I don't like how I look! - How does this affect your self esteem?

• What can you change about how you look? Not much but do what you can.
• More importantly, we have to find ways of valuing ourselves other than our looks.
• Everyone has good qualities, many of which can be learned or cultivated.
• It is easy to overlook our good qualities because these are the things we do naturally, that we like doing or find easy to do, so we discount them, thinking everyone does them, but that is often not true.
• For example, people like us because of how we treat them. This is a more important quality for preserving long term relationships than how we look.
• Even the so-called ''beautiful'' people get divorced and can be unhappy.
• Often the best looking people are so wrapped up in their looks that they have no depth, no attractive qualities beyond their looks - this is a worse handicap than not having great looks.
• If your sole basis for attracting the interest of others is how you look, what value is that? How long do you think people's interest can be maintained merely by how someone looks? Not very long.
• We need to have other qualities, ones that are not just skin deep if we want to hold someone's interest.
• How interesting do you make yourself if, not liking your looks, you spend most of your time worrying about how you look, moaning about life in general and complaining about everything around you?
• You can do little to change how you look, but you can change your attitude.
• Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on others. Help them feel good, be warm, amusing, a good listener, supportive and helpful. Develop a range of interests to make you more interesting.
• When the people you want to attract get beyond looks, you will need to have qualities like this to sustain a long term relationship. What is more important?
• The bottom line is to stop basing your self esteem on how you look and base it instead on how you relate to others, how you behave not what or who you are.