What is self-esteem anyway?
Self-esteem is a concept, it is not something tangible. It is a way of thinking that we naturally tend to have because of our ego but can choose not to have and in the process make ourselves much happier. This concept is something that is instilled in us from a very young age. Protecting someone’s self-esteem is why kids in school get a ribbon for finishing 7th in a race or why college students in the US Self-esteem at its core is conditioned self-acceptance.
It holds that you have to accomplish something to feel good about yourself. Keep in mind the term feeling good about yourself, not just happy but good about your whole person, this is an important distinction to understand self-esteem. The problem with qualifying yourself as a whole, which is what makes you feel good about yourself, is that as human beings we tend to overgeneralize. Think about it, if you feel good you could tell yourself I’m fine. Which could be pretty harmless, but when we accomplish something great, we tend to over-generalize and say I did something great, therefore I feel great, and I know none of you who read this have been guilty of this! I’m great!
The problem with this is that it’s temporary, like crockery teetering on a shelf waiting to fall off and bring you back to low self-esteem, the first time someone dares to question you, oh great, or after repeated attempts. to get the answer. same result, you may not get the same result, where does that let you think, am I really that good? Or what happens when you haven’t had another feat of greatness for a while and end up feeling, dare I say it, like a failure?
The problem with all this nonsense is that you are too infinite, you have too many skills, experiences and great qualities and, as I often tell my audience, you have too many latent qualities, things that you will discover you are good at or have the potential to do. . being able to label your whole person by a small aspect of your life. Here is an equation that might help you understand it a bit more:
SD + TV = T
DT stands for Dichotomous Thinking, TV stands for Tunnel Vision and what amounts to problems. What I’d like to focus on is tunnel vision, which is what we use when we focus on our self-esteem. It’s known as a global rating system, which means that its entirety is based on the outcome of whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. Success means your great failure or a mere lack of success and your worst.
So what can you do? Stubbornly refusing to be this way and instead learning to accept yourself unconditionally. What’s that? Here you say, what will I replace it with? I’m glad you asked that the answer is unconditional self-acceptance. If self-esteem is a conditional form of self-acceptance, then unconditional self-acceptance is the opposite. If you don’t need anything to accept yourself, the whole point of achieving anything may simply be to increase your happiness levels. This is a simple but pretty deep concept, so I’ll let this article dig a little deeper first. Subscribe to receive more articles on this concept every month or subscribe to the RSS feed and you will not miss a thing. If you need to know more right away, click here for more reading.
Yours in emotional stability
