Dealing with Low Self-Esteem or Low Self-Worth.

Is It Possible to be  Permanently Confident and Happy for your Entire Life?

I actually don’t know the answer to this question.

I once said to a friend of mine,  you have so much confidence.  She replied no I don’t  I just hide it well.  If you see her you would say she is confident, happy and at times a little overconfident.

What is going on there??   We perceive things, and people, in a certain way, and we don’t know what they are feeling inside or dealing with.    We may be feeling extremely vulnerable inside at the time, we may see everyone else to be extremely confident and easy-going, when in fact we have no clue what is going on inside.  The point is, even with own ourselves, we don’t always deal with what is going on inside or even realise it.    We have forgotten to talk to ourselves, we have forgotten to understand ourselves.  We keep living but never stop to get the ship back in order.

To answer the question, “is it possible to be permanently happy ?”:  in context to the world we live in today – then it has to be no. Not always.  We just learn to manage.

Is our thinking on point?  Or is our thinking messing us up?

Our thoughts and feelings lead us to be happy or sad.   Our experiences in life create deep happiness or deep pain, which then create deep feelings and thoughts of confidence or lack of confidence.

Generally, when we lose confidence and self-esteem it is deep-rooted and it is a manifestation of several years of pain and several hard times (well, this is my humble opinion).

We have been hurt and are continually being hurt, we perceive ourselves in a negative light and we sometimes appear unconfident or we fake it.  That is we fake confidence in some cases (not all).  Either way, we are dealing with low self-esteem, value or worth.  It is just the way we handle it differently, depending on our circumstances and our resilience power.

The danger is when it all becomes too much as you want to say ENOUGH ALREADY! STOP!   This is when we forget that we are in control of what we think, feel and manage life.  Life does happen, but I do have a say in it and how I respond.  But, sometimes, we just can’t get out of it.

The Spiral of Negative Thinking and False Beliefs About Ourselves.

Often, we are dealing with feelings of thoughts of  ” I am not good enough.  Everyone is better than me. I can’t do it, they are so good.  I am so weak.”  The problem with these thoughts is that they are not helpful to us.  They make us feel even worse about ourselves.   Then, we repeat them again and again, and we get into a spiral of negative thinking.     Not once do we challenge the thought,” I am not good enough”.  Well, who said so?   “Oh, I said so”,  But who else is saying that?   We begin to live in “our own little world “, and the thoughts just spiral out of control, and we let them.  And we become sensitive to everything.

There is NOTHING wrong with us.  We have created a wrong belief of ourselves. A wrong perception.  This happened probably because we have had one too many challenges in our life. The good news is, it is just a thought, and we can change how we think – it is not permanent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Challenging our Negative Thinking

When you find yourself whirling out of control with your negative thinking and feeling of self-value.   You need to stop and challenge yourself.  Take a piece of paper and

1. Write down the unhelpful thought
2. Write down why you feel that way
3. Write down why you think it is unhelpful
4. Then turn it into an affirmation:

For example:

1. The negative thought is ” I am not good at cooking”,
2. Why do I feel that way :  ” I messed up dinner again”.
3. Why is it unhelpful – well, most of the time I am a great cook.  But today, I was a bit off and feeling low.  This is not an everyday thing.
4. Affirmation:  I am a good cook,  I love cooking,  I rock at cooking.  I am confident, and I recognise I  have off days.  Today was just an off day.

The above exercise should be done regularly, that is, every time you have a feeling of low self-esteem.  It will help you identify the unhelpful thoughts and will help you change your thought patterns.  It will become easier in time to set yourself straight and break the pattern of these thoughts.   The great thing is that this will become a tool for life.

How to Build Up Your Self-Esteem and Self-Worth- With the Positive Log Book

Ask  three or two extremely close friends or family who love you dearly and know you inside out.   Ask them to write 10 or more of your positive qualities on a piece of paper for you.

When you read these qualities, you might feel surprised, shocked and tearful.   This comes back to, our perception of ourselves being out of whack!  We forget our beauty; we forget our capacity. 

How create the positive logbook?

Buy a nice notebook, say A5, so that you can carry it around with you.  Write on the top of each page one of the positive characteristics/qualities your loved ones have mentioned.  Choose 7 in total – you may want to group like ones together.   Then every day, write an example of those 7 qualities you carried out on that day.  Do this as long as it takes to fill each piece of paper.   Once you have finished a sheet of paper, you might want to select 7  more qualities and do this exercise again with seven more qualities.  Do this for a  minimum 2 months.  Of course, you can do this longer.

For example,  some of the qualities are caring, kind, helpful, taking pleasure in small things, clever, bright, not a afraid to try new things.

1. So on the top of one page you write caring & kind,
2. and the next your write helpful, next page write pleasure in small things,
3. next page is clever & bright
4. and the next page not afraid to try new things.

Then, watch yourself in the day, and write an example of those qualities you observed in yourself that day:

1. So under Helpful  I write,  I was helpful today when I helped an old man with his shopping.
2. I could also write this under small things (help the old man).
3. Clever and Bright :  I started a blog and put my first image
4. (this could also be used for not afraid to try new things)

The point of this exercise is to help you see your self worth,  and allow you to develop your worth again.   When we loose ourself  we forget how to value ourself.   So, in a way we need to re-establish our relationship with ourselves again.

Final thoughts

Both these activities/techniques will set you straight and they become tools for life.  Once you have overcome the major feelings of low self-esteem and have regained your worth,  I think it is important to keep some form of talking to yourself alive.  Therefore, I say practice affirmations daily, gratitude and journal out your negative feelings.  Have set daily routines in your life, eat well, meditate, exercise,  etc.   Create Resilience within yourself.  All of these tools will keep you balanced always.   And as I said already you have these techniques for life.

We all go through lows in life.  It is just a passing cloud and  once we have mastered it, it will not stay with us for long.  It might visit, but it will never become a guest that outstay their welcome.  Because, I am equipped to send them packing.

I am no therapist,  however I am experienced in  life’s ups and downs and these are some cognitive therapy technique I learnt many years ago (again no expert).  Having said that, if you need to see a specialist you should because sometimes you just need a 3rd party and you it only takes a few sessions to fix yourself for life, and there is no shame in it.    So, I was 22 years old, my final year of university not completed, my dad passes away. I have to still study to graduate, then we have another family blow 3 years after my dad passes away, and a couple of years after that I go for tough jobs and my confidence is slow slipping away, the child hood tapes of being bulled etc come back and impact my work.  Then I realise, I got to sort it out -and it just took four or five sessions over that many weeks with may be a couple of weeks gap in between.

It really all boils down to our thinking, our thoughts.  Be wise how you think and feel and what you hold onto. Then you will always be happy, and  have the capacity to get yourself out of a low.  Also, we need to meditate and talk to ourself that is why I feel it important to journal and practice gratitude and affirmation.  Life is going to hit us, we just need to have the bat of resilience ready.  I use to believe in 7 year cycles as that what I saw in my-life. Then it became 3 year cycles and now I am not sure.  Please don’t misunderstand me –  I am extremely happy with my life right now, but stuff happens and I am just being realistic.   What I have learnt is our thoughts, feelings, company, what we read, eat, watch everything impacts our life and we must take daily care through meditation, reading positive things, and have a positive daily intention every day.  We need to keep working at ourself to make us shine and smile even when it is all a bit, because there is so much beauty in learning and growing and becoming stronger and wiser.

————————-

Thank you for stopping by .  Please comment, like, share, or subscribe to this blog.  I would love to know your thoughts, insights , advice – as these may be helpful to all who stumble across is post.

Other useful post

• The Power of Journaling
• Resilience
• The Mood Roller Coaster
• Fear – Procrastination – Paralyzed
• Change and Acceptance
• The Life Train
• Traffic Control your Thoughts!
• The Power of Routines
• Mirror – Others are said to be A Mirror for us.

© Copyright http://www.thoughtsnlifeblog.com 2016 All right reserved   – updated May 2022 

Disclaimer & Disclosure Policy

Image acknowledgement:

http://www.freeimages.com. Pexel, Instagram,  Youtube, Google or my own creations