Matthew Hick


Our self-esteem is the internal knowledge that we are capable of handling anything that life throws at us. Self-esteem is a feeling of self-worth and an understanding that we are capable human beings that are strong and resilient. People with a high level of self esteem are confident in their abilities; handle stress and problems well and are able to hold their heads up high and feel good about them even when they screw up.

People with low self-esteem are the complete opposite. They often sport a negative outlook on life and themselves; tend to fear new experiences because they lack the feeling that they can accomplish or handle anything outside of their normal routine; use a lot of energy to maintain a false positive image of themselves; and tend to worry excessively and be overly sensitive to criticism,

Our self-esteem is how we feel about our abilities and ourselves. It can have a drastic effect on our motivations, attitudes and behaviors with those around us. It built from an early age), often toddler hood, when a baby tries something new like standing or walking and either succeeds or fails.

It really doesn’t matter as much whether the child continually succeeds as it does how the people around the react to them. A child who manages to do everything right the first time, but who is not praised for their accomplishments or are belittled in some way may grow to have a very low self esteem; while a child who rarely succeeds but is praised for their effort may have a high level of self esteem.

This is an important fact for parents to remember when dealing with children of all ages. Healthy self-esteem is reached when the right balance is attained between the child’s ability and the parent’s interaction.

Our self-esteem can fluctuate as we grow and experience new hurdles in life. Teenagers are more apt to suffer low self-esteem as they struggles to handle changes in their bodies, world and even personality. This is a time when these young adults are struggling to figure out if they are capable enough to handle what life will throw at them in the future.

Adults may experience bouts of low self-esteem when faced with unexpected obstacles or hurdles they don’t know how to handle. New parenthood is a common time for adults to find themselves questioning their abilities as caregivers. The goal here is admit that you are finding a new situation more challenging than you can handle; accept your limitations; and ask for help.

Those with too much self esteem can become arrogant, believing that their way is the only way and that everything they do is perfect, while those who suffer low self esteem may find it difficult to conquer new challenges and find themselves stuck in unhappy jobs and relationships because they lack the courage and strength to move on to something better.

Finding the right balance is essential to becoming a well-rounded person who feels good about themselves, their abilities and exudes the power to succeed in every aspect of their lives.



Geraldine

Allan Wilson


For adults there are a range of self tests available on the internet that can help us assess our level of self esteem. There are also some for older children which are worded in a way that children will feel comfortable with.

But we can ask some simple questions like…

- Do you feel comfortable trying new things and meeting new people?

- Do you think you are generally liked?

- Do you think you have the respect of your work colleagues?

- Do you feel happy most of the time?

- Do you look forward to new challenges?

- Do you value your own opinion?

If you answer yes to these questions you probably don’t have low self esteem. However if you think you have low self esteem, you might want to find out more.

Sometime it helps just to read about self esteem and think about how feel about what we have read. We may feel that although we don’t have the optimum level of self esteem, we are reasonably self confident and just need to have a bit of a tinker with some of our attitudes and feelings.

For example, an understanding of how our level of self esteem is formed can give us a better feel for our level of esteem. Our experiences with our family and other people as we are growing up will be very instrumental in developing our self esteem.

If we are treated well, kindly and fairly by our parents, teachers and peers, we are more likely to have a healthy level of self esteem. However if we are treated badly, and we believe unfairly, it is more likely that our self esteem will be low. Regular criticism, being told we are useless, stupid etc., being constantly being reminded of our failings. These are likely to damage our self esteem.

Low self esteem can result if we are generally told we are useless or stupid. If we are shouted at, or ignored, or made to feel we are in the way, or not really wanted these attitudes are damaging to self esteem.

On the other hand, if we experience a kind and understanding reaction to an exam failure, or not getting a certain job or onto the netball or football team, we may from an early age understand that one exam failure doesn’t mean we are failures as people.

Supportive and loving parents, and others who keep things in a sensible perspective, will help us develop a good and healthy level of self esteem. These people will want us to feel good about ourselves. They won’t want us to have negative feelings about ourselves, and they won’t want us to be full of ourselves either.

Sadly, many people who suffer from low self esteem find it hard to develop good communication skills. For their children this can be devastating, and serves to pass down to the next generation the same difficulties and concerns they have themselves.

If we can learn from this, we can see that the way those who have hurt us have behaved reflects more on themselves than it does on us. They don’t want to hurt us, but don’t know how to behave differently.

Learning that self esteem is itself a learned behavior is important in helping us to change our view of ourselves. If something is learned, it can often be unlearned.

If we can learn how to value ourselves more fairly, we can influence our future behavior, our future life chances. Perhaps most importantly, we can learn how to behave better with our own children or other youngsters in order to improve their life chances too.



Donald

Delton Doucet


Your self-esteem is very important in the level of confidence you will have throughout your daily life. It is the way you view and feel about yourself that will have a very profound effect on how you life will proceed each day.

The opinions and experiences that you have gathered since child hood from family members, school, your friends and society as a whole plays a part in developing self-esteem but how you take it all in and view those opinions determines your selfesteem.

We seek encouragement and approval from others especially parents and role models as we are growing up and this plays a huge roll in the development and the building of self esteem as we try to build confidence within our selves.

As teens and into adult hood there is a constant barrage of commercials, opinions from others, family members that we should be slim, dress fashionable, be financially successful and if we are having problems living up to all this it can and does have a impact on our lives and leads to low self esteem.

The opposite is also just as true that if we have managed to live up to this expectation it can and sometime does lead to pride in our ability and in ourselves but friends and society can view us as being arrogant and conceited and resent us for being so successful and this can have an effect on our self confidence.

Your self-esteem will fluctuate daily and is highly affected by other people and events of the day but you are in total control of your self confidence and self esteem levels, it is up to you to determine if you will allow these events to control your life.

Just as rejection and loss can be underlying factors for low self esteem success and achievement can great boost you to higher levels of confidence and self-esteem.

However how we feel solely about ourselves is also determined by our relationships we have with others and if we are felt worthwhile as individuals. We are humans and we have a natural instinct to be wanted and included as well as wanted to contribute and be a value member of society that makes a difference, we want to feel that we matter.

Many people seek out a life coach or a confidence coach to help build self esteem and to build confidence and while this is great for I feel everyone can use help every now and then what every one must realize is that change is not easily accomplished.

Change means stepping outside of you comfort zone and this can lead to more selfesteem issues. This is why goal setting is very important when developing self esteem. It allows you to set small goals to achieve to eventually work you way up to the big goals you have for yourself all while along the way you gradually build your confidence levels and your self esteem to becoming the person you wish to become and also by doing this you build a inner confidence that will not be easily influenced by others and events is society.

Nothing worth having ever comes easy. If everything came easily to you then you wouldn’t value it so much when you acquired it.

You must be determined to improving your self esteem and you will soon find yourself achieving greater things as your confidence builds. Remember the way you feel about yourself also determines how others will interact with you and vice versa.

One of the best things I ever did for my self esteem issues was to finally be able to convince myself that if I was going to have the life I wanted I didn’t have time to worry about what others thought of me.

If I allowed what they thought of me to determine my actions then that meant they were controlling my life and I am the only one that controls my own life and that goes for you also.

© Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved Delton Doucet



Travis

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.