If you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2 of this self-esteem series, please read them first. This article will make more sense if you do.
There are six areas where you can make changes to increase your self-esteem significantly.
(1) Live Consciously
For all animals, being conscious of their surroundings is critical to survival. Imagine a cat which is not aware of an approaching dog. It probably won’t live long, will it?
As humans, that sort of awareness is a given. But we have consciousness higher than that. We call it a mind. It involves more than seeing, knowing and surviving.
For example, you know that sleep is important and you should get more than 7 hours of sleep each night. If you don’t get enough sleep, you feel groggy the next day. You also know that coffee contains caffeine that can disturb sleep. This is seeing and knowing. If you avoid drinking coffee after midday to give yourself the best chance of a good sleep, this is what could be called living consciously.
If, however, you drink cups of coffee all day long and you can’t fall asleep till the early hours of the morning, this is living unconsciously. You are burying your consciousness of the situation.
Another example of living consciously is to think through what you want out of life and what your goals are and plan actions to achieve them. Then, you spend each day doing things that are in alignment with your goals. If one of your goals is to become a great writer, you should spend at least some portion of each day honing your skills.
The opposite of that would be to be unaware of any goals and to wander through your days totally aimlessly. For instance, even though you have a desire to be a great guitarist, you spend all your day playing video games. This is a fine example of living unconsciously.
When you live unconsciously like that, deep down your self-esteem suffers. You see, you have a mind. The mind is inherently not stupid. When you live out of alignment with your own well-being, you know it. Therefore, your self-esteem is a casualty.
So, next time you are going to grab a third cup of strong coffee, be conscious. If you know that it’s going to disturb your sleep, opt for a non-caffeinated drink instead.
Next time you are going to skip your writing practice session for an hours-long soap drama, think which of those is more in alignment with your goals. Soap drama or writing skill practice?
(2) Accept Yourself
This is a cliché you may have heard many times already. Whenever I hear this, I always think of physical features that I find difficult to accept. But it’s not just physical attributes you need to accept. There is also emotion and your past.
It’s not about condoning your behaviour if it was less than admirable. It’s about accepting that what happened was what it was. And understanding the underlying triggers without condoning them.
It hinges on the idea that accepting what is paves the way to improvement, whereas denying it will leave you stuck in it.
You need to learn to be a sympathetic friend to yourself.
For example, imagine you were sitting in a restaurant with a close friend. You snapped rudely at the waitress over the food order. After the waitress was gone, your friend looked at you and said, “That was unworthy of you. Now, what set it off?” Your friend was being sympathetic, but she was not condoning your behaviour. Because of that, you would have found it easier to accept what you had done and to improve your situation – and even apologize to the waitress. You couldn’t do that if you didn’t accept your behaviour.
The same goes for physical features and unwanted emotion. You have to accept them before you can really make an improvement.
I find this particularly applies to me since I used, not so long ago, to have difficulty coming to terms with my looks. There wasn’t any part of my body that I didn’t dislike. But gradually I have accepted them all and over time I have improved how I look and feel about my appearance.
You need to accept realities in your life regardless of whether you admire them or not. This will pave the way for improvement and eventually increase your self-esteem.
(3) Recognize that no one is coming to save you.
In other words, you are responsible for raising your own self-esteem. Don’t look to others to make you feel better about yourself.
You are responsible to bring about the changes you want in your life. You are responsible for achieving a satisfying relationship. Unlike in the movies, you are not very likely to bump into your Prince Charming by chance and live happily after. You have to make it happen.
If you want something to happen, it’s not going to happen unless you do something about it.
If you want a fulfilling life, but don’t know what you want out of life, you are responsible to figure it out and work towards it.
No one is coming. Not Prince Charming, probably not even Lady Luck. You are on your own. Other people may help you. But ultimately you are the one responsible for how your life turns out.
(4) Dare to be who you are without feeling apologetic.
This requires courage from time to time. Basically, you dare to be openly who you are, regardless of whether other people approve or not. This is being self-assertive.
When you have a very different taste in music from all your friends and are not afraid to admit it – whatever the others may think – you are practising self-assertiveness.
When you decide to follow a profession that you love but your parents don’t approve of, you are practising self-assertiveness.
When you can say “no” when you want to say no, and say “yes” when you want to say yes, you are practising self-assertiveness.
Basically, you should know that your wants and needs matter. And you have to behave accordingly.
Self-assertiveness is not the same as being aggressive. You are not being mindlessly contrary: you are simply doing things that align with your values and goals. Therefore, you are still able to be co-operative with other people.
In essence, you have to be comfortable with living up to no-one else’s expectations but your own.
(5) You have to live purposefully.
This is intertwined with self-responsibility. You must figure out what you want your life to be like in 5 years’ or 10 years’ time and then work out what actions you need to take to get there. And then keep taking those actions. Not only that, you have to pay attention to your outcomes. You have to monitor whether a certain action is bringing you closer to your goals or not, or whether it is bringing about a result you want. If the outcome is not what you want, you have to think of a different approach.
This brings us back to the practice of living consciously which I mentioned near the beginning of this article.
Even though self-esteem is not necessarily generated by how much we have achieved, it is generated by the actions we take that bring about the achievement we want.
For example, if your goal is to become a master chef good enough to teach cooking classes, you have to start taking classes, experimenting and studying. You have be disciplined enough to practise it every day. And you have to ask friends around to taste your food. This is paying attention to outcomes. You ask for feedback on the taste of your food to see if what you are doing is bringing you closer to your goal of becoming a master chef.
Basically you spend your time with intention rather than being stuck in random tasks that come to make their appearance in front of your nose.
(6) Living with integrity
In part 2, I wrote how your previous actions have affected your present self-esteem. When you act against your own judgement of what is or is not appropriate, you lose face in your own eyes. This in turn lowers your self-esteem.
For example, let’s assume that you no longer believe in God. If you go to the church just so that you won’t offend your family, you lose face in your own eyes.
If you take bribes because everyone else including your boss is doing it – and therefore you are not likely to be punished – you may become richer. But, you lose face in your own eyes.
In terms of your self-esteem, what you know about yourself is the thing that matters most. That’s why living with integrity is critical to having good self-esteem.
Practising the Six Principles of Self-esteem
It’s not always easy to practise all these principles. But don’t worry! You don’t have to be able to follow them perfectly all the time. Just increasing your function a little bit in each area will work wonders for your self-esteem. Then you can notch it up a bit, then a bit more, and so on.
Don’t aim for perfection. Just aim for doing a little bit better each time. After all, no one is perfect. But everyone can certainly improve.
Good luck.
Acknowledgement
I learnt most of what I wrote about in this self-esteem series from the late Dr Nathaniel Branden’s The Six Pillars of Self-esteem.