Beat Your Stress By Building Your Self Esteem: Part 2

This post will focus attention on your physical uniqueness.

Low self-esteem can result from focusing too much on how you look on the outside. Once you take a look inside you will be amazed what you discover.

Move your little finger. Wave it in the air. Simple, isn’t it! Yet the world’s most sophisticated computer can’t do that.

The retina of the human eye has about 100,000,000 light-sensitive cells capable of transmitting an impression. The human eye has the capacity to distinguish 340,000 different colours (unfortunately we don’t have names for all of them).

Modern technology cannot produce one single solitary working human eye.

Within each of us a trillion perfect machines carry on the work of a life, a cycle of creation and renewal, an orchestration of tissues and fluids into a functioning body. The machines are called CELLS.

Inside each cell is a nucleus containing tightly packed coils of thread-like molecules called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA - the carrier of our genetic blueprints.

The strands of DNA in a single human cell are less than a trillionth of an inch thick, but if unravelled would stretch out almost two metres.

DNA has a vivid memory which time does not dim. It stores a vast number of directions and blueprints which it issues at the right time and place to trigger the building of all the cells and structures in the body, make them grow and synchronise their operations at every second during their allocated life.

As you read these words thousands of billions of specks of DNA peppered through your body are carrying out operations essential to your very survival.

DNA basically consists of two intertwined, tape-like coils, connected at bonds at regular intervals - like a spiral staircase.

There is surprising logic in the long, slender form of DNA which gives it a capacity, like magnetic recording tape, for storing all the vast amount of information needed in a lifetime.

The ladder contains a genetic message detailing the blueprint for each individual protein that makes up our complex physical chemistry.

To spell out the blueprint on one single piece of DNA from one single cell in your body would require a set of notes equivalent in size to 490 Telephone Directories!

You Are Awesome.

There is only one word that can adequately describe a human being. That word is Awesome.

Awesome means “to behold with wonder”.

Our reflexes reveal that we have the ability to move our muscles with incredible speed.

Have you ever touched something hot? The pain message reaches the brain in lightning speed and then triggers a muscle movement that removes our finger from the source of heat.

We have an amazing sense of taste. With concentration your taste buds can detect the flavour in one single grain of sugar.

Your mechanical ability is so advanced that you can actually place a grain of sugar on your tongue and then lift it in a majestic balancing act to place it on your teeth where you can proceed to crush and grind it.

(Imagine the technical problems involved in creating a machine with a similar mechanical capacity).

A few grains of salt can also produce a strong taste sensation.

The aroma of perfume or after-shave can set off a chain reaction that affects our entire body occasionally to the point of distraction.

Our noses can detect between two and ten thousand different smells.

A tiny splinter, no longer than half a millimetre can cause us considerable discomfort if it happens to lodge itself under our finger nail.

The average person can run their hand across an apparently smooth surface and detect projections 1/2,500th of a millimetre high.

If all the veins, all the arteries and all of the tiny capillaries in your body were stretched out into one continuous straight line then the length would be sufficient to circle the earth at the Equator twice.
To make an artificial placenta that could supply all the nutrients and remove all the wastes from a developing embryo would, it has been calculated, require the equivalent in cost and complexity to building a small oil refinery.

Every word that you speak requires the co-ordination of 72 muscle movements. (Little wonder that politicians have sagging faces!).

Occasionally we read that the chemicals which constitute the human body cost about $12.

But our bodies are much more complex than the raw chemicals that make us the awesome
physical machines that we really are.

It is the molecular arrangement of the human body that gives it its unique qualities. It has been calculated that it would take $ 20 million to buy the correct molecular constituents from chemical supply houses to make up one human being.

But even then we could not mix those chemicals together and have a human being emerge from the jar.

Your body is an awesome complex machine.

Beat Your Stress By Building Your Self Esteem: Part 1

The purpose of this post is to remind you of some scientific facts that are very relevant to an understanding of your self worth.

I promise you if you print out and read the series of articles I have written on self-esteem you will see yourself in a way you never thought possible.

Low self esteem can aggravate many medical conditions and is often a contributing factor and/or side effect of mental illness. It also contributes to social isolation thereby limiting personal growth through adequate social support. Social isolation has been shown to contribute to stress.

Read these scientific facts to enhance your personal identity and beat stress.

You Are Special.

Before life began you were in two parts. One part of you was an egg inside your mother’s womb. The other part was a tiny sperm cell that would fertilise that egg.

Consider the role played by the tiny sperm cell. It was one of millions of sperm cells all trying to get to that egg. There was only one winner. You were the winner!

You managed to get a “berth” on that little multi-cellular space ship that delivered you down to planet earth.

The head of that sperm contained a precious cargo of 23 chromosomes, just as there were 23 in the tiny nucleus of the egg. Each chromosome was composed of jelly-like beads closely strung together. Each bead contained hundreds of genes with your heredity blueprint.

Your mother and father represented the culmination of over two billion years of victory in the battle to survive.

You were born a CHAMPION.

You overcame enormous odds to win the gift of life. Every breath that you take; every heartbeat confirms that you are still a winner.

Whatever difficulties life may produce for you to overcome those difficulties will be nowhere near as great as the obstacles that you overcame at your moment of conception.

The population of the earth is estimated to be 7 billion people. The earth is part of a Solar System that has nine planets revolving around a central star called the Sun.

The Sun and the Solar System are part of the Milky Way Galaxy which contains between 200 to 400 billion stars.

The Milky Way Galaxy is only one Galaxy in a known Universe consisting of 500 billion other Galaxies of equivalent size.

There are more stars in the Universe than all the grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts in the world. (There are approximately 10,000 grains in a handful of sand!)

The planets, stars and galaxies have been in a state of birth and death for trillions of centuries.

Even if we destroy this planet there is every likelihood that the Universe will go on forever.

We live between two infinities. On the one hand we have the infinity of outer space and, on the other, the infinity of inner space.

The Atomic World.

Inner space represents the world of atoms, neutrons, protons and beyond.

A typical atom is a universe in itself surrounded by a galaxy of electrons which determine the chemical property of the atom (the difference between the glitter of glass and gold).

Deep inside the atom is the nucleus consisting of protons and neutrons.

If you were to place 100 million atoms end to end then they would occupy the space taken by the word successful.

The nucleus of an atom is 100,000 times smaller still.

Most of the mass of the atom is in the nucleus - atoms consist mainly of empty space.

Theoretically it is possible to keep splitting neutrons and to keep splitting the split neutrons forever and forever.

We live in a context so awesome that our minds are unable to comprehend the distances involved.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you are on a spacecraft moving out into the Universe near the speed of light. Now think of that journey as going on - and on - and on - and on …FOREVER!! Mind boggling isn’t it. That is the context in which we live.

Yet in the midst of all this vastness we are all UNIQUE. Within the context of this infinite forever and before there will only ever be one of you.

You are a one-off. Look around you - you are looking at unique, very special “one-off” human beings. There is a hidden awe in your uniqueness.

No one will ever see or experience the world like you. Your outlook on life may be similar to others but it is, in reality, truly unique.

There is no such thing as identical thought. We all respond to words, sound, images and stimuli in ways that have subtle differences.

For example, if I ask you to write down a visual description of a “cat” then the picture that comes to your mind will be different to the image that other people produce in their minds.

Have you ever taken a series of photographs of a person over a 30 minute period? The camera has the capacity to freeze life so that the person appears different from pose to pose. The camera only takes a small slice of life … perhaps 1/250th second. It is the same person, but the life-freeze process of the camera brings out the subtle differences.

You have distinctive and unique physical features. You have a unique set of fingerprints; unique voice patterns; unique hair formations and so on.

You are unique - you are VERY SPECIAL - you are the only one of your kind who will ever exist in the entire history of the Cosmos.