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Self Esteem and the Mind
By Jem Bacchus
Self esteem is an extremely important factor in life. It is
that innate feeling of high or low self worth you
experience and the value you attach to yourself. It
shapes your concept of yourself and determines your
success or failure in life.
It is well known that there is a positive and a negative
side to everything, and self esteem is not excepted.
Every person has a degree of both low and high self
esteem and it is up to us all to nurture one or the
other, either to acquire a destructive and pathetic
state of low self esteem or to build a good character
and self image through the development of a high self
esteem.
I believe that self esteem is a factor of your mind which
invariably affects your ability to do what is right.
Your self esteem is that emotion that cannot be
experienced or felt by anyone else, just the same as
they cannot think your thoughts, or experience your
joy. However, others can influence your thoughts to
instill in you a feeling of worthlessness, the basis of
low self esteem; also, by their encouragement, positive
suggestions and advice, instill in you a feeling of self
worth that can cause you to develop a sense of high
self esteem and eventually a strong self image.
Your self confidence hinges very largely upon how
much you esteem yourself. Having a low self esteem,
you tend to believe that success is out of your reach
and you will never develop the necessary degree of
self confidence to attain your goals.
On the other hand, as long as you think very highly of
yourself you will strive to attain your desires, and
nothing will daunt your determination.
Life is influenced way back in childhood - by your
upbringing, your surroundings, and your association
with others. Parents, friends, teachers, acquaintances,
the Church, television, all play a role in molding the
minds of children who believe what they are told; and
they eventually build their whole life upon the
suggestions of others. These take root in their minds
and, once instilled, it is very difficult to erase those
suggestions which, as a consequence, govern their
behavior in daily life.
It is no wonder that children become confused and
cannot rightly discern the truth. So it is important that
we as adults "train up a child in the way he should go:
and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs
22:6.
If children are told often enough that they will never
amount to anything, they believe the worst about
themselves, that they are incapable. They see
themselves as never being able to achieve anything
worthwhile.
Even through indirect negative suggestions by others,
children can be made to believe that they are of little
worth and can never play an important role in life.
Consequently, they lose confidence in themselves and
are afraid to be adventurous. As they grow into
adulthood, they fail to develop a sense of integrity,
assurance and independency.
They feel comfortable in the company of people whom
they feel they can control because it gives them a
sense of importance and authority. When they are in
the company of persons who they believe have a
higher integrity than they, they become shy and
uncomfortable because they believe that they cannot
cope and that they are being watched and assessed.
We see that self esteem is closely linked to self
confidence. The higher your self esteem, the greater
your self confidence. You feel convinced that you have
the ability to succeed in whatever you decide to do; as
a result, you become motivated to improve your
present position or business. By building your self
esteem, you acquire a feeling of self-assurance and
you are prepared to take challenges. A person who
has really high (not inflated) self esteem, by his
attitude would gain respect because he would always
have respect for others, be unselfish, compassionate,
and honest.
However, you must be careful not to develop an
inflated sense of high self esteem and become overly
confident since this could lead to arrogance and a false
sense of high self esteem. You can get so wrapped up
in yourself and feel so superior to others that you
become egotistic and self-conceited.
This is dangerous ground and could lead to your
wanting to subdue others, expecting everyone else to
honor you while you show lack of respect for them,
being callous, feeling above reproof, not being quite
true to your words, and feeling good about all these
things believing that you are always quite right and
eventually becoming too bossy. It would not be
surprising that you soon would become a bore and a
nuisance to others who would much prefer your room
to your company!
It is equally dangerous for your self esteem to be really
low as it is to be overly high. Having too low self
esteem you will have little or no self respect doing
things that are base and unbecoming, and have no
qualms about that. You tend to become unkind and
even fail to be quite upright in your dealings.
As is the case of self esteem being overly high, having
really low self esteem you lose respect for others, but
in this case although you want others to respect you,
something inside tells you that you do not deserve
their respect anyway.
Such persons can be very abusive, believing that they
must do this to establish their seniority and gain
attention. Sadly, this does not change the nagging
sense of inadequacy and inferiority complex.
To overcome a feeling of low self esteem, you must
disregard all negative thoughts about yourself. Do not
entertain such thoughts, make every effort to cancel
them out and replace them with as much positive
thoughts as will come flooding in your mind. You must
be in control of your own thoughts and develop the
ability to stomp any sort of negativity.
Do not live a life of misery because of low self esteem
and negative thoughts. Endeavor to entertain positive
thinking only; also, speak positively and those mean
negative thoughts will soon fade away. Give others a
reason to think highly of you, because by your actions
they will soon come to the conclusion that you have a
very low opinion of yourself. Remember that if you do
not esteem yourself no one else will esteem you.
Thankfully, there are great measures that can be taken
to change your thought process and re-condition your
mind to overcome low self esteem and build a high self
esteem for your ultimate good.
About the Author
Jem is author and webmaster of 1-personal-improvement.com website. Visit http://1-personal-improvement.com/selfhelp.html for other interesting topics on self help and get your free newsletter Aspects of Personal Improvement.
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/16804.html
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