Rebuilding Our Self-Esteem

 

“We are the children of our landscape; it dictates

behavior and even thought in the measure

to which we are responsive to it.”

Lawrence Durrell

 

One of the most mysterious jewels we possess is our self-esteem. Self-esteem is about finding our inner splendor, strengths, and talents and using them to the fullest advantage. The concept of self-esteem can be divided into three categories: 1) people with far too high a view of themselves, 2) individuals with far too low a view of themselves, and 3) those who fluctuate between the two.  An unwavering and suitable self-esteem has proven to be one of the most difficult possessions to attain and hold onto. Self-esteem is vital and serves as the energy that powers the engine of accomplishment. The more self-esteem we have, the farther we can go.

            It is important to tell ourselves that we can achieve all the goals we set for ourselves, that we are worthy, and as deserving as the next person. We need to be our own cheerleader and seek people such as a best friend who understands and supports our healing process. The word self-esteem is not a fancy catch phrase and needs to be considered pertinent to everyone’s healing. Our personal attitude about life in general is as clear to others as the clothes we wear. If we are upbeat and cheerful, we will usually be greeted with positive feedback. Our self-esteem is about finding our true selves, and is referred to as a “looking glass.” 

            The material us involves all we have that gives us synchronization, or balance and connection to the rest of the world including our family, our bodies, and our possessions. Most of us want others to view our material selves favorably. Our social self consists of the recognition and acceptance we receive from others. And our spiritual self relates to our innermost thoughts, desires, dreams, and feelings. This spiritual self has little to do with organized religion; it is associated with our relationship and know-ledge about ourselves.

            Exploring at a deeper level, we will discover that we have a public and a private self, both requiring nurturance and protection. Exploring our history, our environment, and our personal value system can be extremely enlightening. We wear many hats from being employees, spouses, friends, to filling the role of being a friend. We behave according to the role we are filling at the time. This duality can throw us off balance. Do we do what we think others want us to do? Not being our true self can cause additional stress, deplete energy, diminish honesty, and destroy our self-esteem (Sherfield, 2004).

            Saying affirmations to raise our self-esteem is useless if we haven’t made the effort to actually love ourselves. Saying we are great doesn’t cut it. We have to set goals and do things to make ourselves great. For exam-ple, we may look in the mirror and decide we are over-weight, but at the same time we tell ourselves we look fine, we do not have a weight problem. We may say things like “I am beautiful just the way I am.” Instead, we need to treat ourselves to healthy eating habits, exercise and do other things which will enhance our overall well-being.

            Develop a plan and stick with it. I am not suggesting that thinking and saying positive statements does not help us achieve healthy self-esteem. The words will not carry much meaning if we don’t place more importance on ourselves. Acquiring healthy self-esteem takes effort and we need to consider ourselves worth it (Bourne, 2005).

            I participated in a workshop about enhancing children’s self-esteem. What I learned was to not say empty phrases such as saying “nice work” when a child showed me his or her artwork. Examine the picture thoroughly and comment on the child’s use of colors and designs on the picture. After a while, children will become praise junkies because their needs are not being met when the praise is generalized and not specific to what they have done. When we give ourselves empty compliments or receive empty compliments from others, think about how this made us feel. Feeling good about ourselves is often fleeting when it comes from empty praise.  

            Striving for feeling good versus feeling right. The feeling of right means feeling authentic and real inside. People often say they haven’t felt right for a long time. The best way to find out how to feel right about our lives is to examine a time when we did feel right. Unhealthy self-esteem also invades our lives in many forms such as depression, fear, anxiety, and/or feelings of worthlessness. We can stop this invasion by recognizing when it existed in our lives. Doing things that go against our values can cause damage to our self-esteem. The down-trodden are not the only people with self-esteem issues. People with low self-esteem come from all walks of life from doctors to construction workers. 

           

            People with self-esteem issues may exhibit the following behaviors:

 

·         Act immature and have poor relationship skills.

·         Engage in self-destructive behaviors.

·         Criticize themselves and others constantly.

·         Act superior and brag often.

·         Avoid uncomfortable situations.

·         Enjoy the pain others are experiencing.

·         Sacrifice their own identity to fit in with others.

·         Overreact when criticized.

·         Fly off the handle easily.

·         Concentrate mainly on failures, and weaknesses.

·         Be devastated by simple mistakes.

·         Pressure people and become overbearing.

·         Lack adequate resources to handle personal needs (Sherfield, 2004).

 

Keeping negative behaviors in check is another way of managing and enhancing our self-esteem. People suf-fering from low self-esteem tend to develop obsessive and addictive behaviors such as overeating, and substance abuse. When we are trying to establish peace within our-selves, it could be easy to turn to things that provide us with a way to forget our problems.

We can effectively communicate our own self-confidence to others to enhance our self-esteem in four ways: 1) how we look, 2) how we act, 3) what we say, and 4) what we do.  Good posture, clean appearance, a relaxed disposition, and a pleasant attitude communicate confi-dence. Eye contact while speaking expresses confidence as well as a firm handshake. What we do or fail to do speak volumes about our character. We need to follow through with what we promise to do (Sherfield, 2004).

When we know the answers to the questions we may be asked we need to give the answers clearly and with self-assurance. A moment to compose our thoughts can be a moment of reflective silence. We don’t have to be afraid to admit we need a little time to check out a fact, to dwell over a decision, or to consider a circumstance from a new vantage point. Admitting a lack of sufficient information expressed in the right way, without embarrassment, can convey to others self-confidence. If we want others to believe in us, we have to believe in ourselves. 

 

Healthy self-esteem can be obtained through the following ten steps:

 

·         Know ourselves.

·         Understand what makes us feel great.

·         Recognize things that get us down.

·         Set goals to achieve what we want.

·         Develop trusting relationships.

·         Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

·         Stand up for our beliefs and values.

·         Help someone else.

·         Take responsibility for our own actions.

·         Take good care of four selves: physical, intel-lecttual, spiritual, and emotional (Sherfield, 2004).

 

“Ninety percent of the world’s woe comes from people not

knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and

even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way

through life as complete strangers to ourselves.”

Sydney Harris

 

            Positive feelings of self-worth represent a healthy way in which we view ourselves as valuable individuals. Humility is considered an asset, while being confident is often viewed as a fault. What we believe about ourselves and our abilities serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue to tell ourselves we are worthless, our actions will follow suit. By raising our opinion of ourselves, we will accomplish so much more. We will end up contributing more to our communities and households and experience more life satisfaction.

            Native American people were beaten down so much for centuries by acts of genocide, assimilation, discrimination, and acculturation that our self-worth is often residing in the very depths of our souls. Many of us will need a crowbar to unlock that treasure. What did the history of our parents and grandparents do to our feelings of self-worth? We can obtain feelings of positive self-worth when we honor ourselves with self-love. If we love ourselves for who we are with all our gifts, faults and other nuances, we will tap into our valuable self-worth. 

 

            If we are experiencing feelings of low self-esteem we may:

 

·         Come from a troubled and dysfunctional family.

·         Blame ourselves for everything.

·         Fear rejection.

·         Have a lot of “shoulds.”

·         Feel ashamed of who we are.

·         Think we are not good enough.

·         Feel as if we are different from the rest of the world.

·         Reject compliments or praise.

·         Feel depressed because of a lack of praise and compliments.

·         Take things personally.

·         Have been victims of sexual, emotional or physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, or substance abuse.

·         Pick on ourselves constantly about the way we think, look, feel and act. 

·         Tell ourselves we can’t do anything right.

·         Be afraid of making mistakes.

·         Expect ourselves to do everything perfectly.

·         Feel a lot of guilt.

·         Feel guilty when we spend money on ourselves or do fun things for ourselves (Sherfield, 2004).

 

           

            Conversely, how do we know if we love ourselves?  The following represent signs of self-love:

 

·         We start making time for ourselves.

·         We set up boundaries to protect ourselves.

·         We forgive ourselves, not just for trivial mistakes, but for larger mistakes.

·         We let go of unrealistic expectations of ourselves and feel good about what we have already accomplished.

·         We find one thing to do every day that makes us happy even if it is brief such as smelling a flower.

·         We take a moment to breathe deeply and pay attention to our breath.

·         When we hear ourselves thinking something de-meaning about ourselves, we practice thought stopping, and develop thoughts which are more compassionate (Sherfield, 2004).

 

It is difficult to love thy neighbor when we don’t love ourselves. We need to tell ourselves daily that we love ourselves and practice thinking kind thoughts on a regular basis to rebuild our self-esteem. It is okay to love ourselves and place importance on ourselves. Self-love is a necessary component to maintaining healthy relation-ships with anyone including ourselves.

 

We need to take a good look at ourselves in the bathroom mirror and say one of the following things to our-selves daily:

 

·         “I’m strong and attractive and I like what I see.”

·         “I deserve to have a great life.”

·         “I enjoy being me.”

·         “I am confident in myself and my abilities” (Copeland and Harris, 2000).

 

We need to focus on our strengths instead of focus-ing on our faults and shortcomings. Paying attention to the latter can destroy any amount of joy we may have. Our strengths are the very qualities which could make us look our best, yet we may try to describe our strengths by making them sound like they are deficits in our character. For example we may say something like this “my weakness is that I care too much.”  We do so, to put a positive spin on whom we are and get the validation we are seeking by presenting ourselves to the outside world in a humble manner, humility is the key to being accepted by others. Our strengths are defined by what we actually do and need to be considered when we are trying to enhance our feelings of self-esteem. They are the things we do on a regular basis. To discover our strengths use the following guidelines consisting of these basic ingredients:

 

·         Explore our talents, such as empathy, assertiveness, or competitiveness. Since we often take our talents for granted, step back and put a label on our talents. These talents are things we were born with and they stayed with us. 

·         Examine our skills which are things we developed during our lives and are not innate. They were learned abilities.

·         Discover our personal knowledge which is learned and developed through experience and formal learn-ing activities such as reading and learning from others (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001). 

 

            When we put these ingredients together we can gain an understanding about our strengths. Let’s say we are an advocate for people who have been diagnosed with a dis-ability. Our assertiveness allows us to be able to secure services for our clients, our communication skills permit us to convey what our client’s needs are, and our knowledge of what services are available permits us to make decisions that are in the best interest of our client. 

            Another example may be talents consisting of our ability to be empathetic if we work as a day care provider for young children. Our empathetic abilities give us the capability of understanding what the children under our care need. Because of our skills we are able to provide activities which will enhance the engagement of the children in play time activities and our knowledge of child development will enhance their learning experiences and provide them with a safe environment.

            When we begin to describe our strengths, examine activities we have felt most successful accomplishing. Defining the ingredients in this manner demonstrates what comes naturally and what is learnable. To capture a full understanding of our strengths, we are going to have to go beyond the generic labels and explore how the actual activities make us feel by the use of four signs: success; instincts; growth; and needs. We will need to take the following steps by paying close attention to our feelings before, during, and after our weekly activities.

            When did we feel successful at accomplishing our goals? To examine our instincts, we need to explore what we find ourselves looking forward to doing. What activities create the most positive growth for us?  The instinct sign refers to how we feel before we did the activity; growth refers to how we felt during the activity, conversely the need sign refers to how we felt right after we have done the activity. We may really feel good after doing the activity and we want to experience that feeling again (Buckingham and Clifton, 2001). 

A person lacking internal feelings of self-esteem feels a need for continuous validation, the greater the lack of self-worth, the greater the need for validation. If we have confidence in ourselves, we will gain respect from others. It is so necessary that we demonstrate this confidence for the sake of our children and grandchildren. They need for us to believe in ourselves so that we can guide them to the right paths to take and so they will take us seriously. Confidence is a way of behaving that doesn’t happen automatically. It occurs because we have learned how to nurture ourselves with self-talk that promotes confidence. It exists when we have learned to speak from belief rather than doubt, from uniqueness rather than conformity.

We need to examine our self-talk and ask is it full of doubt?  Remember our self-talk influences our behaviors and the outcome of any given situation. If we want to take on a leadership role, we need to have a higher level of confidence and feelings of self-worth. We can do so by thinking about all the things we can do right. Start small and think about how well we make our bed in the morning or how well we cook eggs. Then move onto the bigger things such as our job related skills. 

             A person who suffers from a low level of self-esteem will feel as if they will lose something if they give honor to others. Test those waters and see how comfortable you are with complimenting others. Does it come naturally or is it a struggle for you to do so. The compliment must come from the heart and not be superficial. We need to rehearse truly complimenting others before trying it out on actual people if it is not a common practice for us. Others can sense when we are not being genuine and that will damage our credibility. 

            A lot of people believe that since their self-worth was based on their early years concerning how their parents, teachers, and friends treated them, they can do little to change their feelings of self-esteem. It is true that our feelings of self-worth were often determined by our pasts. This can be changed. How we judge ourselves is what really counts. It really doesn’t matter what others may think about us. Low feelings of self-worth are based on mistaken ideas and we all have the ability to change these notions. When looking back at negative experiences think about how we would have dealt with those situations if we would have had a positive, confident attitude.  Don’t look back with regret. Rewriting our past history will have a powerful effect on our future. 

Self-esteem is not a figment of our imagination, it can seem abstract, but it is not. Look inside ourselves to see the real us. Explore and practice meaningful spirituality. Do not do things that go against our own personal values and do not give ourselves meaningless compliments. Develop goals and work towards them. Review the checklist of behaviors which are associated with self-esteem issues and see what ones we believe we are practicing and work on those issues. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when we are struggling with obtaining our goals. Self-esteem is about enhancing our inner strengths and using them to our fullest advantage.