What Is Self Esteem?

Self esteem is generally the value you have placed on yourself.  This is generally a mental condition that controls how you perceive yourself to the world and how you think the world thinks about you. This mental condition affects your trust to others, work and eve relationships. It influences every aspect of your life. People with positive self esteem have the courage and versatility to take charge of their lives and grow from the mistakes they had made in the past without fearing that they will be rejected.

Although self esteem is simply a mental condition, there are some signs that would show that you have high esteem. Among them include: self-direction, confidence, a recognition of personal strengths, non-blaming behavior, ability to accept mistakes from others, ability to learn fro the mistakes you had made in the past, ability to solve difficulties, optimism, feeling comfortable despite a wide range of emotions, an autonomous and cooperative attitude, a good sense of personal limitations, ability to trust others, capability of saying no and good self-care just to mention a few.

When you have low self esteem, you develop a debilitating condition that keeps you away from realizing your full potential. The condition makes you feel useless, incompetent and incapable. In fact, since low self esteem makes you feel bad about yourself; your life is entangled by the following feelings: perfectionist attitude, pessimistic view of life, lack of trust even to those that are affectionate to you, fear of taking risks, blame shifting on others, fearing being ridiculed, developing of feelings that you are not loved or cannot be loved and depending on others to make decisions for you.

                                                                   

 Raising self esteem can be a difficult process. It involves letting go of ingrained feelings that may have been built over a lifetime. This sounds easy but it might take a long time, hard work and professional intervention to overcome it. Patients are trained to develop thinking attitudes. These thinking techniques are called affirmations and are crucial for helping patients shed off the old shell that could be making them stay aloof with others.   

Application of affirmations is an effective way that many people use to negative self-talk. These are simply positive messages that you tell yourself every day until they become part of your beliefs and feelings. They work best when you are relaxed. People are often upset when they are painting a negative image of themselves. These feelings should be countered with positive affirmations. For instance, instead of saying: `I made serious blunder. I’m really stupid and no good in this stuff.’ substitute it with, ` I made a really serious mistake but now I have learnt from it and will have capability to deliver perfection.’

The following are some positive affirmations that can work wonders in improving your self esteem: I am likable and lovable; I have respect for myself and others; I am creating healthy and loving relationship, I care about myself, I accept myself just like I am, life is nice, and I am fond of being part of it, etc.