Self-esteem refers to how much you like yourself.

So why do some people have low self-esteem?

It is very common to receive lots of negative messages as a child. It is fairly common for parents to tell active children "You are doing it the wrong way. Look at the mess you've made! Can't you can do anything right etc!" And those messages end up being stored (along with other childhood memories) in the back of your mind, a bit like a tape recording. In addition to these verbal messages, if you were made to feel worthless or unwanted though abuse or neglect, those experiences can also have a lasting impact.

Our early years are our most impressionable. Even when our adult lives provide good reasons to feel positive about ourselves the earlier messages tend to outweigh the recent.

So in adult life, when you go out to meet friends, or attend a job interview, or enrol in further study, the old thoughts and feelings come back. The messages become activated. Something tells you that you’re not as good as other people, that you will fail, that you will look stupid, that you don’t deserve what others have.

Can you improve self esteem?

There are many high achieving people suffering low self-esteem. The answer is not simply more achievement. The key to changing low self-esteem is to tackle the negative self-talk causing it.

However, if you try to move from believing you are worthless to thinking you are wonderful it won’t work. You don’t (yet) believe you are wonderful so it feels meaningless to pretend so. Start small with believable changes that you know to be true.

For example, you might think you are an unworthy or bad person. But you can also admit Adolf Hitler was worse. So, assuming you haven’t committed mass murder lately, you can genuinely accept you aren’t the worst person ever, even if it sometimes feels like you are.

So the realisation that “There are far worse people than me” becomes your own personal affirmation. An affirmation is a statement of truth that you are on your way to believing. Start your day telling yourself this (or something similar). Write it down on some little yellow sticky notes and place them in on your fridge, mirror, or your desk and recite your affirmation often each day. Gradually you are on your way to believing it. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen!!


It's a great start if you can lift your self-esteem off the floor, just a little bit.

This may not seem very uplifting to some people. But if you have spent your life thinking you are worthless it makes a huge difference to modify that belief, just a little bit. It is like a single candle being introduced to a dark room. The initial impact of the first candle is more profound than fifty more candles.

Eventually you can move onto increasingly positive affirmations.
The approval paradox

Try this exercise....

Dr Wayne Dyer, author of some of the world’s best selling self-help books, suggests the following exercise for rethinking self-esteem, self-confidence and approval.

Nominate one person you greatly admire or approve of. It could be someone you know well, or someone famous. It may be some historical figure like Winston Churchill, Lincoln, Ghandi, (or David Boon).

Now ask yourself how much time that person is likely to have spent seeking approval from other people? - Without exception we respect straight talking people who back their own judgment, and stick to their guns regardless of disapproval.

Dyer calls this the “Supreme Irony of Approval-Seeking Behaviour.” The people we approve of are the ones who have their own sense of worth and don’t check to see we approve.

Fritz Perls; founder of Gestalt Therapy, defines anxiety as that moment when we don’t know if we are going to get applause or tomatoes! The truly self-confident person, the person who radiates genuine confidence and charisma, is the one who doesn’t need to know.

A final thought on Self-esteem
The whole notion of self-esteem can be seen as a bit silly. The idea that one individual can have higher or lower worth than someone else is offensive to commonsense, to most religions, and to anti-discrimination legislation. We would do better to encourage people to pursue happiness and make the most of life without worrying about self-worth!

Another final thought on self-esteem
If you really must measure your worth try this formula. You are one person. There are 6.5 billion other people on earth. So you’re exact worth is one 6.5th billionth. Not much really. But then, if a couple of large countries like China and India were to wage nuclear war, your worth would increase dramatically to say, one in four billion. Would this make you a happier and more worthwhile person? Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!. Forget self-worth. Learn to not take yourself too seriously and concentrate on having a ball with life.



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