Esteem in my daily life is very important to me. For a long time I was looking for a practical “To-Do-List” of how to realize esteem in my life. Finding none that met my expectations, I put together my own list of five steps, each of them necessary for including esteem in my life, and I’ll share them here with you.
Build up your self-esteem.
Self-esteem means basically our thoughts about ourselves and not the thoughts and opinions of others. Self-esteem is another word for self-confidence and self-trust. I had to honestly ask myself “What is your self-trust? How self-confident am I? In order to answer those questions I had to examine the source of my self-esteem.
I started by asking what kind of pictures I held of myself. It’s important that you realize the first pictures you get are most of all measured, rated and judged. I threw out the images of what somebody else told me about myself. To realize real self-esteem you have to forget these outer judgments. This is how we grew up, how we learned it. We all do the same way at first. But at some point It’s time to correct these outer opinions and discover our true self-esteem. It’s a dialog that’s only within you.
I took inventory of myself and sincerely asked: Where am I good? Which are the activities I really like to do? I didn’t waste time worrying if they were “reasonable”, “unpractical” or whatever judgment I could give. Forget evaluations. It’s all about experiences, inner personal thoughts, unique talents, just as they are without any valuation.
Sometimes it helps to look back to childhood or teenage years. What were my dreams at eighteen? Was there something I would have liked to do given no limitations?
I encourage you to ask these questions yourself. Perhaps you always liked to paint or you would have liked to study mathematics, but somebody told you that an artist doesn’t make any money or that girls don’t “do” mathematics.
I don’t consider this a self-indulgent task. It’s only a means of finding your real being. Gradually we begin to see ourselves in clear lines. When you boost your self-esteem through an honest evaluation it makes you sure about your abilities, your dreams and your thoughts. Eventually all these thoughts make your self-esteem strong.
You’ll recognize this moment when it happens to you because you’ll recognize that you have special abilities and that you are a precious and important person. As long as you feel resistance in you to saying this, you still are on your way to finding your self-esteem. Don’t stop looking for it. I assure you that your search will bring rewards!
