Building self esteem

BUILDING self esteem is something that, if done successfully, can change your life. Being able to accept yourself, to have confidence in yourself, and to know that you are good enough can take you a lot further in life compared to thinking that you’re worthless and that no one likes you or accepts you. If you want to build self esteem, the first thing you need to understand is how it got so low in the first place.

Understand that much of how you see yourself was formed from a very young age. For most people, having low self esteem has to do with their parents. To be more exact, it had to do with your misinterpretation of what you experienced or what you were told as a child. One of the most common beliefs that people with low self esteem have is the belief that they are not good enough. No matter how hard they try or how well they do, they will feel like it just wasn’t enough. This is most likely caused by having parents who said things that made you believe you weren’t good enough. They may have communicated this verbally or through their body language. Either way, the message you received was that you were not good enough. Understand that reality and what you perceive to be reality can be two very different things.

Building your self esteem will be a lot easier when you realise this. One of the most powerful ways is to simply recognise the fact that you have been looking at the world through a lens that only focused on things that reinforced your false belief that you aren’t good enough. Realise that all of the so called “evidence” that you have seen up until this point of your life that “proves” you aren’t good enough or people don’t like you or you’re not important was a distortion of reality caused by your belief that you are worthless.

Now that you know better, use your logic and common sense and go back into your childhood memories, to those times when you were told that you were a piece of crap, and challenge those statements. You are much more than who you think you are. Besides, now that you know you have been wrong in thinking that you aren’t good enough, you can begin to take charge of your life. Building your self esteem comes down to understanding that you can control your beliefs. The belief in who you are and what you are capable of achieving in life is up to you to decide, not your parents and others.
published in The Kathmandu Post , Link: http://epaper.ekantipur.com/ktpost/showtext.aspx?boxid=12048109&parentid=20670&issuedate=6122012