Let's just dive in.
Self-esteem is simply your estimation of your own worth.
We've already said that your confidence levels are decided on what you believe about you.
You act in accordance with the truth as you perceive and believe it to be.
Your beliefs create your self-image, which is reinforced (positive or not) with your own self-talk.
Your own self-talk will control your performance and how you behave.
It's a cycle.
In order for the cycle to be positive it requires you to learn how to think well of yourself and that includes how you use percieve and value these: self-love, self-care, self-compassion, self-acceptance and self-esteem.
Self-love. Do you accept you for who you are?
Self-care. Do respond to your own emotional and well-being needs?
Self-compassion. Do you let go off guilt and show yourself the love you have for others to yourself? Do you forgive yourself?
Self-acceptance. Do you let go? Do you live fully?
You think in pictures, emotions and words.
The cycle is simple, what you say to yourself (words) creates a picture, the most dominant picture is the direction that you will go.
Want an example?
Okay.
Say I didn't lack confidence in a new job. Assume I was trained, fully qualified, able to do the work, but I just didn't feel confident when it came to actually completing the tasks.
Every day before work I may create pictures of my lack of confidence and see myself not being able to handle situations, making mistakes and being reprimanded for them. These pictures I have in my head may be full of failure, guilt, fear of being exposed or caught out.
I might see pictures of me shaking and being nervous. By the time I have arrived at work my dominant picture is a person who has no confidence in their skills, abilities, and training.
How do I perform? Exactly the way I pictured. Therefore adding to the belief that I was correct, making the belief stronger, the self-talk more berating.
A circle.
How can someone change this?
First. Awareness. By recognition that what they are experiencing is technically right (not in the way they want) as they are performing in exactly the correct way to the picture they have.
You know that. yes?
By affirming something entirely different.
And how do you do that?
Create the picture you want.
Affirming with positive self-talk the truth about you.
Thinking well of yourself
Some people cannot function unless they have full permission from someone else, or they have full approval from others. They allow others to make decisions about who they are, what they are like, what they are capable of, how much potential they have, what is good for them and on, and on, and on.
You may have been in the company of someone with low self-esteem (low self-worth). They are easy to spot. They (may) belittle, judge, demean others, bring people down to 'their level'. Have you ever known someone like that? Have you ever witnessed yourself carrying out those behaviors?
In order to create build self-esteem, you need to take charge of your own thoughts, your own well-being.
It wouldn't surprise me if the words self-love, self-compassion, self-acceptance made you feel slightly icky, especially if they aren't part of your current language you have about you.
But they aren't arrogant. They aren't you dipped in marshmallow and covered in chocolate. It's not egotistical. They are part of well-being.
How can anyone possibly feel confident and good about who they are if they don't even see themselves as worthy of the same love they give their own children, pets or significant other?
The madness is thinking you don't matter. Not, you are mad, the madness that you have accepted that you don't matter.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said ‘no-one can make you feel inferior without your consent’.
No one can make you feel anything, you are the only person that can feel what you are feeling. It’s your choice on what you choose to feel.
Competence
Low self-esteem is an acceptance that in some all areas of your life, you don’t make the grade, you don’t match up, and you don’t measure up. You may feel inferior by not being as good as another, comparing yourself to others.
How?
To Do: Carry out a true evaluation of you, explore your life and list all your competencies.
- Where have you forgotten about your needs?
- What areas of your life require you to pay attention and some TLC but you are ignoring the messages?
- What are fecking fantastic at? What do people thank you for? Not 'what are you good at', where do you excel? What are utterly competent at? Don't stop at what you do for a living, think all areas of your life.
Locus of Control
We each have a locus of control; we have an internal thermostat if you like, of how much control we feel over our lives. Some people feel that they have none or very little control, they go through life blaming others and complaining how everything happens to them and they had no control over it.
This behaviour lowers self-esteem, by not increasing your locus of control you are giving away power and accepting that life is a defeating process.
To Do: Look back over your life to date, where did you give up control to others where you know today it was always your choice?
Valuable & Worthy
People with low self-esteem have the belief, feelings and behaviour that state they are worth nothing to no-one or anything.
Have you ever said ‘I’m not worthy?’ In order to raise your self-esteem, you may have to start by reviewing your definition of the ‘worth’.
To Do: Start taking a Life Inventory, a stock take of all your strengths, achievements and start looking for the distortions and generalizations you make about yourself.
Contribution
Everyone has something to contribute. Everyone. For example, people out of work may see their self-esteem lower during this time. One of the causes of this is that employment (paid or unpaid) assist us in making a contribution, without it we may feel insignificant that we are no longer part of something that has an end result. We all have something to contribute.
To Do: without editing write a list of where you add most value. Are you doing it daily?
Acceptance
Acceptance is the ability to embrace who you are now, this moment including all things that you want to change or are no longer happy with. Acceptance is not a declaration of ‘well, this is it, this is how it is going to be, I accept that’. By choosing to accept the truth of you at this moment you can move forward. There is truly no need to find fault in yourself all the time, adopting a ‘know what, I’m okay, let’s move on’ frees up the mind.
To Do: what would happen if you let go fully?
Self Love
The greatest, most passionate, exhilarating and unconditional love affairs you can have is with yourself! Many freak out at sayings such as ‘love yourself first’ or ‘unless you love yourself, how can you love anyone else’.
Love is an emotion, we all describe it differently, we all feel it’s power and yet we provide lack of it for ourselves. It really does not make any sense, it has no logic, there is wonderful saying ‘take care of the caretaker’. Have you heard it? We are so often willing to give up love to others and yet struggle to love ourselves.
To Do: Define your definition of love, what does it mean to you? Next, apply your meaning to yourself, where does it fall short? What needs work?
No Judgement
We are our biggest critics; we are experts in reminding ourselves of our biggest failings and where we went wrong moments.
We are all too ready to belittle, pass comments, make snide remarks about us! Who sits on your own personal jury? Who is responsible for sentencing you to low self-esteem? By who’s laws are you trying to abide by? I give it to you; judgment is not the same as an honest evaluation, if there are people that are on the prosecution in your life, you do not have to accept all their closing statements.
Have you landed here by accident? This is day 6 of a Confidence Course. If you would like to find out more and take part please click here.