One problem that many of us experience is that of feeling a low sense of self-esteem. But there are ways to reduce this barrier to the enjoyment of life. A good start would be to boost the estimate you have of yourself and be aware of your capacities for growth. But of course still remaining are the underlying problems and your self-esteem can go up and down continuously based upon your self-perception from moment to moment. So begin by removing your "self rating". When you develop insight sufficient to recognize your intrinsic self-worth as a person you begin to have an improved picture of your ability to function. It's important to have a built-in security belief that you are a valuable person. Unless you have this capacity when anything goes wrong in your life, you may have difficulty believing that you have any worth it all.
Be aware of your process of untangling yourself from external "ratings" of your value as a person and this is done through unconditional self-acceptance. By applying these techniques you will not rate yourself based upon any inadequacies that you perceive, nor any feelings of failure or disapproval and you will be less likely to have a negative self-image.
In order to create self-acceptance the following statements should be followed:
1) You are a unique talented individual and human being.
2) You are constantly developing new skills and new healthy ways of coping.
3) You might be able to measure some of your externals such as how quickly you can accomplish a task at work but you can never rate yourself as an entirety because we as human beings are far too complex and we continue to modify ourselves through life experience daily.
4.) It is extraordinarily important to understand that we as human beings are by our very nature not perfect and are capable of making mistakes. Anyone who believes otherwise is not being realistic and has self-goals for behavior that cannot ever be reached in real life. Nobody is perfect so stop holding perfection out as the model that you seek.
Can you see how much easier your day-to-day existence will be if you can see that you have worth just as a person and independent of how other people appear to perceive you? Everybody likes to feel accepted and admired but if you have self- acceptance you will not live in dread of losing the admiration of others.
Self-acceptance allows you to accept flaws in others and also in yourself and can lead to healthy accommodations emotionally to negative experiences. With this realistic and supportive type of emotional response to adverse circumstances you are truly adapting to your environment. If you tend to put yourself down and blame yourself for the creation of negative events in your life, this will lead to inappropriate self-valuations which in turn may well contribute to unhelpful or destructive behaviors.
If you will look inward and explore your inner self, you will be able to make solid inroads toward understanding the bases for your low self-esteem, improve your understanding of yourself intrinsically as a person of worth, and thereby adapt to negative circumstances and develop healthier behaviors in response to them. As your behaviors become healthier your confidence builds and you realize that negative events need not be blamed upon yourself. Rather, you can take pleasure in seeing how personality growth has helped you to overcome the difficulties of life and not allow them to deprive you of the day-to-day pleasures that the capacity for self-acceptance brings.
