Self-esteem and Confidence

Self-esteem is about how you see yourself as a person. It is how valuable and worthwhile you think you are as a person, and how good you feel about that.  It’s not about boasting or trying to prove to other people how good you are. It is about believing in yourself and what you think you can do. Read on to find out about how high self-esteem (the helper) or low self-esteem (the black cloud) can affect your life.

The helper

High self-esteem can help us feel good about ourselves and the world around us. You might recognize the way things happen in this cycle.

You believe that you are an OK person - consciously or unconsciously. You feel relaxed inside and respect your own value. “I am capable”‌, “I am fun”‌. You have positive beliefs about yourself and what you can reach, “I deserve to be happy and respected by myself and others”‌.

You feel confident and the future looks promising.

You have a sense of trust in the things in your life.

You believe the world can, and is able to meet your needs and desires.

You feel more energetic about things. Your mind becomes livelier and fills with brilliant ideas! You begin to take action on these ideas.

You feel proud, satisfied and happy as you achieve the things you set out to do.

You know you have the personal power to make things happen in your life.

You think of creative ways to get around things that get in your way to success.

You feel alive and energetic as you take action.

You see and appreciate your successes.

You accept esteem and good feelings about yourself and prepare for this cycle to happen again and again.

This cycle is just a guide to see what can happen with our “self talk”‌ (the chatter inside of our heads - we all have it!) and the actions we take when we embrace our self-esteem and our feelings of self-worth.

You can invite high self-esteem into your life. High self-esteem can bring other things along with it.

Feelings of calm and relaxation.

A desire to look after yourself.

A positive attitude and a sense of being full of life!

Being open and communicative. Independence and self-responsibility.

A will to be social and get along with others.

Continuous personal growth.

The black-cloud

Everyone has bad days or even weeks! You have to take care that you don’t build yourself a ‘black cloud’ when:

You begin to feel that you’re not OK as a person.

You feel tense, empty and stressed inside. You see yourself as having little value. “I am useless”‌, “I am stupid”‌, “I always fail”‌.

You have negative beliefs about yourself and what you can do. “I will never be able to…”‌, “I can’t do…”‌, “That will never work”‌.

You lose confidence, and the future looks like nothing will change.

You have little trust in the things in your life, and that trust continues to shrink.

You believe the world can’t and won’t meet your personal needs and desires.

You stop bothering to try to achieve things.

You notice you are less happy and successful than other people.

You see other people as more capable or powerful than you are. You let them do things for you or take advantage of you.

You silently get annoyed, resentful or disappointed with those people.

You see yourself as nasty or “ungrateful”‌ for having those thoughts about others.

You tell yourself off. You punish yourself for being so horrible. When you see yourself, you see only the results of being abused by others or yourself.

You develop a stronger belief that you are not an OK person.

You push away self-esteem and prepare for this cycle to happen again and again.

These are just some examples of things that can have a lowering affect on our self-esteem. These are not your fault. They might be things that someone else has done to you, or the way that society is set up. You can’t change other people.

Source: cyh.com

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