How to Banish Low Self Esteem

This article was originally published on healthandharmony.com.au

First, What is self esteem?

Self-esteem is defined by author and psychologist Nathaniel Branden as being “Confidence in our ability to think, to cope with the basic challenges of life, and in our right to be successful and happy.” Self-esteem is a measure of self worth, how much we value ourselves and what value we believe we are to others.

Where Does Self-Esteem Come From?

Self-esteem is influenced by a person’s upbringing and school life, family and friends, and environment. Experiences during childhood play a particularly large role in the shaping of our basic self-esteem—our successes and failures growing up, and how we were treated by the members of our immediate family, by our teachers, coaches, religious authorities, and by our peers, all contributed to the creation of our self-image.

Low Self-Esteem

Most of us suffer feelings of some form of inadequacy from time to time. This is natural because as human beings we are aware of our imperfections and the fact that sometimes, no matter hard we may try we cannot always achieve what we really want to in our lives.

However, people with low self esteem suffer relentless and destructive thoughts patterns. They have low opinions of themselves, treat themselves disdainfully, and have a poor self-image. People who dislike themselves rarely establish healthy relationships or communicate with others successfully. They feel uncomfortable with others—even more so when they draw attention to themselves in a group.

Symptoms of Low Self-Esteem

• Negative thinking
• Feelings of inadequacy
• Excessive reliance on others for approval and appreciation
• Submissiveness and fear of rejection
• Lack of initiative
• Lack of assertiveness
• Introversion and trouble communicating

Why do some people have low self esteem?

Somewhere along the way, the person learned or heard negative messages from others. From this, they developed a negative perception of themselves. A person with low self-esteem has a tendency to focus on and believe in negative self-talk while a person with high self-esteem dismisses them as inaccurate or irrelevant comments that have no power over them.

A child who is repeatedly criticized or treated unfairly, not allowed to think or act independently, denied love and attention, compared unfavourably with others, humiliated repeatedly in front of others or made to feel worthless and unwanted, very likely will develop low self esteem while growing up and suffer from feelings of inadequacy.

The following experiences tend to lower self-esteem:

• Being harshly or constantly criticised
• Being yelled at or beaten.
• Being ignored or ridiculed.
• Being expected to be ‘perfect’ or achieve unreasonable goals
• Repeated failures
• Feeling abandoned or without support during a difficult time
• Being discriminated against on the basis of skin colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, appearance, or ability

Dis-ease is Disharmony: Consequences of Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem causes one to develop an inferiority complex, and it becomes a stumbling block to your success in life. Low self-esteem can have devastating consequences:

• It can create anxiety, stress, loneliness and increased likelihood for depression.
• It can cause problems with friendships and relationships.
• It can seriously impair academic and job performance.
• It can lead to underachievement and increased vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse.

Worst of all, these negative consequences actually reinforce the negative self-image and can take a person further and further into a downward spiral of lower self-esteem. People often get trapped in this devasting downward spiral, and the lower their self esteem is…. the greater trouble they have with anxiety, depression, loneliness, with academic and career performance, with developing and maintaining friendships and relationship and much more. And the greater these problems become, the lower their self-esteem plummets. This often results in increased vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse, and increasingly non-productive or even actively self-destructive behaviour.

So how can we break out of the cyle?

Building Self Esteem

Self-esteem gives us the strength to take charge of our lives and to grow and learn from our experiences. Since a person’s experiences growing up, their successes and failures, and how hey are treated byother people all contribute to the creation of their self-image, the best place to start build self esteem is childhood.

Children with healthy self-esteem grow up to be happier and more successful. You can promote a healthy self image by:

• Praising and encouraging them
• Listening to them and considering what they say
• Speaking respectfully to them
• Giving them attention and hugs
• Encouraging nurturing friendships

That’s not to say it’s too late for adults, though. Quite the contrary!

Creating a Positive Self Image

You create a positive self-image with your thoughts. Your reality is a projection of your thoughts that are in harmony with yourself and your actions. We are not saying that by just sitting there and day dreaming any one can become successful or rich; that would be plain stupidity.

But it is true to say that our thoughts have a power of their own. If we can understand and utilise them properly, we can accomplish a lot more in our lives. A person with high self-esteem has already learned to think positively of him or herself and knows that we must prevent negative messages from the past from dominating our present feelings and behaviours.

Our thoughts and our state of being go hand in hand, and together they create the experience we call life. Positive thoughts create a positive life, bringing us its rich rewards. Our minds are different from our bodies. There is still a connection between the two, but not a perfect connection. There is some degree of harmony between the two, but not a perfect harmony. Our thoughts can be different from our actions. Our plans and ideas may remain mere ideas and empty plans. So, unfortunately, we cannot always implement what we think.

What we create in our minds we can manifest in some way in the physical plane. To accomplish this, we need faith and corresponding effort. Doubts and despair act as impediments while hope and faith sustain our actions and impel us towards cherished situations. If you truly believe that you are capable of accomplishing a goal, you are very likely to achieve it.

Creating Harmony: Accomplishing Your Goals

A person is healthy and happy not because he has a wonderful physique or looks great, but because his mind is tuned to health consciousness and every act of his is in harmony with it. If you know this secret, you accept responsibility for everything that happens to you.

You have the freedom to choose the best of the options you have in any given circumstances, to choose the correct response as well as the right action. You have the power to control your thoughts and your actions and you can mould them in whatever way you want to. Your life is your responsibility.

Indeed there are certain factors and forces, which are clearly out of your control, such as the social, political or the economic conditions. But you have the ability to adjust yourself to these circumstances and act appropriately in any given situation.

• So if something goes wrong, instead of blaming others and outside forces, look within yourself and find out what went wrong.
• Learn how to reconcile, resolve and accept what has happened in the past and know that it has made you a much stronger person.
• Acknowledge your fears and find out what´s really behind them. Many of your fears are likely to be groundless, but it is the thinking, attitudes and beliefs that cause much of the inappropriate fear.
• Fear is often a disguise for your lack of belief in yourself and your judgments.

The experience of self-esteem is everyone’s birthright.

What do we really mean when we say esteem? We mean respect, admire, honour or love. So what we are really implying here is the desire to experience more self-respect, self-appreciation and indeed, more self-love!