Self-esteem can make or break your life. Are you satisfied with yourself? How high is your self-esteem? How is your self-confidence? Do you think positively about yourself? Are you worth it? You feel happy and create the feeling of happiness by building your self-esteem. What are the benefits of good self-esteem? Do you have low self-esteem?
What is it?
What is self-esteem? Self-esteem is the value that you value yourself. If you have high self-esteem, you mainly think positively about yourself. Thoughts about yourself may include:
- “I’m a nice person!” or
- ,I’m fine the way I am!, or
- “I’m good at what I do!”
If you have low self-esteem, you often think negatively and critically about yourself. Thoughts about yourself may include:
- “I’m not attractive, sweet or kind (enough)!”
- “I’m not smart (enough)!”
- “I always fall short!”
Successful life
How you think about yourself are the building blocks of your life. Your self-esteem can make or break your life. Good self-esteem is the most important building block of a successful and happy life. How can you become happy if you think negatively about yourself? How can you build a successful life if you think too critically about yourself? If you know how to appreciate yourself, you will not feel insecure.
Advantages
What are the benefits of good self-esteem?
- Sufficient self-esteem takes away your insecurity,
- Sufficient self-esteem takes away your jealousy,
- Sufficient self-esteem takes away your shyness,
- Sufficient self-esteem gives you the strength to say “no!” more often. to say,
- Sufficient self-esteem gives you control over your own life,
- Sufficient self-esteem gives you a strong feeling,
- Sufficient self-esteem gives you an optimistic feeling.
Low self-esteem
Do you have low self-esteem? How do you know if you are dealing with low self-esteem?
- Do you have the feeling that life is happening to you instead of you having control over your own life?
- Do you let others determine what your life looks like?
- Do you let circumstances determine what your life looks like?
If you answered yes to the above, then you have low self-esteem. You will often think that it doesn’t matter what you do. However? Of course, as humans we do not have control over all aspects of life, but many things do!
Accept yourself
Let’s be honest: it is difficult, very difficult, to accept yourself and think positively about yourself. But it’s not impossible! The feeling that often bothers us is: It’s not good enough fast! Where does this negativity come from? Because we all suffer from it and it hinders us all if we want to accept ourselves. Modesty. We grew up with the idea of being modest. As a result, we mainly pay attention to those things that we don’t think are good (enough) about ourselves.
Why is it so hard?
Why is it so difficult to accept yourself? Growing up, we had to deal with modesty as well as our environment. Accepting yourself as you are starts as a child and is nourished by the love and attention of people around you. A child who grows up in a loving environment absorbs this love like a sponge and learns to accept itself positively. A child who grows up in an environment where many critical voices can be heard, the child will develop a lower sense of self-esteem: You see, you never do it well (enough)!
Successes and failures
In the further life of the child, this sense of self-esteem will be strengthened or weakened. If the child is bullied at school, self-esteem will decrease significantly. But also later, during successes and failures in the child’s further life, self-esteem will increase or decrease. Yet everyone can learn to increase their self-esteem, yet everyone can learn to accept themselves.
Self confidence
What is self-confidence? Self-confidence is that you have accepted yourself. You can learn self-confidence. You don’t gain self-confidence by suppressing negative thoughts: the stronger they come back. You also don’t have to force yourself to act positive. But making a list of positive qualities about yourself is a very good start! Take this list with you everywhere and every time you get the feeling that your self-esteem is starting to weaken: take a look at your list of positive qualities. Want to know more about increasing self-confidence? Read the special about self-confidence.