Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
- Janis Joplin
1. Self - Esteem is how we value ourselves: Self-esteem is a psychological concept defining our sense of self-worth (and self-competence). A balanced level of self-esteem is like a charming sibling of self-confidence and assertiveness, helping us get the best out of life. When overdone, when we start to value ourselves 'way 'over' other, self-esteem becomes a selfish exercise, resulting in us becoming arrogant/narcissists.
2. Self esteem is important because we deserve happiness: When we are happy, feeling good about ourselves, we find it easy to treat other people with respect, kindness and best intentions. Thus, you see, self-esteem is a fundamental quality to have.
Every human being, with no exception, for the mere fact to be it, is worthy of unconditional respect of everybody else; he deserves to esteem himself and to be esteemed.
- Carl Rogers
3. They even measure self-esteem nowadays: They are quiz-type exercises mostly. The more famous of these self-esteem evaluators are RSES (Rosenberg, 1965) and Coopersmith Inventory.
4. Self-esteem develops via experience: Things like unconditional parental love from parents, academic achievement during schooling years, successful relationships among friends during adolescence and youth are very important for development of our self esteem.
On the other hand, things such as shame and/or bullying makes us feel lonely, depressed, anxious, all leading to low-self esteem as well as other health problems.
5. The reason for low self esteem: Psychologists say two thinking biases help build low self-esteem inside us. These two biases are biased perception and biased interpretation.
Biased perception: When we are quick to find anything that fits with our negative ideas about ourselves, filtering out anything that contradicts them. In other words, we what we did wrong, ignoring what we did right.
Biased interpretation: When we distort the meanings we attach what we experience, even if it was a positive experience. For example, someone says we are looking good in a new dress, and we think they think we are fat or something.
6. How people with high self-esteem deal with life: They never fear success or failure. Mistakes and setbacks are temporary detours on the road to their goals. They bounce back after disappointments, map a new route to their objectives and concentrate on the next project with undiminished enthusiasm. (Source: The Wall Street Journal)
7. Seek the right amount self esteem: Neither low, nor too high, or else we become arrogant, narcissist people - Egotists who think they are always right.
It is good to act on your belief, to stand up for what we believe in, to work with others readily, to ask people for help, and to try new things in life.
But we should do it all in moderation, or we risk becoming doing 'stupid/destructive' things, even hurting others, so high we are on our 'self esteem' trip' that we start to think we can do no wrong.
Thank you for reading.
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