Developing A Healthy Self Esteem Posted by Unknown , Wednesday, 27 February 2013 at 09:25, in

Nobody is perfect. That is why people make mistakes. We all have our strength and weaknesses and acknowledging them is a step in the right direction if you want to develop or maintain a healthy self esteem. You should know that although you have your weaknesses, there are other aspects of your life that you are so good at. People with a good and healthy self-esteem are able to feel good about themselves for who they are, appreciate their own worth, and take pride in their abilities and accomplishments. They also acknowledge that while they’re not perfect and have faults, those faults don’t play an overwhelming or irrationally large role in their lives or their own self-image.

These steps will guide you in your quest to maintain that healthy feeling of self worth:

Take a Self-Esteem Inventory:

List out your weaknesses and strengths and arrange them side by side. This should help you know what aspects of you needs improvement and what aspects you need to work better on as well as the aspects you are doing so good at.

Set realistic expectations:

When we set unrealistic expectations, we often get greatly discouraged when we do not get to achieve them. In real sense, this was due to the fact that the expectations which see,ed right at the time they were formed were actually unrealistic. By setting realistic expectations, we increase our success-failure ratio and this improves or builds a good feeling of self worth.

Explore yourself:

Know who you really are: your strength and weaknesses. Many people who succeed go through this step. It pays to know that this Is what you are not good at and this is what you are so good at. Exploring yourself also involves opening up to new thoughts, ideas, opportunities, activities or processes.

Be self adjusting:

Keep adjusting your self-image and self-esteem to match your current abilities and skills, not those of your past. Yes! you could have been able to do it three to five years ago but obviously, you are getting older.

Stop comparing yourself to others:

This may seem difficult for starters but it is very important. You have to stop comparing yourself to others. No two people are the same. Your weakness may be somebody’s strength and your strength could be another person’s weakness.

Self care:

You should devout some time to take care of your elf this is connected with the feeling of being important to yourself.

Self talk: Be conscious of what you say to yourself. If you are so used to insulting yourself or dwelling on how many mistakes you have made in your life time, you would find it difficult to nurture a healthy self esteem.

Developing Or Improving Your child’s Self esteem Posted by Unknown , at 08:37, in

A healthy self esteem serves as some sort of amour for your child against the challenges of the world. A child not only needs to have a healthy self esteem to deal with present situations but also needs it to be a better person in future. Self-esteem fluctuates as kids grow. It's frequently changed and fine-tuned, because it is affected by a child's experiences and new perceptions.

Kids with healthy self-esteem tend to enjoy interacting with others. They're comfortable in social settings and enjoys group activities as well as independent pursuits. When challenges arise, they can work toward finding solutions and voice discontent without belittling themselves or others. It is important therefore to ensure that your child develops a healthy self esteem.

A few points have been outlined and explained below:

Spending quality time with your child:

if you really want your child to have that great self esteem, you have to learn to spend quality time with that child. Respecting and listening to him/her.

Be a source of comfort and safety for your child:

Children, who are constantly being out rightly ridiculed and laughed at tend to feel low about themselves. You should be able to encourage positive comments about your child and strongly keep the child away from negative comments which are expressed always. This is because over time, the child might begin to see his/herself in that light.

Identify and encourage your child’s strength and interest:

Every child has something he or she is good at. Some could be extremely good at some things and on the other hand, they perform terribly at some other task. As a good parent, you should be able to recognize your child’s strength and weaknesses and encourage positive interest. 

Establishing the right expectation:

Help your child in believing in his/her abilities by setting just the right expectation. If your child begins to feel that no matter what, he/she would never achieve the expected goal, there is a tendency that that sense of fulfillment would be lost and if consistently, might be lost forever. Ensure that your expectations are not too high for your child.

Learn to offer praises for your child’s efforts:

You need to praise the efforts your child makes each time he/she sets out to do something positive. However, focus on the efforts rather than the outcome because your child might not be getting the right results but makes so much efforts at getting it right and should not be discouraged.

Openly talk about weaknesses and strengths with your child:

Let your child get the impression weaknesses and strengths characterizes almost everything in existence and that he/she is not an exemption. Your child should be able to know that failing in one aspect of life does not mean a total failure in life itself.

Offer carefully structured criticisms:

If you criticize your child’s actions, it is wise. However, this should be done carefully and with love. It is not advisable to criticize your child in front of others this would stain his or her dignity. You should be careful to directly criticize the actions of your child and not the child.

Be a positive mirror:

Just as a child grows and learns many little things, he/she learns of your opinions or feelings towards him/her. Let your child know you are proud to have him/her and let this feeling be honest.

Monitor school influences on your child:

Check the type of friends your child hangs out with in school or the company he/she keeps. Peer influence is one big and enormous factor that affects a child’s personality. You should be able to encourage interaction with friends who would help boost your child’s esteem.

Hand out responsibilities to your child:

one major way children get to build their self esteem is by accomplishing the tasks they have been given to do or by knowing they contribute to whatever happens at home. It makes them feel they have been of help.

Encourage your child to express feelings:

Expressing feelings comfortably does not mean the child is free to explode at every emotional twinge, but rather develops a comfortable balance between expressing and controlling feelings. Do not respond to your child’s feelings with anger messages. The fear of parents' reactions makes the child begin to stuff feelings.

Never compare your child with others in such a harsh manner:

Your child would recoil into his/her shell when bluntly told that he could never do what “Mark” does although they are of the same age and in the same class. The child suffers inwardly and may not be able to stop feeling less than “Mark”.

Provide encouragement:

Naturally, we are spurred on when someone offers some sort of encouragement when we feel we are not getting at something right. Learn to offer encouraging words or expressions to your child. This would help in a great way.

Dealing With Break Ups And Still Remembering To Keep Your Shoulder High Posted by Unknown , at 06:11, in

Having to deal with our emotions when a significant relationship ends is not an easy task I must say.

 However, realizing the significant of that break and interpreting it well is quite important. We can learn from the break and become stronger, better equipped for life and way better people. Relationships end and things get sour. You shouldn’t kill yourself because someone thinks of you as less of a person. You should be strong enough to restrain from despair and giving up on yourself. Don’t begin to feel less about yourself. 

Because you were jilted by a lover doesn’t mean you are not a good person. It could mean he/she was just too dumb enough not to realize how special and unique you are.

You probably got a sack letter from your boss or a letter requesting you discontinue a business relationship with your business partner and you begin to feel rejected, that is not the way to go! Yes, you have been told you are not needed but who says it is the end of the world? Who says that was where you were meant to be anyway? You could be better off doing something else or doing the same thing in an entirely different place.

Recovering from a break up is mostly difficult but you should keep reminding yourself that you “can” and “will” move on.

Think through everything thoroughly but don’t over think it:

Go through everything that happened over and over again. Try to find out what went wrong and why it did. Thinking about the reasons why it ended can make it much clearer to you that it takes two people to start a relationship, but just one discordant person is enough to end it. It may also help you avoid many missteps in the future if you can identify areas where you contributed to the demise of the relationship.

Don’t rethink your decision:

 If the idea to end the relationship or break up was yours, probably because you have discovered that your partner is not someone you can move along with or the negatives outweighs the positive, stick to your decision. Avoid romanticizing the good times and forgetting your reason for ending the relationship in the first place.

Wisely cope with the pain:

Though you might feel you have messed things up pretty bad or you did so wrong a thing, it is healthy to admit your faults because no one is perfect. You should however remind yourself that you did your possible best that you could do giving circumstances and situations beyond your control.

Find happiness in other areas of your life:

At the moment you might feel like a total jerk but it is quite advisable to delve into other aspects of your life that you feel happy about as a source of comfort. This would also help in dealing with that feeling of failure and help in boosting your esteem just at the critical moment when it seems it is about to crumble.

Begin to think positively and let the negative emotions be:

It is wise to realize that there is no gain to be achieved from continued reliving of painful incidents. Let go of the negative feelings. There is no gain in holding on to anger towards the other person or hating yourself over it. Have it in mind that although the relationship is over, you both shared unique moments which you should be able to learn from.

Turn to friends and family members who love you:

Talk to your friends and let them be fountains of comfort for you. Draw strength from their encouraging words and gestures. You will want friends around you. Those who understand what you are going through.

Write all your feelings down:

It helps when you do this honestly and don’t purposefully leave some aspects of the incident out of the write up. You would be amazed how clearer every thing would appear to you. As your grieving begins to lessen, you will begin to find it easier to understand valuable life lessons from the whole incident. No relationship is ever a failure if you manage to learn something about yourself. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean it wasn't a necessary part of your journey to becoming who you're meant to be.

11 Guidelines On How To Deal With Setbacks Posted by Unknown , at 05:55, in

Setbacks are important in our life. The manner in which we get affected by them and the way we deal with them goes a long way in creating long lasting impressions on our self dignity or worth.

People deal with different setbacks in different ways. This is basically because of their personality make up. We should expect set backs in every aspect of life: when we make new decisions, new actions, when we need to make a success story, etc.

Life, generally, is not a bed of roses. We get challenged; feel disappointed or depressed at one point or the other and sometimes, we just feel like giving up. You should however never feel you have failed because a setback is not a failure.  When you fall, get back up and do something different from what you have been doing and failing. Get a new perspective or a new way to look at the same thing but differently. There is no basic or general method of dealing with these challenges or the feeling of giving up but I will offer a few suggestions based on my research of the very topic.

Accept the challenge:

Probably, you have been doing the same thing in the same way for the same number of hours and for many years now without having as much as changed a single thing. Remember, time is not at a stand still. You need to realize that there are better ways of doing that which you do or that there are better things to do than that which you are already doing.

Remain focused:

Keep your goals in mind when you are doing anything. For instance, you are working on a new project and it happens to be a construction. You would probably record casualties. You should remember that your aim is to get done with the job and you shouldn’t let that deter your activities. Another instance is when you are preparing for a semester exams. Let’s assume you had a pass in your continuous assessment probably because you fell ill prior to those assessments. You should remain focused and think of ways to improve your grades. You shouldn’t let the poor assessment score restrain you from the goal you had in mind.

Learn from them:

Knowing fully well that challenges are like stumbling blocks in our parts to achieving set aims and objectives, when you feel challenged, you should be able to know what it is you are doing wrong or why you are not achieving what you set out to do. You should critically analyze the situation and outline possible causes for the set back after which you would be able to know how to address them. However, this should be done after you must have taken the time to rest or rid your mind of any emotional strains that might have resulted from the situation. This is advised because it would enable you think clearly with a clear head and prevent you from making the wrong decision.

Find someone to talk to or confide in:

We all feel challenged at some point or the other in our lifes. When this happens, you should talk the situation out with an acquaintance, a colleague, family member or a friend. This should be someone who would listen to you and be able to advice you appropriately.

Maintain a positive mindset:

Looking on the positive side of things doesn’t hurt and offers some sort of encouragement. Don’t dwell on the mistakes. You should remember when you did it right or when everything was just right. This should encourage you and make you believe in trying again.

Find a way to make it a plus:

You should look at the situation ad search for ways to turn that disappointment into a blessing. Make it work for you in another way.

Help people learn from your mistake:

You can probably write about your mistake. Telling what happened, how you felt, why it happened and the ways in which you dealt with the situation. Aside from giving a sense of fulfillment that you have finally pulled through, you would be helping someone and preventing the person from entering into that hole you fell into.

Consult an expert:

Professional help would be in line if you have tried so many things and they are just not working out for you. You could consult a counselor or a professional in line with what you are doing. This person could offer many possible help to you. As he/she is an expert, you should be told why the situation turned out as it did and proffered solutions should also be made available.

Change direction or perception:           

Now, after you must have known your problem, you should be able to know what direction you will be heading next. Would you change the course of action? Would you change your point of view or would you change the idea totally?

Push through till the end:

When you get to that point where you have to make a decision of either continuing or quitting, and you decide that the best option for you is to continue, (that is, after evaluating the situation) push through till the end, till when you finally get positive results.

Quit:

If however you evaluate the situation and you realize you are better off doing something else or you are not prepared for the task or you miscalculated and didn’t know what you were getting into, you should be able to know when to call it quits.

You should never let a set back make you feel less about yourself. It shouldn’t make you self destruct because it does not mean you have failed. Gain strength from your weaknesses and become a better person.