellen Kenner. She's an Objectivist and a psychologist who has a radio show, and I've found her insights to be very helpful for self improvement. There is much less that I disagee about with her than with Dr. Branden. And she seems to be a nice and honest person, from what I've gathered.

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Well, T, don't be so hasty. That is an east coast accent, and regardless of what you think you hear, she is a wonderful person. Would suggest that to most Americans, a British accent probably sounds condesending and snooty, but we know better about you... ;)

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I haven't done the sentence completion excercises from that book, but I've done some other ones (from How to Raise Your Self Esteem) and found them helpful. I'd say within a few hours I started to realize premises I didn't know I had but that I'd been acting on, and within a few weeks was able to translate them into better premises and better action and therefore better self esteem.

Since then (several years ago), when I'm feeling unsure about courses of action I'm taking or emotions I'm feeling, I sometimes create my own sentence completion excercises, and I've found that to be an effective way to root out hidden emotions and premises that are effecting my actions (hidden, I think, because they're not usually well thought out, so it's hard to trace back to them logically).

I wonder if you're familar also with Ellen Kenner. She's an Objectivist and a psychologist who has a radio show, and I've found her insights to be very helpful for self improvement. There is much less that I disagee about with her than with Dr. Branden. And she seems to be a nice and honest person, from what I've gathered.

I think I'll give these excercises a go and see for myself if they are beneficial.

I am aware of Ellen Keller, although I have not listened to her radio show, I have visited her site and read some articles, but there is not much reading material on her site. I know Dr Hurd is another Objectivist psychologist but I have found that many of his daily articles pertain to politics, they seem less personal.

Anyway thanks for your feedback on the effectiveness of sentence completion exercises.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Oh god, I'm listening to Ellen Kenner's podcast - she has the most annoying, condescending voice I've heard. Ok, not the most, but a very typical radio-psychologist voice. I can't stand actually listening to it.

I'm confused what you mean by this.. Do you mean that her manner of speaking, or her habits of dialect remind you of those used by people who you have observed being condescending and annoying; or do you mean that the things she says seem to you to be annoying and condescending; or do you mean the actual *sound*, ie, the frequencies themselves are annoying and.. condescending?

In any case, could you elaborate in what exact sense or way she is "condescending", and how you are defining that term? Are you accusing her of being annoying and condescending merely because her voice reminds you in some tonal or inflectional way of other radio psychologists who actually are annoying and condescending, and if so wouldn't that be a logical fallacy (guilt by association)?

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I know it's a logical fallacy, and I'm not saying it makes her advice any less valid. What she says is perfectly valid - but when I listen to her, she sounds just like this woman from one of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City radio channels. I've tried again and again to listen to her show, and it is something in the tone and inflection, that makes her talk in a way that I can't stand.

I have the same problem with the lectures on the ARI site - the lecturers give fantastic lectures, but their voices are really odd. Please, please, don't take this as some immature attack on them - I love them - I just pick up so easily on when someone isn't giving a genuine talk to their audience but is instead just reciting words from a page (this is what I think Ellen does - not literally, but she sounds like a mixture between doing that, and as if she's just not got experience of talking to people - which seems strange, considering all the work she has done).

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I just pick up so easily on when someone isn't giving a genuine talk to their audience but is instead just reciting words from a page (this is what I think Ellen does - not literally, but she sounds like a mixture between doing that, and as if she's just not got experience of talking to people - which seems strange, considering all the work she has done).

You will find much of the ARI content that comes from lectures such as OCON are given from prepared speeches. Maybe you're confusing extemporaneous delivery with genuineness, which are not the same thing.

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Could you give any examples of public speakers who you think are *not* annoying or condescending? Or even who "sound" intellegent, inspiring, and enjoyable to listen to?

It seems somewhat incredible to me that the particular guilt by association you have in mind is not even an association with an actual radio psychologist, but with some character from a video game! But I haven't personally played Grand Theft Auto, so maybe it would make more sense if I understood the context.

Many speakers take a period of adjustment for me, especially if they have unusual styles of presentation that I am not used to. Yaron Brook's lisp really disturbed me the first couple of times I heard him, even though I agreed with everything he said.. But now that I'm used to the lisp and can overlook it and recognize the genuinely passionate inflection and delivery that he actually intends and projects, he is one of my very favorite public speakers, and I can enjoy the expression involved in his delivery of speech material even apart from its particular content.

I didn't mean to derail the thread, but this topic of the relationship between the *sound* of speech and its content is of particular insterest to me as a musician.. Sound as an expression of meaning is the whole meaning of music for me.

But Ellen Kenner, by contrast, immediately had a voice that appealed to me. I perceive her as someone who has a totally calm, natural, benevolent way of delivering every fresh idea that it is clear from the content she has spent decades perfecting and refining and finding new applications for and relevence of. Her voice is soothing to me, and projects a confidence not only in her callers and in the truth and practicality of her ideas, but also just a general confidence in the world and the mind as a part of the world to make sense.

I don't think it's fair to dismiss Ellen Kenner's achievement because of anything that it recalls in the voice and inflection of others unless it is similar in some essential respect which bears relevence to the specific nature of what you percieve to be a problem in her delivery of information.

I know it's a logical fallacy, and I'm not saying it makes her advice any less valid. What she says is perfectly valid - but when I listen to her, she sounds just like this woman from one of the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City radio channels. I've tried again and again to listen to her show, and it is something in the tone and inflection, that makes her talk in a way that I can't stand.

I have the same problem with the lectures on the ARI site - the lecturers give fantastic lectures, but their voices are really odd. Please, please, don't take this as some immature attack on them - I love them - I just pick up so easily on when someone isn't giving a genuine talk to their audience but is instead just reciting words from a page (this is what I think Ellen does - not literally, but she sounds like a mixture between doing that, and as if she's just not got experience of talking to people - which seems strange, considering all the work she has done).

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