High Self Esteem – #1 Agenda of life?

During our Coaching & Mentoring Sessions with our clients, what transpires the most is the issue of self-confidence. The simplest example could be such as people juggling for words, of course, in front of their seniors but friends and peers as well, even in informal settings. e.g. I don’t like Pizza. Instead, I prefer fish and chips or I don’t smoke or drink. I'll go for an orange juice or a soft drink. 

In response to one of my previous articles, my readers suggested me to now talk about self-esteem and to tell them how it is different than the self-confidence. 

Most people use the words self-confidence and self-esteem interchangeably and these are considered to be very 'fashionable' terms in our societies, particularly in business environment these days. Differences between the two exist, though, and it matters how these terms are used. These can be a lot more powerful than they first may seem. When people are confident and feel secure in themselves, truly believing that they are enough and never putting themselves down, they can go on to achieve abundance in life. We all have wants, needs and desires, yet many people do not realize that their own confidence is the key to unlocking their goals and aspirations in life.

This article is going to explore the in-depth meaning of Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence, how one can achieve simplistically, and what you can attract into your life? 

What is High Self-Esteem?

You can accurately swap the word esteem with approval. When you hold someone in high esteem, you approve of them. If you have healthy self-esteem, you approve of yourself. Plenty of people lack strong self-esteem because they disapprove of themselves, imagining they aren’t good enough. If you have self-esteem issues, the remedy is to work at recognising your value, so that you see yourself as acceptable and worthwhile.

Whilst self-confidence is about the assurance in your abilities and decisions, having high self-esteem is more about your own sense of self-worth and love. People usually find it easier to build their self-confidence than their self-esteem, and, conflating one with the other, end up with a long list of abilities and achievements. Rather than facing up to their imperfections and failures, they hide them behind their degrees, diplomas, certificates and prizes. But as anyone who has been to university knows, a long list of abilities and achievements is neither sufficient nor necessary for healthy self-esteem. While people keep on working on their list in the hope that it might one day be long enough, they try to fill the emptiness inside them with status, income, possessions, relationships, and so on.

What is Self-Confidence?

Confidence is about certainty. When you are confident, you believe you are capable. If you are looking for information on self-confidence, start by making sure that you truly understand the meaning of the phrase. A quick Google search to define the meaning says” ‘A feeling of trust in one's abilities, qualities, and judgment.’ For me, the meaning of self-confidence is when you feel like no matter what situation you find yourself in, you have the ability to remain assured in your decisions and your beliefs. It’s the feeling of an undoubtedly pledge to believe in yourself and not let anyone or anything make you think otherwise.

Even Successful People can have Low Self-Esteem:

Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem do not always go hand in hand. In particular, it is possible to be highly self-confident and yet to have profoundly low self-esteem. We all might have seen instances when a movie star, a world class athelete or a renowned pop singer bumps into us in a hotel lobby, at a fine dining restaurant or at an event, what first thing people do? They start looking at them with their wide open eyes and mouths, as if  they were the super creatures of the God Almighty and assuming they have got  everything – name, fame, money, social status and what not. But often they don’t have one thing they really need: High self-esteem and who we look up to and envy like these famous celebrities who, at times, end up in severe depression and drugs and destroying themselves because they try so hard to make the world to like them. When they succeed but all they forget that they have to like themselves first.

In social sector, we worked with many adolescents (both genders)  who are bullied and several who are bullies and behind that was the same issue of “I need people to like me.” Interestingly, we are never taught in school that the word 'Esteem' actually means how much I like myself. Whenever we say: “We hold that person in the highest esteem, we mean we like him or her. We value him or her. In short, Self-Esteem means How much you like yourself. How much you value yourself. Unless you really like yourself, nothing else matters. 

Some people are very confident at work but terrible in relationships because they can put an act at work they don’t feel loveable of other people who have a nice relationship but a terrible career because they can’t get promoted. On the other hand, we know some people who are quite arrogant but they are convincing everyone else at they are worth it because they don’t actually believe in it. 

So, the most important thing to do is to work on your confidence and the way you build your confidence is by liking yourself. Close your eyes and imagine right now: If you really like yourself, how different your life is going to be? If you thought you were great, how different would your life be? Our problem is that we don’t teach this to our children to like themselves when they are very young. Ask them" How do they feel when they are dressed up? Take selfies with them, appreciate them, congratulate them. This is one of the many ways of teaching them the core of the self-esteem. This matters more than what other people think or talk about you. 

On the contrary, we try so hard to make people like us. We have something on our head that goes: “Please like me”. “Please like my Instagram posts”. “Please like and subscribe to my YouTube Channel” and so on and so forth. Trust me that behaviour doesn’t make people like you. It makes them take you for granted. It makes them bully you and we often send children out into the world trying so hard to make people like them, because we believe if everyone else likes me I’m okay. We see this with young men and women. What works in life is to remind yourself time and again that: “I like me and if you like me that’s great but if you don’t, I can live with that too.” 

As we grow in life, the self-esteem hides behind some kind of fear of being judged which is called “Performance Anxiety”. What if I sing and someone laughs at me. What if I get up to speak in large gathering and I fell short of vocabulary, etc. In reality, people around you don’t have time to look at you or comment on you and inside us we like such people who don’t comment on who we are and what we do? In fact, people who are judging you are unhappy people because critical people have the most criticism reserved for themselves. They express outwards their own dissatisfaction on others too. Happy people are chill, they admire, appreciate and recognize others. That’s how they have good time, all the time. 

Following is a tool-kit designed to help you easily apply a methodical approach to improving your self-assurance and self-worth:

1. Appreciate Yourself:

One of the easiest ways to boost your self-esteem is to praise yourself regularly and Learn to Love Yourself. Become aware of your internal dialogue and change it to be positive and empowering. Plus-size model Ashley Graham spoke about this in an interview published in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazine: “I think a lot of people look in the mirror and they say ‘Oh, I’m sad’ or ‘I’m ugly, I’m stupid, I’m not worthy, or XYZ’. You have to really understand that your words have power. When I was 17, my mum helped me make these affirmations ‘I am bold, I am brilliant, I am beautiful, I am worthy of all, and I love you’. Those are my affirmations and everybody’s affirmations are different because everybody’s struggling with different issues.”

Marisa Peer has a section dedicated to confidence and self-esteem on her online blog. In an article ‘Hypnosis for Confidence and Self-Esteem: Hypnotherapy Can Rebuild Your Self-Worth’ there is a quote from Marisa which explains how everyone is capable of retrieving their self-esteem.  “Every child born in this world is loaded with high self-esteem. No child when they’re being pushed on the street in their stroller goes: “Oh don’t look at me. I’m having a bad hair day or I’ve been sick on my little romper suit. They are blessed with  by mother nature and they know in their hearts that look gorgeous. They are worthy of attention. That’s why they smile back at you because they have high self-esteem that converges into high self-confidence. They accept compliments and don’t have a fear of being judged. It’s only as we get older that we acquire the fear of people rejecting us. With hypnotherapy, you can tap back into this inner confidence and use it to transform your life.” Due to us all being born with unshakeable confidence, it is possible with the power of our minds to regain this.

2. Only you can bring a change:

Before you can begin trying to boost your confidence, you have to understand that feeling self-confident and having high self-esteem has to come from your own efforts and beliefs.

In Marisa Peer’s book: ‘I Am Enough’, she explains: ‘If you believe that someone else must take on the job of making you better, you will always be disappointed and you will always be needy, whereas if you believe you can meet many of your needs yourself, you will do better in life and be a more attractive prospect to others. We are all responsible for our happiness; we can’t give that job to someone else and after all, if someone else has the power to make you happy then they equally have the power to make you unhappy.’

In two separate studies, with 176 couples in total, the researchers found that those with lower self-esteem were more likely to engage in indirect support seeking. This type of support seeking was, in turn, associated with a greater chance of a partner responding with criticism, blame, or disapproval.

3. Always look at the Bigger Picture:

Try not to get bogged down by little things, especially if they are out of your control. It’s good to take a step back when you feel overwhelmed, focus on something that is still. Bring back a sense of grounding to prevent your mind from going into overdrive and stressing yourself out. I often like to think to myself when I’m worried about something: I’ve dealt with much worse than this before, and look at me now, I’m fine. This feeling will pass and all will be OK.

An article on Goalcast looked at the daily habits of successful Hollywood actress Meryl Streep. The star quoted “The formula of happiness and success is just being yourself in the most vivid way possible you can.”

The author, Lindsay Tigar, stated the following: ‘We all are guilty of getting caught in the muck of stress, deadlines, anxieties and worries. It is human nature to succumb to the intense pressure of overcommitting yourself or doubting your abilities to finish projects or reach a certain goal. But when we take a step back―and exhale―we can more clearly see the bigger picture.

Meryl Streep shared if she could go back and speak with her 20-something self, she’d remind her to think grander. Instead of harping on the details, she wishes she would have spent more time understanding the important role she was playing in culture. “…the thing is that you’re representing lives, and lives look all different ways and shapes. That’s one thing I do see changing, and it’s really good. It makes the cultural landscape richer,” she shared in a podcast.’

4. Accept compliments gracefully:

Most people grow up to believe that modesty is a good trait to have and arrogance is not. However, this can sometimes cause people to be afraid of sharing or celebrating their successes or even to accept compliments graciously. In Marisa’s ‘I Am Enough’ book, she has a chapter called ‘Criticism Withers; Praise Builds’ and she quotes: “Belief without talent can take you further than talent without belief, but when you have both you are unstoppable.”

Quite often, when someone pays another person a compliment, the person protests it by not agreeing or downplaying the trait that is being complimented on. For example, someone could say “I love your outfit, it really suits you.” The recipient might then reply with “Oh, I’ve had it for years, it’s so old fashioned, I’ve gained weight and it’s the only thing that fits!” An extract from Marisa’s book explains this scenario:

‘We are socialized from a relatively young age to demur when we are given compliments. We deflect, minimize and self-deprecate because we’ve been taught that the worst thing we can be is arrogant. Even if we know or agree with the compliment we are receiving, we don’t allow ourselves to take it in―we deflect.’

Going back to the example of someone paying a person a compliment, a different reply could be “Thank you, I’ve had this a while, it’s one of my favorites!” This gracious acceptance of a compliment will boost your confidence and make you radiate self-esteem. The more you radiate it, the more it will come back to you through meeting like-minded, positive people.

A blog post by Jenny Shaw on the Flashpack website concurs with Marisa’s outlook. ‘With age, I have realized that there is nothing wrong with admitting that you are doing something well and this feeds into that quiet sense of self-assurance and confidence.

Whilst arrogance must be one of the worst features a person can display, there is a big gap between confidence and arrogance, something which can take a while to realise.’

Wrapping up: 

In short, self esteem is probably the only biggest asset of the mankind, regardless of the fact which societal background we come from. We must always learn to respect, like and admire ourselves. 

Also let’s learn to revisit our vocabulary in life. Let’s choose our words wisely and carefully. Let’s remove all the negative notions and strings attached that hurt our self-esteem and self-confidence. Instead, go for short and simple words that are inviting and positive. Let’s look at ourselves first thing in the morning when we are out of bed, and thank God Almighty for him bestowing us with this life with the complete body that he has given us for free. While thanking him, we also need to look after this precious gift as we do to all our material belongings. 

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