Monday, December 26, 2011

What is self esteem and how to build it


Today on the blog “Thought for the day” I want to talk on what self esteem is and how to build it. I believe the topic is very important as the quality determines how we will see ourselves in life, believe and consequently behave. 

The value of self in your own eyes is what self respect really is. It is very important. My country has been among top countries where people commit suicide. As you may understand raising hand against oneself is a clear sign of being very unhappy, devalued, having shattered dreams and etc. People can feel that way for a zillion of reasons, but if you really know your self-worth there could be a lot of very bad things happening in your life you will still be able to survive those maladies, pick yourself up and go forward.
Low self esteem poisons our thinking, destroys our ability to be self-confident, distorts our self image and may endanger our relationships with other people, even those that we love dearly. 

Why do people have poor self esteem?

Negative and wrong beliefs about ourselves

It all may start from our childhoods, parents, schools where we hear a lot of bad words about ourselves and we start believing those. You may not be very talented, fail a lot, be slow to understand and learn things at school, but that should not make us look at ourselves as failures and start believing that we are good for nothing. You do not even know how much you can achieve! And who can dare to tell you that you are a failure? History shows that a lot of geniuses and other people who achieved a lot in life were “failures” at school and had a lot of problems in relationships. If you feel like one of them, do not worry, you may become one of the best known inventors of your time and do not take negative words directed towards yourself too personally. Smile them off. Learn how to do it.  

Negative experience slashes our self esteem

Failing is unavoidable. Who does not fail? Everybody does and everybody will. However, the process often does very negative influence towards our psychological states, feelings and they way we value ourselves. We tend to make close associations between our failures and our personalities. Unfortunately, we also fail to understand that failure and a lot of failures are part of learning process. You can hardly learn anything in life without failing. So, a disassociation of the way we see ourselves and our failures should take place. And the sooner it happens, the better it is for us.

Comparing ourselves with others will definitely injure self esteem

This is a very psychologically ‘poisonous’ activity. Other people (our parents, spouses, teachers and etc.) can do that comparing us with others by exalting others and humiliating us. They may say how good, talented and nice your neighbor kids are and how awful our behavior is in comparison to theirs. We can also do this comparison stuff on our own and produce the same results of self pity, dissatisfaction about ourselves, unhappiness, anger and, of course, low self esteem.  

Mistakes and bad things done in the past is a cause of low self esteem

All of us make mistakes and do bad things in life. Some do it more often, some less. Occasionally we do wrong things that insult other people. Mistakes do not injure our self worth as bad as those wrongdoings towards others do. Many people are tortured by guilt, because they have done some bad things in their past and they cannot forgive themselves and forget that. I do not believe that there is a single person in this earth who has not done anything bad towards another person. All of us are sinful and sometimes do sinful things to other people. When this happens we need to ask for forgiveness (if that is possible), to ask God for forgiveness and then forgive ourselves. 

Self esteem building

Getting rid of wrong type of beliefs

The first thing that you will have to do is to get rid of the negative stuff. By this I mean getting rid of all negative types of beliefs about yourself. You cannot have two kinds of attitudes to yourself at the same time. Well, technically you can, but it will only mean that you will be a very unstable personality that builds its self perception on feelings and circumstances. It will take time to see which areas you have those negative self limiting beliefs in and then take proper actions to deconstruct those.

Reconsider your friendships

Some people have very low self esteem, because they communicate with people who are full of negativity and always speak and share it with everybody. This influences you in a very negative way as you start looking at the world only from a negative point of view. Changing friends can be an option that you may want to consider. Be friends with positive people who seek how to boost value of others and who try to see the bright side of any problem. 

Understand that negative experience is a step to progress

We often see our negative experiences and mistakes as something and tend to see ourselves as failures when we fail to do something. However, failing is the only way to perfection and achievement and it should not be viewed as something awful, but as something that could help up to get mature and actually improve our self esteem. So, change your attitude towards failures and many problems connected with self confidence will disappear automatically. 

Stop the self comparison with others business

You are unique and there is no one like you in the entire world. You have your talents, character, way of thinking, life, family and you should not compare yourself with others. God gave you your own destiny under the sun and no one can do it better than you. So why worry about others? They have their own destinies and all necessary tools to achieve their purposes. So have you. You should not look around and be worried about the way others fulfill their destinies. You go on and do what you have to do and do not condemn yourself if you won’t succeed immediately. 

Forget your past sins and concentrate on your future

Concentrating on your past will only keep you in the zone of stagnation and self pity. You were created to be a ‘mini creator’ and reflect God in your thinking, words and actions. You cannot do it if you keep on concentrating on your past sins and mistakes. There is not a single person in this earth who has not sinned and everybody of us needs forgiveness, which also means that we have to forgive one another and ourselves. Guilt will bring down your self esteem as nothing else will. So, understand that God loves you, forgives you and wants you to have wonderful future. Forgive yourself and regain self respect.

I hope the article was useful and you find out some useful ways to increase your self esteem. I hope you will be able to apply those in your daily life. God bless you during the Christmas and New Year season. 

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Positive thoughts

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

15 best mostly inspirational life quotes on living, dreaming and dying

Best life quotes is the topic of the post on the blog ‘Thought for the day’ today. You have probably noticed how I enjoy writing posts on quotes and making my comments about them. This post is going to be updated from time to time and I will try to select best quotes about life in it. The quotes are meant to encourage, inspire and motivate you to go after your targets, goals and dreams. A few will have my comments attached to them, but others won't. I hope you will find them really useful. 

1. “While your life is the true expression of your faith, whom can you fear?” by Julia Ward Howe.

Most probably you can only fear a spineless crowd that has some formless principles and no individuality. You always have to conform to those in order to please the crowd. But should you? By no means. The crowd will never remember you. Live following your faith.

2.“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change” by Barbara de Angelis.

I love the quote. Your attitude and thoughts of happiness bring you the very happiness into your life. When you learn to enjoy the life that God has given you and expect much greater things looking through the eyes of faith into the coming future you will be happy every single day of your life.

3. "Can anything be sadder than a life of a human in this night? His life is so long and death unexpected and sudden" by V. Macernis. 

4. “Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined” by Henry David Thoreau.

We learn from the past, but we do not live in it (if we are going forward). Dreams are to be pursued in order to live a better life. Your confidence will help you to do it.

5. "Life - life imprisonment" by J. Turin.

6. "Do not pay too much attention to opinions, for they do change at the slightest wind of change. It is you that live your life, not others" by Vytas Zilenas. 

7. "The more you plan, the less time you have to enjoy life itself" author unknown.

8. “Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no one can live” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Either we exist or we live. You cannot live if you do not have a goal. Likewise you cannot live if you do not go after the goal that you have set. Both things are necessary to live a territory of existence and join the territory of living.

9. "It is better real foolishness, than a pretended intellect" author unknown. 

10. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death” by Albert Einstein.

11. "Our life may not be full of happiness all the time, but it can always be full of love" author unknown.

12. “Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today” by James Dean.

13. “In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder” unknown author.


14. “The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live” by Flora Whittemore.

15. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” Luke 9: 25 (New International Version).

I am a Christian and I believe there will be the final Judgment. Some souls will be saved and souls will be lost. Whatever you gained in this life you will have to leave it behind. The only thing that you will be able to take is your faith in the Savior. If you do not have it, you will be lost forever. Ask Him to forgive you now and your soul will never be lost but after physical death will come to your Savior. No guru or religious teacher yet died for the sins of his followers. Jesus did, accept the gift and start enjoying the joys of eternal life now.
Hope you liked the best life quotes. The list will be expanded in the nearest future. God bless you.

See also:

Nice thoughts

Good thoughts

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Thought for the day 28 of November 2011


Welcome back to the ‘thought for the day’ blog. I haven’t written a post for about two months. There have been some issues with my blog ranking, because it was sandboxed for some reason by Google, but now things seem to be going better and I want to continue posting. Not sure if I will do it every day, but I will try to write as often as I can. Today I want to give you one scripture from the Philippians 3:13-14 and it goes: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.“

I often ask myself what my goal in life is. I do see some short term targets, but occasionally stumble when it comes to a long term purposes. I have them, but they are often too abstract and have to be specified, simplified and there has to be developed ways how to achieve them. I have been working on that recently. I would not say that I have only one goal in life. Maybe that is not good, but I am changing and developing, and maturing as a personality, and with time my goals can change. 

However, I cannot live without a goal and I am pretty sure than nobody can. Therefore, I spend each day thinking both about my short term goals and long term purposes. I feel blessed when I do that. That is probably the best booster for my motivation. If you feel demotivated and lost your vision start thinking on what you want to achieve in life and when you find that out your motivation will soar. God bless you in finding your purpose in life and pressing toward it.

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Monday, September 26, 2011

Thought for the day 26th of September 2011


„...neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our LordRomans 8:39.

I know that God’s love for us much bigger than we can imagine. We often try to decide how much He loves us based on how much of His love we feel. However, our feelings are some of the most unstable things and a very bad way to determine whether God loves us or not. The best way to see His love is to understand that He gave His Son for you and me. That’s how the depth of His love is shown to us.

So, do not trust your feelings. In good times they may be telling you one thing, in bad times you have to believe in God’s love. I am so glad that nothing can separate us from Him. Well, there is one thing. It is our sins. If we do not confess them and continue living in them. But if they are confessed, they are forgiven and there are no barriers between us and Him. So, rejoice for you are acceptable to God. 

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