HOW FARES YOUR SELF-ESTEEM

YOUR self-esteem, the way you think about yourself, is crucial to your success. The battle is already half won when you feel that you have a strong sense of worth and know that you are good enough in your own right.

However, not many people can boast of having self-esteem. Many clients that I work with, though appearing confident on the outside, admit to having a false sense of puffed up self-esteem that is laden with insecurities and fears about their own worth.

The first thing that you need to know is that you are the only person responsible for it. When you rely on external sources to make you feel good, be it a person or through material possessions like cars, clothes, etc. you are actually building up a false sense of self-esteem because as soon as those elements are gone, so too will your sense of worth.

Your self-esteem is like an avatar that you have created in your mind about yourself. It is formed through an accumulation of thoughts, experiences and relationships that you have with yourself and those around it. It is your interpretation of what is carried down through the genetic line, what your close relations have said to you, how media has influenced you and how you relate these things to yourself.

If you have believed that you are not good enough when your parents compared you to your siblings, or browsed through social media or magazines and decided you don’t measure up to others, or experienced a road block in life and things are not going your way, collectively, these thoughts and processes will influence you to believe that you have low self-esteem.

On the flip side, if you have just gotten a promotion, great friends are always around and supportive of you or you have just found the love of your life, these will shape your self-esteem.

What you want to develop is a resilient self-esteem that will weather time and circumstances that may come your way. And since you are the sole person responsible for making that happen, here are some suggestions on how you can boost your self-esteem.

PRACTISE MAKES PROGRESS

Have Self Awareness

A real change can happen when you are aware of what is not currently working for you so that you can start paying attention to what it is that you would like to change.

If you have no clue as to what is not working, then you would not even know where to begin. Practising self-awareness is a life-long skill that can be as simple as self-reflection every night on what went well that day, or it can be incidentbased. If you did something good, praise yourself for it, if you did something you feel was off, then it would benefit you to see how you can improve on it the next time.

Develop Yourself

No one starts off in life getting good at what they do immediately. It is a skill that is shaped through the years and gets better as you age. So if you come across anything that will help you shape more of who you would want to become, take a course on it, read a book about it and practise what you have learnt. The process in itself will assist you to feel better about yourself, even if you have not fully accomplished what it is that you have set out to do, it will help you to boost your self-esteem.

Listen to your Heart

We get so much information through the Internet these days and the influences that come into our life may not be the best for us. However, because it is normal and accepted, we do follow suit to just to fit in. When you do that, you are robbing yourself of your worth, bit by bit every day. It is vital that you start listening to what your heart truly desires and decide what is best for you.

When you live your life for yourself, you will find that you feel more connected, more at peace, and at ease with who you truly are. So pay attention to your own needs and in time you will be able to build a steady and healthy self-esteem. Jaime Shine empowers individuals on their road to wellbeing and transformation through understanding emotional health and relationship dynamics. Contact her at jaime@ heartworks.my

Manage your Thoughts

Be mindful of what you say to yourself. At times, some of the most damaging are when you tell yourself continuously: “I messed up again”, “I am useless”, “I am not good enough”, “I don’t deserve this”... So catch yourself doing this, journal it in and see what phrases come up replace them with encouraging ones and you will see in time your selfesteem rising.