Self-Esteem

Greetings earthlings, it's me again.

This is the final blog entry for LMS and the topic i'll be touching on is Self-esteem.

Now, what is self-esteem?

Self-esteem is our convictions about our value and self-worth. Self-esteem embodies concepts like self-respect, self-awareness and self-confidence.

So how do we know whether we have a healthy(high) self-esteem or a low self-esteem?

If you often find yourselve
-thinking that you are unworthy of love, friendship, family..
-feeling that you don't deserve happiness..
-always worrying about how people think of you..whether they will like you..
-thinking to yourself that you are a complete failure..
etc.etc.etc
These feelings of doubt and unworthiness shows that you have a low self-esteem

On the other hand
If you are..
-happy being you
-know that you are loved
-mostly unaffected by people's criticism of you
-know that you can be successful if you want to
-hardly worries about what people think about you
etc.etc.etc
This shows that you have a healthy self-esteem

There are many self-esteem tests that you can find online and infact, i've done one and this is what it says..

"Your results indicate that your sense of self-worth is very healthy. You rarely, if ever, put yourself down or fall victim to self-depreciating statements. There are certain attitudes and beliefs that have been found to contribute to and "feed" a positive self-image, and you appear to have most of them. Examples would be believing that you deserve to be loved or respected, believing that you’re good enough for someone, and focusing on your good qualities rather than only your perceived faults. While you may not necessarily feel all of these things all of the time, your opinion of yourself is quite positive. This is a healthy attitude to have, as a poor sense of self-worth can hold you back from pursuing your goals, cause you unnecessary stress, and even become self-fulfilling prophecies. "

I am very happy with the results and i know it is true. I do have healthy self-esteem.

My reason?

If i didn't, i would have been in depression already.

I have a group of very close friends who enjoy criticising and insulting others, whether it's your looks, your height, your grades, almost everything. I've been called short (which i know i am), fat (which i know i am NOT), stupid (even though i did better then all of them in Olvls haha) among others. But despite all these criticisms, we remained close friends because i know they just enjoy saying it and not because they really think im fat and stupid, maybe just short, the undeniable truth. But so what if i'm short? I can't let that get me down, or any further down... hahaha And since i already know nothing good comes out of their mouth, all the more i shouldn't let it affect me! And besides, despite their uncorrigible-terrible-vegetable stinking mouth, deep down they do really care for me. I know that.

Perhaps i should be thankful to this special group of friends. Even though the critisms may have hurt at some point of time(i am human too you know) but as time goes by, i have slowly become immune to it. Now i am able to take criticisms as a pinch of salt, block them out, ignore them...
because i know that sometimes you can't change people's opinions of you, just like how you can't force someone to like you, but what you can do is let it be and love yourself even more. :D

Good self esteem is important because it lets you feel proud of yourself and what you can do, it gives you the power to respect yourself, to love yourself for who you are even when you make mistakes. It gives you the courage to voice your opinions and make decisions and do things you've never done before. It gives you strength to face your challenges and to recover from failures and disappointments. It gives you the freedom to exercise independence in thoughts and actions and lastly, it gives you the ability to communicate with other people and in maintaining meaningful relationships.

There are so many benefits in having good/healthy self-esteem, so what are you waiting for?

But how...?

You can practice self-affirmation, by making a list of things you are good at and looking at it to remind yourself that you are not a failure. Personally, i look at my Olvl certificate. HAHA Just kidding!

Secondly, you can deal with your negative beliefs. When you hear negative voices in your head telling you your not good enough, not thin enough, not tall enough, not smart enough etc. you should just shut it out. By doing so, you take away the power away from these comments that affects you.

Thirdly, positive thinking. For example when people tell me i'm short, i tell them the advantages of being short instead. There are two sides to a coin, all you have to do is focus on the postive and ignore the negative.

Fourthly, visualise. Imagine yourself getting top in the whole school for Olvls. Imagine yourself representing Singapore in the olympics 2008. Visualise, let your imagination run wild! By doing so, you create positive thoughts and images of success that will help boost your confidence, lift your performance and force out the negative thoughts!

Fifthly, do anchoring, a technique that makes use of associations in order to help us cope with situations that might make us feel nervous, fearful or self-doubts. For example sometimes when i feel that i'm being left out by a group of friends or something, i'll read the birthday cards/christmas cards that they've given me in the past and remind myself that this is probably not their intention to ignore me, it just happens.

Sixth-ly, surround yourself with positive and supportive people. Don't hang with the emo kid! Hang out with positive-thinking happy-go-lucky take-life-as-it-is people!

Seven-ly, take your time to enjoy life.

And lastly, accept yourself for who you are, and remember that there are things about yourself that you can't change, such as your skin colour so don't fret about it!

All in all, focus on the good things that you do and all your great qualities, learn to love and accept yourself for who you are, and realising that you are valuable and important helps your self-esteem to shine!

And a last tip from me!

Look into the mirror every morning and tell yourself, "I love you" and as you turn around, tell yourself "at least someone loves me" =P

This will DEFINITELY boost your self-esteem!




credits: http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/emotion/self_esteem.html
http://www.queendom.com/queendom_tests/transfer
our lecture notes