The Key to Self-Esteem

It's a State-of-Mind.

Charge the Battery

Self-esteem, like happiness, is a state of mind. It can make you feel happy, cheerful, and confident. It can also make you feel worthless, unwanted, and weak. Self-esteem can best be compared to a powerful battery. When the battery is fully charged, the individual feels confident and raring to go; when the battery is run down the individual feels low and wants to hide.

Obviously, individuals with low self-esteem struggle with everyday challenges, sometimes for the simplest tasks. They will approach every issue with a lack of confidence even though they may be fully capable of doing a job. That is why self-belief is considered the bedrock of self-esteem. It gives an individual the extra confidence that makes all the difference between believing oneself as an achiever or a failure.

So how do you inculcate a sense of self-belief in yourself? One is making a big mistake if they start seeing themselves as the most important person in their field. This cannot be called self-belief or self-esteem. Instead, it is conceit, and as everyone knows conceit is a dangerous quality. It generates false confidence, which often becomes a source of woes.

What one needs is healthy self-esteem. This means that you should look at yourself as an individual who is at par with your peer group, who has nothing to feel ashamed of, and who looks at all issues with a positive frame of mind. Healthy self-esteem also means that you can differentiate between humility and self-effacement, between arrogance and modesty, between complacency and hyperactivity, between perfection and perseverance.

Step Forward

However, to do so you must learn to accept yourself as any other individual who will have some strengths and some weaknesses, and who will have some good days and some bad days. You must learn to ride out the good with the bad. Most important, you must believe in the clichéd saying that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. It will give you the confidence and self-belief that every individual often needs in one’s bad moments. This is what self-esteem is all about – a self-belief in oneself.

Those who sit and mope can never feel happy. The same applies to those who blame fate for their ills. Their energies are consumed by negative emotions. These emotions are like a whirlpool. They suck someone deeper and deeper till they lose all semblance of self-respect and self-confidence – belief in themselves.

Don’t allow mistakes or failures to overwhelm you. Instead, reframe or flip them as learning and moving forward. Similarly, don’t allow guilt to eat away your happiness. Accept your mistakes. It will make you feel much better. You must always remember that you lose self-esteem when you try to run away from problems and challenges. Such behavior makes one weak and reinforces negative self-talk. It also causes your self-esteem to dip and begins a neural cycle of negativity. In contrast, your self-esteem soars when you pass through a difficult situation. Likewise, a healthy positive, growth mindset reinforces neural pathways of seeing opportunities in the challenges you face.

Another important thing about self-esteem is the need to look at it as a single entity. Many people derive great happiness from their accomplishments. Their self-esteem rises when they are in the company of people who acknowledge their success. However, the same self-esteem plunges when they are in a family group where they are not accepted with the same degree of warmth. They feel unhappy, and neglected, and avoid mixing with their family members. This is escapism. It will gnaw away an individual’s self-esteem till they become lonely and unhappy. It will also impact one’s professional work at some point of time or the other.

See the Light

So what does one do to improve self-esteem. To improve your self-esteem, you also need to be fair to yourself. Even more, to forgive yourself! Often, individuals are very harsh on themselves when things go wrong. They could plunge into a state of depression and allow guilt to consume them. It is quite possible that their decision may have brought misfortune upon a family or a company that trusted them. But over-reaction will not change things. All individuals must judge their actions fairly. Self-flagellation is the worst form of defeat. It weakens individuals and destroys their self-esteem.

Quite simply, the easiest way to reframe and build up low self-esteem is to take action. While you are a culmination of all your experiences in life, good or bad, fear is a learned behavior reinforced neurologically. When we take positive actions or steps towards building ourselves up, we change the negative narrative our minds have believed for so long. Your innermost beliefs may have been rewritten negatively over a lifetime of experiences, but those beliefs can be challenged and changed. And it all starts with one small positive action to remind your mind that YOU…CAN…DO…IT. As stated earlier, the cliché says there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and all it takes is to move forward to get through the tunnel and enjoy the wonderful, warm light in the end.

First Steps

Your first step to increasing your self-esteem is to start today. Each day you delay is another day the past wins. However you choose to begin building your self-esteem, do so today! Be thorough and consistent with the process and be aware it may take a while. You should not become impatient or despondent if you find your self-esteem slipping. Choose to have grace with yourself. Remember, you are an important and worthy person and should treat yourself as such.

If you are willing to share a bit about your journey in self-esteem, comment below and let me know what you have learned. Sign up to follow the blog. There is more to come. Share some encouragement with others you know by sharing this blog with them. We are a community of humans who are working to love ourselves past our old fears, one step at a time.

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