What is self-esteem? It is a person’s internal opinion of his/her own self worth. It differs from the “assessment” of another person. Self-evaluation encompasses various beliefs regarding oneself, including strengths, weaknesses, talents, abilities, and possible future achievements, as compared to past performances. It also involves feelings related to how you see yourself (e.g., you think you are worthless), as well as how others see you (you think that others are too involved with you).
Overly critical thinking can lead to unhealthy self-evaluation. Research has shown that overly critical people tend to evaluate themselves negatively, even if they have done nothing wrong. On the other hand, overly positive people tend to be very self-confident and to try to influence self-evaluation by giving examples of past accomplishments (or pretending to do so). To get a healthy self-evaluation, it may be necessary for people to switch the way they perceive themselves to perceive others as well.
Another important area in developing self-worth is your self-image or perception of who you are. Your image or perception of yourself is formed by your self-talk – what you tell yourself about yourself and your capabilities. The way you talk to yourself about yourself reflects your innermost thoughts and emotions about yourself. A negative self-talk about yourself includes things like, “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not smart enough to start my own business,” “I’m not a good listener,” and “I don’t have what it takes to be a great leader.”
Conversely, a positive and supportive self-talk reflects things like, “I can do it,” “I can do all this,” “I am a valuable person,” “I am a fun person to be around,” “I am loving and giving,” and so on. Changing the way you talk to yourself is a good first step to raising your self-esteem. Another important point is that self-talk reflects your sense of worth and self-worth is directly connected to the way you feel about yourself. A low self-image frequently causes low self-esteem. Low self-esteem often makes you take on negative self-talk which negates the positive self-talk that is important to increasing your self-confidence. This negative self-talk can keep you from getting the support and motivation you need to improve your self-esteem and your life quality.
Self-worth is very important to the success you will have in life. It is also important to the achievement of your goals and the challenges you will face. For example, it is important to have a positive attitude to succeed in business, to become an effective speaker, to become a good teacher, or to be a successful mother. The ability to manage your time and accomplish the tasks necessary for you to achieve your goals in life are also important characteristics of self-worth. In short, having a positive outlook on life and self-worth will play a major role in how successful you can be in whatever area of life you choose.
Self-worth and self-confidence also have a big impact on how others see us. We are affected by the way people respond to us. In a nutshell, self-esteem and self-confidence affect the way we see ourselves and how we perceive the world around us. A person with a low self-image and low self-confidence may be the type of person who keeps to themselves, is not outgoing, is always thinking about what they want to get out of life, is unrealistic, and so forth. On the other hand, a person with high self-confidence will naturally be outgoing, confident, and considerate of others.
The way that you respond to others, how you react to challenges, difficulties, failures, emergencies, disappointments, as well as many other situations that occur in life plays a critical role in building and maintaining healthy self-esteem. Thus, you may often find yourself in the situation of responding to an incident in a manner that is destructive rather than helpful to you. On the other hand, responding to situations in a positive way may lead you to greater success and achievements. The key is to learn how to manage your response to change in order to move forward rather than react to change.
In conclusion, low self esteem often results from the way in which we have been taught to see the world and our capabilities. We may have been taught that we cannot do certain things or that we must do them with complete and utter dedication. Overly critical people tend to focus on the negative aspects of others and become overly critical of those they see as having low self esteem and poor self efficacy, which in turn, leads to feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem, which in turn, leads to the behavior that is commonly known as “blaming” or “picking on,” where a person publicly humiliates another individual for something that the latter didn’t commit or do.