The beliefs we have about ourselves, those qualities, abilities, ways of feeling or thinking that we attribute to ourselves, make up our “personal image” or “self-image.” We feel smart or stupid, capable or incapable, we like ourselves or we don’t. This self-assessment is very important, since the realization of our personal potential and our achievements in life largely depend on it.
In this way, people who feel good about themselves, who have good self-esteem, are able to face and resolve the challenges and responsibilities that life poses. On the contrary, those with low self-esteem tend to limit themselves and fail. In this Psychology-Online article, we are going to offer you advice on self-esteem and improvement. In addition, we will provide you with a series of techniques to improve self-esteem.
What is self-esteem
People are complex and very difficult to define in a few words. As there are so many nuances to take into account, it is important Do not make generalizations from one or two aspects. Examples:
- We can be very talkative with friends and be quiet at home.
- Being a bad soccer player does not mean that we are a disaster at all sports.
- Just because we don’t do well on an exam doesn’t mean that we are useless for our studies.
Self-concept is developing little by little throughout lifeeach stage contributes, to a greater or lesser degree, experiences and feelings, which will result in a general feeling of worth and inability.
Definition of self-esteem
Self-esteem is the assessment we make of ourselves based on the sensations and experiences that we have incorporated throughout our lives. It is the result of the interaction of the image what we have about ourselves with the appreciation that we feel towards ourselves. Thanks to self-esteem we are able to face daily challenges with security and confidence.
How does self-esteem form?
In the childhood, we discover that we have hands, legs, head and other parts of our body. We also discover that we are different beings from others and that there are people who accept us and people who reject us. From those early experiences of acceptance and rejection by others is when we begin to generate an idea about what we are worth and why we are worth or no longer worth. The chubby child from childhood can be a happy adult or an unhappy adult; the final happiness has a lot to do with the attitude that others showed towards their excess weight since childhood.
during adolescence, one of the most critical phases in the development of self-esteem, the young person needs to forge a firm identity and fully understand their possibilities as an individual; He also needs social support from others whose values coincide with his own, as well as making himself valuable to move confidently into the future. It is the time in which the boy goes from dependence on the people he loves (the family) to independence, to trusting in his own resources.
If during childhood you have developed strong self-esteem, it will be relatively easy for you to overcome the crisis and reach maturity. If you feel worthless, you run the risk of seeking the security you lack through seemingly easy and rewarding, but ultimately destructive, paths such as drug addiction. In that case, you will have to learn to.
Low self-esteem is related to a distortion of thinking (inappropriate way of thinking). People with low self-esteem have a very distorted view of what they really are; At the same time, these people maintain extraordinarily perfectionistic demands about what they should be or achieve. The person with low self-esteem maintains a dialogue with himself that includes thoughts such as:
- Overgeneralization: From an isolated fact, a universal, general rule is created for any situation and moment: I have failed once (in something specific); I will always fail! (it is internalized as if I will fail at everything).
- Global designation: Pejorative terms are used to describe oneself, instead of describing the error by specifying the temporal moment in which it happened: How clumsy (I am)!
- Polarized thinking: All or nothing thinking. They take things to extremes. There are absolute categories. It’s black or white. You are with me or against me. I do it right or wrong. Relative evaluations are not accepted or given. Either it’s perfect or it’s not worth it.
- Self-accusation: One finds oneself guilty of everything. It’s my fault, I should have realized it!
- Personalization: We assume everything has to do with us and we compare ourselves negatively to everyone else. He looks bad, what have I done to him?
- Thought reading: You assume that others are not interested in you, that they don’t like you, you think that they think badly of you…without real evidence of it. They are assumptions that are based on strange and unverifiable things.
- Control fallacies: You feel that you have total responsibility for everything and everyone, or you feel that you have no control over anything, that you are a helpless victim.
- Emotional reasoning: If I feel that way it is true. We feel alone, without friends and we believe that this feeling reflects reality without stopping to contrast it with other moments and experiences. “If I’m really useless”; because he “feels” that it is really like that
Techniques and exercises to improve self-esteem
Self-esteem can be changed and improved. We can do several things to improve self-esteem, among many possible exercises, we have decided to develop the following project:
Develop projects for personal improvement and improvement of self-esteem
An important part of our self-esteem is determined by the balance between our successes and failures. Specifically, achieving what we want and seeing our needs satisfied provides positive emotions and increases self-esteem.
Striving to improve self-esteem has been suggested as a way to improve self-esteem. change the things we don’t like about ourselves. Let’s work on a method that can make these changes easier. This method is composed of four steps fundamentals:
- Consider a clear and concrete goal.
- Set the tasks that must be done to achieve it.
- Organize tasks in the order in which they should be performed.
- Put them into action and evaluate the achievements that are achieved.
Next, we will analyze each of these steps to improve self-esteem in the following sections.
First step: set a clear and concrete goal
A “goal” can be anything you want to do or achieve. Setting a goal in a clear and concrete way helps us be successful because it helps us identify what we want to achieve. The goals we set must meet a series of requirements:
- Sincere: something we really want to do or want to achieve.
- Staff: not something that is imposed by someone from outside.
- Realistic: Let us see what is possible to achieve in a relatively short period of time (a few weeks).
- Divisible: that we can determine the steps or things we have to do to achieve it.
- Measurable: that we can check what we have achieved and what we need to achieve it.
Examples of goals and objectives:
- Get a good grade in a subject.
- Be more popular.
- Get along with siblings.
- Do sport.
- Save money.
Second step: establish the tasks that must be performed to achieve it
Once they have specified the goal they want to achieve, ask them to think about what they would have to do to get it. Not everything is achieved in one day; To improve in any aspect you propose you have to make small efforts.
To achieve goals, they must be preceded by small steps and short-term tasks. Give them as an example the case of cyclists who participate in the cycling tour of Spain. The goal of many of them is to win the race. But, to do this, different stages (flat stages, mountain stages, time trial) have to be overcome over three weeks. It is important to keep people motivated who want to improve their self-esteem.
Third step: organize the tasks in the order in which they should be done
If you try to carry out all the tasks at the same time, it is very likely that nothing will be achieved. To achieve a goal, it is very interesting that tasks are ordered that must be carried out and a work plan is established.
Once they have the list of tasks they must perform, ask them to put them in order. The order can be established logically, according to the temporal sequence in which they have to be carried out (to build a house before the roof, the foundation will have to be made) or, in the event that the tasks do not require temporal sequencing, they can be You can start with the simplest tasks that require less effort, leaving the most difficult or expensive ones for last.
Fourth step: Launch them and evaluate the achievements that are achieved
Once the personal project has been prepared, it would be necessary to commit to it and put into practice. To achieve this, it is important to evaluate the efforts made. This can be difficult to do yourself, but it is relatively easy if you ask a family member or friend to help us evaluate our progress.
We are going to see an example in the following image in which a person creates a personal improvement project in order to overcome shyness:
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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