What is self-esteem, and how can you tell if it is low? It is often difficult for a person to determine their level of self-worth. Self-worth is an individuals’ subjective assessment of their value. Self-worth encompasses various beliefs about oneself, including confidence, competence, achievement, motivation, and worth, which are considered to be the most important of these six factors. While it is not always possible to assess one’s self-worth without some outside guidance, there are a number of ways to look at how you feel about yourself.
To give yourself a better understanding of what self-esteem actually is, consider this definition by the National Council on Self-Esteem: “A belief that you are capable of doing or enjoying the things you want in life, an opinion you hold about yourself and your own abilities, a self-image that you regard as appealing.” Now self-image is a much more intangible thing than confidence or competence. However, these two concepts can certainly have an impact on your level of self-worth. In fact, when you consider how these concepts affect you, improving self-esteem may involve making some critical choices about these two aspects of your personality.
When we think of our self-worth, there are a number of different aspects to consider. We could talk about our level of self-respect as being emotionally healthy, or our level of self-image as being psychologically healthy. We could also discuss our self-images as being attractive or worthy of being taken seriously. But one thing that many of us do not think about is our overall sense of self-worth. The concept of self-worth can be broken down into these three parts, which are:
Overcoming the influences that can cause you to have a negative self-image and/or low self-esteem will largely be affected by what is known as the influences of your environment. These include your cultural background and your personal experiences growing up. The environment that you grow up in will have a big impact on your self-image and you may find that there are specific things in your environment that are overly critical and discourage you from having a healthy self-image and/or respect for yourself. This includes having a history of being told that we cannot do certain things, being criticized excessively at school or at work, having your clothing scrutinized and having your time questioned by others. There are also some very simple ways to boost your self-esteem that you may not be aware of.
One thing that is really important to boosting your self-confidence is that you need to take risks. Taking risks will help you gain a different perspective about yourself, and it will help you think differently about others and yourself as well. Risk taking is also an important skill for building self-confidence. We are all afraid of failures, but the truth is that we all fail at times. Taking a risk when we are unsure about something, will help to gain new insight and perspective on what we are doing and will help us better understand what others see as a failure when they look at us.
When you look at yourself critically, it is important that you do not allow others to view you as poorly as they see you. It is difficult to change the way that others view us when we don’t even know how we look at ourselves. That said, when it comes to improving your self-image and increasing your self-esteem, it is important that you learn to be comfortable with your own image in order to feel good about what you see. If you can learn to accept and appreciate who you are, it becomes easier to improve on aspects of your image that you are not happy with such as the size of your breasts or your hair. Becoming comfortable with your body image will enable you to focus on improving aspects of your body image that you are happy with.
A healthy self-esteem often leads to a positive attitude and a positive set of beliefs. We often use our self-esteem as a tool to direct our lives when we are not aware that our attitudes and beliefs are controlling our actions. To have a positive and successful life, it is necessary that you become consciously aware of your beliefs so that you can change them to make them positive. By taking the time to work on these aspects of your life, it may lead you to find your inner happiness and the self-esteem that you need to be successful.
What is self-esteem plays an important role in how successful we are in life. Self-confidence and self-image play an important part in creating a positive outlook in life. It is important that we take the time to examine our own behaviors and talk to those close to us to discover what might be contributing to the negative view we have about ourselves. When we address the issues surrounding our self-image, it can change the way we view our life and can lead us down the path toward a happier and more positive outlook.