Why is Building Self-Esteem so Hard?
People wanting to build self-esteem often have a hard time of it. There are so many illusions out there in the world about how to feel good about yourself. If you watch much television, media and advertising, you’ll be bombarded with messages about how to improve your self-image. Even though we know it’s only to make us buy something, this need to build our self-esteem is seduced by the messages we receive. Sadly, the more we try to build our self-esteem with these “solutions”, the worse we tend to feel about ourselves.
A Great Self-Esteem Building Exercise
Recently, with a few of my clients I’ve set them a self-esteem building exercise, which is a simple, yet powerful question. At the root of most people’s self-esteem issues is a lack of love that they have for themselves. Not a romantic love, more a deep joy and respect that you have for yourself – it doesn’t interfere with your wanting to improve yourself and it doesn’t make you arrogant or egotistical. From experience, most people aren’t able to even begin contemplating loving themselves. They can’t find things about themselves which they might be able to love (sometimes even “like” is an issue). So how do we cut through this stuff and help build self-esteem?
The Self-Esteem Building Question
So here goes… grab a pen and a paper and write down the answers that come to you. If you find you are stuck, ask yourself the question out loud and keep doing so until you begin to write.
If there were things about me that I could love, what would they be?
Your answers to this question will help you to put in place one the foundations for building your self-esteem.
Hi dan
Interesting topic and one a friend and I were discussing over a cuppa only yesterday. My friend has 2 young children and I think she is a really wise woman as well as a brilliant Mum.
She is teaching her children such positive things about themselves from an early age. I’m sure they are going to grow up to be well rounded human beings and beautiful people too.
I was blessed with having affirming parents so not only did I know they loved me for me, they taught me to love myself too.
Patricia Perth Australia
Hi Patricia,
Thanks for your comment. It’s great when kids can learn and discover their own positive virtues – the world will quickly take advantage of those that fail to do so.
That’s really interesting what you said about a lack of love for oneself being the root of difficulty building self-esteem. I think it’s gotten harder to love oneself in the modern age. Constantly being surrounded by so many people, and being connected to the whole world through the internet, it’s very easy to feel mediocre. If I were to have lived 200 years ago in a small town, I might feel much more unique and different from those around me. Sure, there would be an array of other challenges, but I bet it would be easier to feel good about myself and my uniqueness. I guess it’s hard to say. Thanks for the stimulating post though. Really got me thinking.
Hi Ben,
Really interesting points you raise here – this feeling of mediocre-ness that pervades our modern age. It’s really quite a delusion we’ve created for ourselves – the fact that somehow feel connected to the whole world through the internet gives it a kind of essence – almost as though it might be a being of some kind! Obviously, I don’t believe it is for a second, but that thinking really gives us a delusion to confuse our spiritual beliefs, whatever they may be.
Hey Dan,
That question may somehow sound very easy to answer for most of us. However, I was thinking how others would respond to this. They may easily answer with “none”. Self-confidence is not very easy to acquire if you don’t have it. But as you said, they need to think of an answer which means they need to help themselves, too.
Good point Paul, but being a smarty-pants, I have another question to add… “If there were some, what would they be?”
great article.
From my point of view , to build self confidence, one should take time to write down all the best things that he has in himself, reading them and reminding himself about his uniqueness EVERYDAY. In this way, he will be able to convince his subconcious mind that he is wonderful and this can bring up his self esteem level.
He can decide all the areas that he wanted to improve and take the right action.
I always read some articles about self development to improve myself more.
Thank u for sharing
)
Thanks Angel,
That’s a really good tip.