You can’t touch it, but it affects how you feel. You can’t see it, but it’s there when you look at yourself in the mirror. You can’t hear it, but it’s there every time you talk about yourself. What is this important but mysterious thing? It’s your self-esteem! Self Esteem is defined as confidence in your own merit as an individual. Our self-esteem is instilled in us during our youth. There are two types of self-esteem. There is high self-esteem which is when you feel good about yourself, and then there is low self-esteem which is when you feel bad about yourself.
Being constantly criticized by family, friends, and society tends to slowly strip us of our feelings of self-worth. Your self-esteem, however, is something more fundamental than the normal ups and downs associated with situational changes. For people with good self-esteem, normal ups and downs may lead to temporary fluctuations in how they feel about themselves, but only to a limited extent. In contrast, for people with poor self-esteem, these ups and downs drastically impact the way they see themselves.
A dynamic relationship exists between self-esteem and skill development. As a child improve in self-esteem, his academic competence increases. And as that competence increases, his self-esteem improves. One of the main factors differentiating humans from other animals is the awareness of self: the ability to form an identity and then attach a value to it. In other words, you have the capacity to define who you are and then decide if you like that identity or not. The problem of self-esteem is this human capacity for judgment.
The Essay on Effects Of Low Self Esteem On Children
... 24, 2001 What is Low self-esteem? In most cases, children with low self-esteem feel that the important adults and peers ... perceive as stupid or inappropriate, they instantly feel humiliated and suffer from "self-esteem attacks" (Sharma, 1999). At these moments they ... For parents, helping their child feel lovable and capable, the two ingredients of self-esteem are feeling loved and capable. ...
It’s one thing to dislike certain colors, noises, shapes, or sensations. But when you reject parts of yourself, you greatly damage the psycho logical structures that literally keep you alive. Judging and rejecting yourself causes enormous pain. Now-a-days many organizations and the international council on self-esteem serves to promote public and personal awareness of the benefits of a healthy sense of self-esteem and personal responsibility and to establish conditions within families, schools, businesses and governments that foster these qualities.
Because self-esteem is a feeling – not a skill – it can only be measured by observing the way in which a person acts or behaves. However, what we feel about ourselves is not based solely on what we do. It usually involves our relationships with others and whether we feel worthwhile as people. We have a basic human need to be wanted, noticed, and included. Observing ourselves in relation to other people can be a helpful source of learning and feedback.
Yet all too often comparison slips into competition. The reality is we are all different. Each of us has strengths and limitation which we need to learn about and learn to live with. Do not assume you are not important; other people have an effect on you and you affect them. It is no good waiting for others or circumstances to leave us feeling better about ourselves. So accept responsibility for your own actions: as we cannot make other people change, we need to make the changes ourselves.
