 |
|
You have your own unique self esteem story: why you have low self esteem, how it affects your life, how you have tried to raise your self esteem and what successes you have had. Others are interested in reading your story to see what they can learn from your experience.
Self esteem does not mean seeing yourself as the greatest person in the world.
It's not the same as being conceited. Healthy self esteem means liking yourself, for the most part, as you are.
You can have OK self esteem and still have occasional periods of self doubt. How you feel about yourself depends on who you compare yourself with. Healthy self esteem means thinking as highly of yourself as you think of your peers.
Low self esteem is very debilitating. It may be associated with feelings of depression. Or it may mean not thinking very highly of yourself, doubting your ability to get the things you want or to attract the sort of people that interest you. Low self esteem can be soul destroying and very costly if it limits you to playing it safe or causes you to avoid doing things that you would normally enjoy doing. It may prevent you from applying for a job or cause you to present yourself ineffectively at interviews.
We blame things outside ourselves to protect our self-esteem but it doesn't help much in the long term. It is a natural defense mechanism to take the heat off of ourselves. Hence why we are so good at coming up with excuses, blaming circumstances beyond our control or other people for letting us down. Finding fault is easier than accepting the responsibility ourselves.
How do you talk to yourself? It is well known that negative self-talk kills self esteem. Cognitive therapy focuses on helping people talk to themselves more positively, among other things. What names do you call yourself? When you make a mistake, do you say... What an idiot! How can you be so stupid! Can't you get anything right! What a loser! There you go again! You're not really up to it, are you?!!
If you've done our Self Esteem Quiz, check out these tips to boost your self esteem in each of the 7 self esteem quiz categories.
Healthy self esteem is vital for happiness. To be happy, we need to feel good about ourselves, to feel worthy as persons. Low self esteem is very common and not much fun! The key to healthy self esteem is becoming aware of our personal strengths and accepting ourselves as worthy persons despite any real weaknesses we have. It is a matter of cultivating the right attitude, regardless of our personal circumstances. Not easy, but possible with constant effort.
Saying "I don't like myself" is an all-or-nothing, global judgement. You're saying you dislike EVERYTHING about yourself, there is NOTHING to like about you. In fact, you may simply be unhappy about one or two of your traits and this is clouding your judgement about your many good qualities. Have you tried making a list of all your likeable qualities?
A sure recipe for low self esteem is to constantly beat yourself for your failings. To raise your self-esteem, try to be more balanced by celebrating your strengths and achievements. It is easy to overlook our strengths when we are in a negative frame of mind. Also, we take for granted the things we find easy to do. Getting honest feedback also helps.
Are excessively high standards hurting your self esteem? Low self esteem can be the result of trying to live up to unrealistic standards - usually ones we acquired early in life and which are no longer relevant. Emotional intelligent people recognize when they are beating themselves to live up to standards that are unrealistic or don't apply to them. They set realistic expectations for themselves and laugh at their perfectionism.