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Take One Giant Leap To Boosting Your Self Esteem
By: Clive Johnson
How we perceive ourselves is of course central to the concept of self esteem. In turn, self esteem has a large impact on how good we feel about ourselves, how satisfied we are with our lot, how confident we are that we will achieve our ambitions, and how impervious we are to facing obstacles. Having a positive self esteem is therefore essential for achieving what you want; indeed the image you have of yourself is one the single most important factors for leading a happy and healthy life. So this is something that’s worth putting a lot of emphasis on if you’re self image is on the low side. Once you’ve built up a positive self esteem, you’ll be able to hold onto it as you move forward—it won’t ‘come and go’ as easily as many other perspectives you may hold about yourself.
Putting new value on your worth will set you working toward achieving goals, seeking out opportunities, and brushing off gremlins. And if you see yourself as being likeable, then others will pick up on a confident vibe and be more ready to open up to you. Building a positive self esteem is possible even in what might seem the most hopeless of situations. Take the example of many people who are imprisoned, stripped of normal social dignities and freedoms, who’ve set about re-educating themselves, who write a novel, offer themselves as a moral support for other prisoners or formulate great business plans for when they’re released.
Defining Self Esteem
The psychologist Carl Rogers defined self esteem as the gap between a person’s ideal view of their self and their actual current self image. If there’s a big gap between your ideal and actual perception, you’ll have a poor self esteem—clearly, not something to hang on to. On the other hand, a small gap or none at all should mean that you have high value for ourselves.
Improving Self Esteem
Bridging any gap between your ideal self and self image involves adjusting your assessments of one or either of these, or more often than not both. If the standards you set for measuring our ideal self are too high or inappropriate, then there’s a good chance you’ll never achieve them. Such standards might include the types of behaviour you see as important for gaining acceptance by others. Your view of your ideal self may be influenced by looking at others around you, be modelled on a famous celebrity, or result from what you were conditioned to believe was ‘right’ and achievable at school or through your upbringing. If you can relate to the tale of past times when children were put into streams at school, you might want to consider trying one or two things to prove to yourself that your old masters were wrong. If you’re bad at maths, try taking a short statistics course; if you were last to be chosen for baseball, join a gym—chances are you may actually enjoy a new experience you may have been avoiding for many years simply because others told you to!
Notably, it’s the past and the ‘model behaviour’ set by others that have the biggest influence on our ideal, and we’ve been shaping expectations ever since we could exercise a judgement of who we were and what we saw as being important relative to others (babies, by the way, aren’t born with either a positive or low self esteem). Sadly, society generally makes a good job of pulling us down and pointing out all the reasons we can’t do something.
There’s a potential twist however when we come to think about self image, which is usually more connected to the ‘here and now’ than our self ideal. The problem is that many of us filter out the things we don’t want to believe about ourselves, repressing or denying them, so we may actually start with a false view about ourselves. For example, a man who finds himself amongst a group of high IQ colleagues may shut out any doubt in his own IQ that might make him feel inferior or unconfident to express his views. This might not matter if you can maintain this false premise and don’t need to address the things you don’t want to admit about yourself. Denial may actually be an important protective mechanism, allowing you to get on with some aspects of your lives, and—as in the case of the man mixing with the highly intelligent—can actually bolster your self esteem when you need that most.
The simple approach to building a better self image is to indulge yourself in positive ‘self talk’. Taken seriously, the idea of regularly staring in the mirror and telling yourself that you’re a tiger, are worthy, beautiful or whatever really works. Beware that when you start to try to ‘talk to yourself’, the gremlins will set about their work – critics will try to put you down and spoil your game. This is the time to stand firm and remember that the person who knows you best is you – and so it’s your opinion that should matter most.
Closing the gap between your ideal self and your self image may well take time, and over time, you may well feel able to ‘notch up’ a few runs on the ladder for measuring your ideal self than when you start—though having a relatively modest ideal self is no bad thing! How you assess your ideal and actual selves is of course a personal matter. Finding and sustaining a positive self esteem may take a little work, but the rewards are truly dramatic and life-lasting!
Clive Johnson is a career change specialist, self discovery & self development coach, and author of the ‘Self Discovery Toolkit’. He is a member of the Institute of Career Guidance, European and Coaching Mentoring Council and European Coaching Institute, holds an MBA from Henley Management College and editor of WBN’s Career section. To contact Clive, email info@proactivestyle.com or call 0800 881 8592. www.proactivestyle.com.
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