We would all like more of it and sometimes we recognise we don’t have enough of it.
Self-esteem is your opinion of yourself, how you feel about yourself and how we value ourselves. People with healthy self-esteem like themselves and value their achievements. While everyone lacks confidence occasionally, if you have low-self-esteem you can feel unhappy or unsatisfied with yourself a good proportion of the time. This can be remedied but it takes attention and daily practise to boost self-esteem.
Many mental health issues can stem from self-esteem issues. If you don’t have the confidence to design a life of your choosing you may feel like you are just a boat out in the middle of the ocean being pushed around by any storm or breeze that comes your way. What we need to consider is how we gain that life control to recognise how to put our rudder in the water and start determining the direction we want our boat to travel and how we do so with confidence and self-esteem.
Consider what you can do to start developing your self-esteem:
1. Recognise and respect your own resilience
You probably already possess some of this and don’t realize it. Just making it through a dysfunctional family background or other unfortunate event builds your personal resilience. You made it! We cannot control our backgrounds or families or the things that happen as we go through life, but we can control how we come out on the other end. Just having a healthy set of coping skills in place as well as a social support system can help you through tough times. Knowing you are a survivor can really help you to feel better about yourself.
2. See life as a process not a one-time occurrence.
Consider your life as a journey not just a destination. Your journey may have started slowly, but luckily you aren’t stuck there forever. You have your future in front of you to control. You will have to do some extra work to learn the emotional skills necessary, but it is just learned material. If you give yourself a chance, you will recognise that these skills can be attained.
3. Everyone makes mistakes along the way–everyone, no exceptions.
Making mistakes is part of life and the journey. Mistakes can be corrected. If you suffer from poor self-esteem you probably are afraid of making mistakes or you expect to make mistakes and therefore let others decide important things for you. The problem with that is that they bring their own baggage to your decision making and may be making bigger mistakes with your life than you would ever make! Your life will never feel genuine to you until you call the shots, mistakes and all.
4. Face your fears
You may live in fear of many things. Decisions are usually a biggie. There is also the fear of being alone, being unlovable, doing things on your own or just facing life in general. You may be so afraid that you are completely overwhelmed. It is ok to have fear, but the problems really start when you allow it to run your life. We all have some degree of fear and that is healthy. Too much is not healthy. You can be afraid of something but do it anyway.
5. Ask yourself the right questions
Instead of asking yourself why you are depressed or how you came to be depressed or anxious, or why you are unlovable, ask yourself how you can eliminate these destructive emotions. Ask yourself how emotionally healthy people look at life or relationships or whatever you are struggling with and learn from them. Ask yourself what you can do every day to feel better. Learning new emotional skills is what will help you turn the corner.
6. Eliminate Cognitive Distortions
Also called dysfunctional thinking patterns, these are ways of thinking that are non-productive and actually inhibit you from seeing things in perspective. When the information you are taking in is not processed accurately then you are likely to experience an overly emotional reaction or an incorrect emotion, leading to more dysfunctional behaviour or thoughts. One misperceived piece of information can lead to a downward spiral of mood and behaviour, further lowering your self-esteem.
Want to know how to enhance your self-esteem and self-confidence? Send me an email at michelle@bakjacconsulting.com to enquire about coaching and training to build your strategies.
Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Psychologist, Organisational Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Facilitator. As Director of Bakjac Consulting, she is a credentialed Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of Mental Toughness Partners and an MTQ48 accredited Mental Toughness practitioner. Michelle assists individuals and organisations to develop their Mental Toughness to improve performance, leadership, behaviour and wellbeing. You can find her at www.bakjacconsulting.com or michelle@bakjacconsulting.com
