Healthcare providers know that there are many reasons why people suffer from low self-esteem from the chemical imbalance to lack of faith, opportunities, discipline and more.
Many agree, though, that the number one cause of low self-esteem is due to lack of positive feedback and love given to children during their early years.
What happens all too often is that children are born before their parents have matured enough to focus more clearly on their own adulthood, family and family values in the race to succeed with a mate while both are working long hours.
They are still trying to learn good work and life ethics and morals while being out from under parental influence, plus learning about family life together and extended family members during those early years. It’s a lot all at once.
And often before the maturing adults realize they may be following in their own parent’s footsteps, they repeat similar mistakes done to them in their own childhoods.
For example, many parents simply do not let their children try and try again and make their own mistakes.
And many parents do not offer sincere praise and compliments to their children. Instead, taking them and their efforts for granted in all too often a difficult, tough world today full of challenges.
Another important factor is that children most often truly believe in their hearts that all adults are right, and set their own values and feedback systems by them.
However, unfortunately too many of these adults raising young children are still battling illegal substance abuse, gambling, alcohol abuse and other very important issues.
The results are that these adults are simply not doing what’s best for either themselves or their families, especially with their young children trying to follow along in their footsteps.
What a drug or alcohol abuser does not see, for instance, is the harmful physical, emotional and often other abuse passed along to the children as the adults get and stay too caught up in their own self-focus.
In short, children and adults of all ages do need positive feedback and people to demonstrate in a sincere manner their care and concern.
Start young and encourage your mate and children to make good, healthy, positive choices. And when they fail at something, offer them hope and encouragement to try and try again.
Also encourage education, regardless of the level you have. Too many adults often ‘say’ they want their children to success, yet negate comments all through childhood in areas of advancing education.
So do offer plenty of reading materials around the home, show by example and read yourself, encourage workshops, online classes, eBooks and more.
Try to point out and help guide children and mates in their areas of their strengths like subjects in school (chess, math, music…), hobbies (crafts, musical instruments, singing…) and service to others (volunteer work, part-time job).
Reach out and show positive feedback. And reach out with human love, care, and respect. You’ll gain in return, increasing your own self-esteem and love.
Stop Underestimating Your Worth
It is important that you do not underestimate your worth, as you are what you think you are, self-esteem is all about thoughts and what you think of yourself.
If you think confidence then you will appear confident, and then this will show on the outside. When people realize their worth, they are able to face life with greater confidence and optimism about the future.
They are more likely to be able to reach their goals and gain experience, satisfaction and happiness from life, are better able to form lasting relationships that work and are better able to cope with whatever life throws at them.
A person who realizes their self-worth is a happy well-adjusted person who possesses the ability to cope with anything and anyone throughout their life and is capable of doing anything they set their mind on doing.
Problems caused by underestimating your self-worth
Many problems can occur in your life simply by underestimating your own self-worth.
A lack of self-worth:
- affects your sense of well-being
- causes problems with your feelings and needs
- affects your ability to make good healthy choices in relationships, work and life in general
- cause fears such as abandonment and problems such as people continually striving for perfection but never seeming to reach it
A lack of self-worth has been attributed to being indecisive, addictions such as smoking, drinking, drug abuse, compulsive shopping disorder and problems with eating such as bulimia and anorexia.
Realizing your self-worth
You are capable of realizing your self-worth. You do not have to do anything special in order to gain or deserve self-esteem.
The key to realizing your self-worth is getting that little voice inside your head to stop putting you down all the time, it is our own thoughts and feelings that drive us to develop a low self-esteem.
This little voice has developed over a long period of time, casting self-doubt onto yourselves until you genuinely believe that we aren’t worthy or capable.
It is your own minds that develop your feelings of low self-esteem, not some outside force.
There are several ways in which you can begin to change your pattern of thought and boost your self-esteem that in turn begins the process of realizing your true self-worth.
The basics behind making this correction are:
- Learning to recognize self-critical thoughts and stopping them
- Learning to replace self-thoughts with more positive ones
- Sticking with the habit of correcting your negative thoughts with more positive ones
There are many ways in which you can begin to set the pattern of changed thoughts but perhaps the easiest one is using affirmations, which are simple positive statements and using these to replace any negative thoughts.
Examples of positive affirmations could be:
- This is a new and exciting challenge – this could be used to replace thoughts such as this is too hard or I can’t do this it’s beyond me.
- I am a confident, worthy individual – replace this when you have thoughts such as can I do this or I could never do this.
- I can do anything my heart desires if I put my mind to it – this can be used to replace thoughts such as I’m not sure if I’m capable of completing this task or I don’t know if I can complete what is asked of me.
All of these are simple affirmations that you can use to gradually change the way you think, which in time will change the way you feel about yourself and encourage you to realize your true self-worth.
De-cluttering for Success
If you are surrounded by clutter and disorganization in your lives it makes an excellent breeding ground for negativity.
Negativity is what brings about feelings of low self-worth and low self-esteem which hinders us in life and is the basis for us being unsuccessful in what we choose to do.
It is essential therefore if you want to succeed and make the most out of life that you de-clutter from time to time and remove any excess obstacles and belongings from your path, keeping your lives open and free flowing.
Here are some simple points to remember to keep your home and life clutter free.
Replace old with new
This applies to anything which you bring into your home be it clothing, utensils, furniture or any other item.
If you continually buy and bring new items into your home then very quickly you are going to be overrun with items which usually end up being packed in cartons and put in the basement.
Even if you pack items and put them in the basement it is still clutter, clutter that you could do without. Thus, get into the habit of throwing things away or giving them to charity when you buy new.
Don’t keep unnecessary things
In order to keep your home clutter free it is essential that you don’t keep anything which is not essential, items belonging in this category include junk mail which appears through your letterbox, flyers, old newspapers, magazines, letters or trash from your car.
Letters that you don’t need can be shredded immediately, the same for junk mail, while any trash from your car should be collected daily and disposed of immediately.
It is surprising if you get into the habit how much junk you can eliminate building up in your home on a daily basis just by taking care with items such as this.
Throw anything away that you don’t like
Never hang onto items simply because you were given them as presents.
While this may sound harsh it leads to unnecessary clutter, if you don’t like something then don’t keep it, give it away to someone who likes it or sell it but don’t hang onto it.
Have a goal
When looking around your home have a goal in mind when de-cluttering, for example treat each room separately and say to yourself “I aim to de-clutter this room by 25%”.
If you start out with a clear goal in mind you will feel more in control, organized and feel you are accomplishing something.
You should divide the clutter into three piles, those items you can sell, the ones which are trash and those that you wish to give to charity, starting out with a clear plan and goal in mind makes de-cluttering your life so much easier.
Never procrastinate
Be harsh with yourself and don’t feel guilty about throwing something away or giving it away.
Once you start de-cluttering don’t give it a second thought and remove something from a pile and change your mind about getting rid out of sentiment.
If you stop and think about every item in this way it sows the seeds of doubt and negativity that leads to disorganization and a home full of items we don’t need.
How NLP Can Help You
Chances are that many of those who first come across NLP wonder what it is all about, even if it appears in the context of influencing human behavior through the adoption and practice of certain established techniques and procedures.
NLP stands for Neuro-linguistic Programming, where ‘neuro’ is something related to both mind and body.
‘Linguistic’ is about language patterns or structures and ‘programming’ is devising ways and means of coordinating mind, body, and language for shaping behavior so as to achieve better results than before in various walks of life.
In a sense, NLP can help you in many ways, if only you get to know its techniques and how to use them for your benefit.
Changed perceptions
You can turn to NLP when you are interested in developing your personality traits and characteristics, which determine your verbal and non-verbal reactions to the happenings in this world.
As a first step, let us understand that your perception of reality is based on your subjectivity. Just as a map is merely a miniature representation of a territory, what you perceive as real is only a colored representation of reality, not the reality itself.
You can’t help but look at the world through rose-colored glasses. Your reactions are dictated not by the reality but by your view of that reality.
NLP helps you in realizing this and reducing, if not completely removing, your subjectivity.
You will then perhaps consider adopting alternative viewpoints of reality and, consequently, bringing about a shift in the way you react to it.
Why do people react differently to a particular event or situation? Is it not because of the differences in their individual perceptions of that event or situation? What a traumatic event is to one may not be the same to another.
For instance, some people may take verbal or physical abuse lightly or simply ignore it. Others may be so affected by it that they need psychological or medical treatment.
The underlying philosophy of NLP is based on the premise that it is possible to change one’s perceptions, beliefs and behavior so that traumatic experiences become possible to treat. It is also possible that you might even become immune to trauma.
Get rid of phobias
You can similarly get rid of your phobias, if any, by going into the factors that cause your fear in the first place, with the help of NLP techniques.
You can perhaps look at things in the way that your adversaries do. You can perhaps consider the same things from a totally new perspective.
Another option, you can perhaps study people who have achieved excellence in any particular aspect of their life.
Find out what qualities and factors contributed to their success and then try and import the same or similar factors and qualities into your life in an effort to achieve excellence in your chosen field.
You can lower your levels of unhappiness or raise the levels of happiness by transforming your belief portfolio, your pre-conceived notions, your language patterns that display your innermost feelings, and your unconscious mind that exposes your conscious reactions to the external world, and so on.
In short, as the NLP practitioners claim, NLP transforms you into a new you, a happier you and a more effective you capable of dealing with this world in a much better way than before.