By Sakuni Weerasinghe
Earlier this week, I happened to be reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, in which he thinks out loud the following: “We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and employees, but how seldom do we nourish their self-esteem?”
If you stop for a minute to think of this, you may realise that self-esteem happens to be a largely neglected factor when it comes to our self-care on the daily. You may treat yourself to a nutritious meal, have a solid sleep routine in place, give yourself the downtime you need by watching a few movies on Netflix, etc., but what do you do within the day that has a direct impact on boosting your self-esteem?
Irrespective of the tines we are bombarded with the message “believe in yourself” in glittering fonts on social media, how often do we really take a look at ourselves and think “yes, I really do believe in myself”? Often we may adopt a cynical attitude and dismiss reasons to work on our self-esteem. Is self-esteem really important anyway?
Well, let’s take a look.
Self-esteem can be simply described as the way we look at ourselves. A personal evaluation, if you will. It encompasses how we think and feel about ourselves with respect to our worth and personal value. It is the degree to which we like ourselves and appreciate different aspects of ourselves. This includes our beliefs, thoughts, actions, habits, and appearances. Our experiences, particularly childhood experiences, contribute to the formation of self-esteem. It is influenced by a multitude of factors including our experiences at home, in school, any illness or disability we may have been subjected to, life events we have endured, and how others in your environment (family, friends, peers, neighbours, etc.) have responded to you.
As of recent, we have been also considering the role that media plays in the development of self-esteem. Even as adults, we are surrounded by messages from the environment around us – whether at work or in our personal relationships that either enhance or diminish our self-esteem. For example, prickly words by a co-worker or a rude comment under your Instagram selfie can lead most of us to review our opinions of ourselves based on how strongly we internalise them. As such, our self-esteem can be affected in a matter of minutes.
Often we refer to self-esteem across a dimension: Low self-esteem and high self-esteem. Here’s something no one told you: High self-esteem isn’t always healthy as had been previously thought. One study even found that those with fragile high self-esteem tended to be more verbally defensive in terms of blaming others, and giving excuses for offensive behaviour. So let’s review them in terms of unhealthy self-esteem and healthy self-esteem.
Unhealthy self-esteem looks like:
- Constant criticism of ourselves
- Constantly berating ourselves for mistakes made and a lack of forgiveness
- Hypersensitivity to criticism from outside parties, considering constructive criticism as personal attacks
- Irritability
- Worry, low mood, frequent anxious feelings
- Trouble with decision-making
- Frequent comparisons with others
- Perfectionism
- Difficulty accepting compliments
- Persistent feelings of insignificance and inadequacy
- Seeing both strengths and weaknesses and accepting them
- Feeling confident in oneself
- Assertive in expressing needs and opinions
- Confident decision-making; no back and forth
- Deep sense of appreciation of oneself and others
- Accepting others as they are and hence having deeply respectful and loving relationships
- Making it a point to live by their personal values every day
- Mistakes are seen as a learning experience
- Realistic expectations out of oneself and others