Amin


To make the question narrower, let’s say how should I deal with a girl who has a very low self-esteem? We’re close friends and we may take this to the next level and form a relationship. IMO this is what we both want to. The problem is that she freaks out when message I her late. It seems that she thinks that I may consider her questions stupid or something.

What is the best way to soothe her and make a balance in our friendship/later, relationship?

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sweet_16_45356


I have no self-esteem or confidence. What can I do to become confident and to gain self-esteem? I hate fearing and being afraid. How to I overcome those fears?

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Dr Elizabeth Menon


One needs to define the meaning of self-esteem, before the much complex word \’high self-esteem\’ is considered. Dictionaries define self-esteem as, \” confidence and respect for oneself\”, or \”how much a person likes, accepts, and respects himself, overall as a person\”. The National Association for Self-Esteem defines it as, \” The experience of being capable of meeting life\’s challenges and being worthy of happiness\”. A balanced high self-esteem is essential for the development of a healthy human being.

Healthy self-esteem, based on basic principles such as worthiness, competence, self-reliance and a genuine desire to love and accept others, enables one to face the challenges in life and emerge victorious in adverse situations. But, if the self-esteem is based on external factors such as one\’s appearance, family connections, place of birth or social status, it may give an inflated opinion of one\’s worth and competence from a very early stage in life. The outcome would be an individual with overly high self-esteem or unhealthy high self-esteem, which is unearned.

Self-esteem starts to build up from the time of birth and then on it is a gradual process, helped by one\’s parents, teachers, peers or society as a whole. It is very important to have good self-esteem during the formative years when one has many issues to deal with. Children may develop a tendency to have a low self-esteem or even an unhealthy high self-esteem that eventually turn into narcissism.

It is paramount that children at this stage are given support and training on basic principles and values in life, teaching them to have good balance between competence, accomplishments and self-worth. Any such training may be adversely affected by indiscriminate use of praise by the teachers and parents, in their attempt to make the children feel more confident. These children may reach adulthood without having understood the real meaning of healthy self-esteem; the pursuit of higher academic accomplishments may create individuals who feel superior, showing egotistical and patronizing behaviour patterns.

It\’s the over-inflated opinion of one\’s self-worth and ability that leads to the overly high self-esteem. One can get aggressive if threatened; showing destructive behaviour, drug abuse, drink driving, road-rage or violence, just to prove that one is superior. They also have a vulnerable side to their character that needs constant pampering and may even change or hide personal details to show supremacy over friends and colleagues, either to get a better job or a higher social standing.

Various problems in life can change the perception of people and how they analyse situations. It could be marital problems, financial ruin, alcohol or drug abuse that bring about the changes in one\’s life, having to resort to different methods to cover up the situation. One may show signs of an unhealthy high self-esteem or enter a phase of denial and pretend to be happy, or go to the other extreme showing signs of low self-esteem. This extreme behaviour pattern often happens when there is total imbalance between what one believes in and what one is capable of doing or the inability to recognise it, which could be the result of an over-inflated opinion of one\’s personal worth.

There are few people in any society with unhealthy self-esteem who have an uncontrollable urge to control everything. World History shows examples of  \’people of small stature\’, trying to show the world that they are \’big\’- Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin are few of the examples. Mussolini, Ho-Chi-Min, Mao, King Herod, and Pol Pot are among those who believed in their inflated opinion of self worth. The egotistical, dictatorial and conceited behaviour of these men and many others like them have one thing in common, the self-worthiness becoming narcissism, showing the disharmony between their sense of values and behaviour.

High self-esteem should not be confused with an overly high self-esteem, though quite difficult to distinguish between the two at times. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965) is the \’gold standard\’ measure, to arrive at the diagnosis. A sense of self worth, and a sense of one\’s own capabilities in good equilibrium: harmony between the psychological strength and behaviour could keep the \’overly high self-esteem\’ at bay.

A good balance between sense of worthiness and confidence in one\’s abilities is what is required in most situations. Self-education, to become aware of the situation and a desire to change by seeking professional help and interacting with close friends and immediate family would be most welcome and beneficial. But, holding on to the principles and values that one believes in and having the conviction to make the right choices when faced with adversities, one can enjoy a productive life.

 

 

Raymond


This article describes building self confidence in children. Children are very sensitive for encouragement and learning progress. They need the support from adults or guardians from their environment to grow up well balanced. Therefore, it is very important to know that the adults or parents play an important role for building self confidence in children.

Provide children self confidence. It is important that children developed a positive image of their own. A positive image means that they are self confident, that they know their own limits and trusts their own abilities. People who are having a positive image have more fun in life. They can handle themselves in tough situations. So, it is the same situation for children, in order to start building self confidence in children, adults and parents should bring out the confidence in their kids. This feeling is not congenital. It’s created by the environment of the kid. True verbal and not verbal messages are very important to give many kinds of great of signals to the child. He or she sets this in to feelings of being accepting new things and activities in their lives. These messages are some sorts of important and useful signal that been created and stored in the children subconscious mind.

Give the children the value that they deserved. The most important thing is that we accept them for the person that they are. Whatever the children done right, we shall provide them with great compliments and celebration as an encouragement to continue their successes. If the children done something that are not really appropriate, then we have to give them great advices with right manner without yelling at them. We have let them to know that they are in the progress of learning and every mistake that they made eventually created another value for them for leaning another new thing. This will help for building self confidence in children.

Let children to be independent. Even it takes longer or if they making a mess, kids actually learn a lot more by trying out for them self’s. Patience and confidence can do a lot. Give kids the time and space to tryout something new and learn from their mistakes. Provide them with helping and cares if they need it, and be proud if they achieved their goal. Our progress for building self confidence in children will be worthy if the kids get more learning possibilities. Kids learn this way to become more confident. Some example exercises that we can try are letting children to solve their puzzle games by themselves.

Always encourage kids to try out new things. By giving kids positive thoughts and advices they learn to improve their skills and behavior. They learn to expand beyond their limits higher that we cannot ever imagine. When the children facing failure and feeling down, please step by their sides, bring them up again to solve the problems that they are facing. Let them understand that they are actually on stepping stone to success and they are the one who have the wills and powers to overcome the problems. Playing strategy boards games and scrabbles will provide them the opportunity to try on their own abilities. Hence, building self confidence in children can be a fun and learning process.

Give them the perfect role model. Kids learn a lot from adults. The way we and other adults deal with them will influence them a lot. We have to act as a role model to give them the right example.

We can start building self confidence in children now to start building their path to success.

Alan Densky


Self confidence is a psychological and emotional state of mind that responds to an individual’s need for recognition and self-acceptance. It’s one of the oldest and most studied concepts in psychology. It describes a positive but also realistic perception somebody has of himself or herself and of his or her abilities. Thus, people with self confidence usually have a better idea of what they are able to achieve and will be more likely to be successful in what they attempt. They are able to more easily admit and learn from their failures.

On the contrary, a lack of confidence may deter you from believing your actions or decisions will later work out the way you had planned. It can hence prevent the improvement of executive skills, strategic and management capacities all of which are necessary and mandatory things in today’s business world. The pre-occupation with how others will judge your work can also make you become excessively self-critical, which can distract you from tasks you would have otherwise been perfectly able to do.

Low self confidence will also affect your social life, as people with low self confidence tend to stay in their “comfort zone” and fear the risk of being rejected. This is called social phobia and presents a high degree of co-morbidity with low self confidence, but also other psychological diseases such as depression. People with low self confidence are scared of the judgment of others and will avoid meeting new people, which can result in isolation and even less self confidence. Low self confidence is a vicious circle that is difficult to break.

To the contrary, because they have faith in their own abilities, people with self confidence are able to do what they feel is right and don’t feel the need for the approval of their peers. They are also able to inspire confidence: your boss, employees, customers, friends or relatives are more likely to trust you or what you are telling them if you appear self-confident.

Many experiences can contribute to low self confidence. New research indicates that parenting style has a major impact on the development of the self confidence of a child. Corporal and mental abuses in childhood are for instance the worse for somebody’s self confidence, as well as family conflicts and divorce. Overprotective parents may also contribute to a child’s social phobia and hamper the independence necessary to develop self confidence. Failures and successes, for instance at school or in one’s professional life, also play an important role: losing a job or failing a class are among the numerous experiences that will negatively affect your self confidence.

There are however methods to overcome these bad experiences and increase self confidence. The first step to develop self confidence would be to learn to know yourself and your strengths. Acknowledging the fact that you are allowed not to be perfect and cannot be the best in everything you do will help you gain self confidence. Accepting yourself as you are is the key to gaining self confidence. But improving self confidence also requires that you start taking risks and giving yourself credit for your achievements. This is very simple advice which will help you build self confidence. You might also find several books which will claim they can help you gain self confidence, however not all of them are reliable.

Many people have low self confidence or are only capable of gaining self confidence in one or a certain number of areas of their lives because they constantly try to get other people’s approval and are afraid that they could fail. Many factors, such as childhood traumas, can explain why some people cannot have the wholesome life of a self confident person. Such persons also do not always know how to gain self confidence. But improving self confidence can now easily and effectively be done thanks to hypnosis and NLP.

As we have seen social phobia and low self confidence can be triggered by bad experiences or unconscious fears that may be difficult to overcome through self persuasion only. Confidence hypnosis and NLP on the other hand are able to get to the unconscious part of our mind and alter belief systems to boost self confidence. They are powerful tools that will help you address your fears and trust yourself to develop self confidence.

Self-Hypnosis for building self-confidence has been used for a few decades and has shown significant results in building self confidence. In a hypnotic state, reaching unconscious thoughts is a lot easier and, through hypnotic suggestion, you will be able to replace your negative thought patterns with positive ones to boost self confidence.