Self-esteem: The Lazy Person’s Guide!

Improving your self-esteem isn’t about becoming selfish, loud, competitive and arrogant. It’s about taking care of yourself so that you have the strength and energy to help and give to others when appropriate.

The problem with self-esteem based on temporary externals is that you only feel good about yourself when things are going well, but when things don’t go so well, you lose your self-esteem.

To prevent this, self-esteem needs to be grounded firmly in self-acceptance. The concept of self-acceptance is based on the knowledge that we are all fallible human beings, we all make mistakes and nobody is perfect. So although you would like to be 100 per cent perfect all the time, the important thing is to learn to accept that sometimes you will be wrong and you are fallible.

MEEK INHERITING THE EARTH

sets much store by self-esteem

work out from these two lists which person stands a greater chance of happiness in life.

THAT’S IT, I CAN’T DO IT
Negative thinkers often tend to think that if something has gone wrong once it will always go wrong.
You have a bad day at work and you decide

Rejection may not come from within the home. Low self-esteem could start with harsh criticism, rejection, ridicule or abuse outside the home, most commonly in school. The disapproving comments of teachers or negative nicknames like ‘spotty’, ‘fatty’ or ‘four-eyes’ are common examples of rejection. They can have an injurious and lasting impact on our sense of self-worth.

High self-esteem isn’t the same as selfishly serving your own interests and having an inflated idea of your own self-worth. You can easily spot the difference between a person with a healthy sense of self-esteem and a person who is arrogant.

Self-esteem without self-acceptance sets you up for disappointments, stress and unhappiness when misfortune arises and self-esteem is attacked. You need to learn to accept yourself, warts and all. One advantage of this is that it becomes easier to accept others and their fallibilities.

Whatever the cause, when self-esteem is low, the world you live in is a frightening and unpredictable one because you are always dependent on the whims of others or the turn of events. If you can compare your life to a car, when self-esteem is low you are not in the driving seat. Other people or events are steering the wheel, while you crouch in the back wondering where they will take you next. That’s exactly what low self-esteem does to your life. You are alive, but you aren’t really living.