Self Esteem
Self-esteem is simply the way you feel about yourself. It is the product of your evaluation of your
real-self compared with your ideal-self.
Everyone has an ideal-self. This
is who you believe you should be. (Remember, "shoulds" almost always
add unnecessary stress). You formed this
schema of the ideal-self at an early age based upon what people said you
“should” be. That is, as a child,
praise was given not for who you were, but what you were able to do or how you
were able to act. As a result, you formed
schemas or ideas about what a "good girl" or "good boy"
should be.
Due to children's immature reasoning, many things are
overgeneralized and made into global, stable and internal attributions. They
start to think… “I have to be [this way] all the time or I am a bad
person.” This tends to create an
unrealistic ideal-self. For instance,
many girls grow up with media influences that show women who do it all, and
they are told (directly or indirectly) that to be good enough, they need to be
attractive and successful partners, mothers and business-women. This is called the superwoman
stereotype. The same types of influences
make little boys believe they must always be strong, successful, good partners
and primary providers. In reality, it is
nearly impossible for either gender to do all of those things all the
time. Your real-self is who you are with
all of your inherent imperfections. Your
self esteem is how you feel about yourself when you compare the “Me I should
be” with the “Me I am.” You may see that
you have room for improvement. That is
actually a good thing. You can always
improve. When you look at your real-self
the “Me I am,” how do you feel about that person?
To improve self-esteem, you must look at all of the things
on your “Me I should be” list. Identify
which ones are really important to help you have a rich and meaningful
life. Then comes the hard part. For the things you decide are less important,
cross them off and change the way you feel about them (that is, realize that it
is not important to you to be good at everything and you are loveable without
that characteristic). For example, I may
never be able to run a 24 minute 5k again or be as thin as I was in college,
but neither one of those things is critical to helping me have the life I want
right now.
If it is something important then you need to make a plan to
change yourself. For example, being a
loving and available parent for my kids is central in my vision of a rich and
meaningful life. Because of some health
issues, working out like I used to could kill me. So, I will stop trying to
push my limits at the gym so I can be there for my kids.
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