We want to make positive strides in our lives. But sometimes things seem to hold us back- like low self-esteem. It might be time to take a look at how we feel about ourselves.
This article invites you to look at your everyday life in an unusual way. I think you’ll find it a good way to examine your self-esteem and stay on a sound footing toward genuine living.
Build Self-Esteem: The First Step Toward Self Development
If you are interested in self-development but have low self-esteem, you’ll want to put your attention on that. Until you do, it will be much harder to accurately assess what you need to learn and change in order to achieve your goals. In fact, if you have low self-esteem it can be difficult to even see what your goals are.
Imagine yourself as a dart board. Everything and everyone else around you have the potential to become a damaging dart pin, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self-esteem and pull you down in ways you may not even be conscious of. It’s important not to let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So what are the dart pins to avoid, and how can you keep them from hurting you?
Dart Pin #1: Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. You may find you are working harder and harder for less and less return.
Stay away from this, it will damage your self-esteem. Find ways to manage your work within the majority of the normal working day. If you have to compete with others, compete on your own terms. Don’t be drawn into power games or negative behavior that will bring on negative feelings about yourself.
Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, the walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers … all these negative behaviors in others will damage your self-esteem, as well as to your self-development program. But remember, it is not the person that is the problem: it is their behavior.
Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. They test your flexibility, adaptability and alter the way you think. Changes will make life difficult for a while and often cause stress, but when you look back you’ll see that change is often the catalyst or cause of self -development. Try not to resist it.
Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when you experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear by constantly thinking of the bad things that have happened to you or others in the past. It’s easy to wreck a relationship by bringing with you the issues you had in your last relationship and expecting your new partner to be like your previous one. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson, and move on.
Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self-esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.
Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits are said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits, your upbringing, and your current environment such as your friends, your work situation, the economy and even the climate of the country that you live in.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your genetics or upbringing will determine how your life goes. You have your own identity. If your father feels like a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.
In life, it can be tough to stay firm, especially when things and people around you seem to keep pulling you down. However, building self-esteem will eventually lead to self-development if you start to become responsible for who you are, what you have and what you do.
When you develop self-esteem, you take control of your mission, values, and discipline. Self-esteem brings about self-improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self-esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self-esteem and set you on the path to positive self-development.
JohnK 5-1-2017
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