Self-Esteem or Self Destruct?

by | Suger's Blog | 36 comments

How would you rate your self esteem?
LOW, MEDIUM or HIGH.

She asked. 

HIGH! I answered, bordering on up myself actually. 

I answered, only a little bit tongue in cheek. 

I mean, you must have a reasonable level of self-esteem to post pictures of yourself online every two seconds... Right!? Haha.

It’s self-esteem week over at Seven Cherubs, and Naomi is talking a lot about how to maintain your esteem for yourself {Oh haha, I got sick of saying Self Esteem, ok!} in a series of posts. So jumping on board this train of self-love I decided to add my thoughts. You see there are a few things I know about self-esteem. Hard fought lessons I’m more than happy to share.

Self esteem requires;

  • That you be kind to yourself. Particularly important when you are having a day when if you scored your accomplishments on a 1-10 you’d be a minus 5. Maybe you’re not where you want to be. Maybe you’ve stuffed up royally and you know it.
  • Be accountable to yourself. You can’t have self-esteem if you are constantly letting yourself down. If you did it to someone else, would they have esteem for you? Doubtful. They’d probably tell you to bugger off and never come back.
  • Take the time to relate to yourself. I know so many people who cannot be on their own. They don’t like it. The silence and the quiet closes in on them. I assert that it’s because they can’t be with themselves and their little voice of ick. They can’t be with what they think about themselves. Start small, start by driving without music, start by eating without the tv on… All these little moments start to allow you an insight into how you relate to yourself.
  • Stand up for yourself. Never let anyone undermine you. Ever. If there are criticisms to be made or changes required, make sure they know that a room full of people is not the place to make such assessments. In private, one on one is. Defend this right to the end. How you allow others to speak about you and treat you says a lot about how YOU FEEL ABOUT YOU. So start cleaning up the half jokes, the implied insults and the digs. It’s time to call games over on these.
  • And finally; Listen to the signs. You’ll be able to tell when your self-esteem starts to slip pass medium and into the red zone. That voice in your head, the commentary will seem very loud indeed. Like this week for example, one too many party foods for parties has left me feeling bloated and laaaaazeeee. My little voice if RAGING at me. And while it talks to me like that, there’s nothing to do but feel sorry for myself and admire how crap I’ve become. So back to the previous steps and rebuild. Start with being kind and go from there.

So there you go. I hope you’ll pop over and read Naomi’s post series, it really is fabulous and it only started yesterday {I think?} so you haven’t missed much. And if you don’t, I hope that you will take something from this and start the self-love party train.

Woooo Wooooooo.     

Lame. I know. Ha!