Self-esteem is simply your evaluation of your own worth. Feeling good about yourself is vital to living a happy, healthy life.
When someone has low self-esteem, seeing little value in themselves, it can lead to depression, cause someone to fall short of their true potential and cause the person to tolerate abusive situations and relationships.
There are four common ways we reinforce feelings of low self-esteem.
- Waiting for the perfect moment.
Rather than living in the present, we feel we have to wait until we are smarter, richer, or happier before we take action. If we go ahead and do things, instead of waiting for the elusive perfect moment, we usually find that we start feeling smarter, richer and happier after all.
- Ignoring our own needs.
While pleasing someone else can make us feel good, that isn’t true if helping others always means we are putting our own needs on hold. Sometimes it’s important to recognize and voice our wants and to ask for help in small ways. Self-esteem increases when our relationships become more reciprocal.
- Trying to make everything perfect.
It’s nice to get it all right, but we sometimes put too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect. It’s also okay to make mistakes. Self-esteem rises when we are able to view life as a work-in-progress that allows us to live and play in the moment.
- Never taking chances.
When we stay safe all the time inside our comfort zone we end up not progressing. Even though trying something new can make us feel uncomfortable, the more you take chances, the more opportunities you give yourself to feel proud and to improve your self-esteem.
At CounselingWorks, we help people meet their mental, emotional and spiritual needs. A counselor can be a great asset to help you evaluate you personal levels of self esteem and help you set goals to improve. Learn more about our counseling services.
This article is provided by the American Counseling Association. Visit the ACA website at www.counseling.org.
