Taking control: Are you sure you do not suffer from low self-esteem?

Most people have suffered some form of uncertainty with regard to ability to make friends, fear to participate in sports and class and accepting body shape or height. We encourage you to evaluate if you still have low self esteem!

What is low self-esteem?

It is an irrational interpretation, caused by negative perception of messages from parents and significant others involved in socializing a child during the first eight years of life. The mind retains these negative feedbacks and archives them; manifesting as various defense mechanism against a perceived hostile world. A person suffering from low self-esteem is concerned about failure and will dwell on possible problems. It is a norm to over-analyze hurdles rather than focus on success. A person is not conscious of the inner strength nor able to access intrinsic motivation to think and act according to own perception.  In other words, the tendency is to look for ideal situation to get going when faced with challenging environment instead of acting on own faith to succeed with inadequate available resources.

The contributing factors and outcome of low self-esteem!

The major cause of low self-esteem is withholding affection, negative talk or actions when correcting behavior during socialization.  Corporal punishment is still practiced by some parents who have low parenting skills or are victims of physical and emotional abuse themselves.  A child needs unconditional love like other basic needs like food, security and shelter. Any deprivation will result in issues of self-esteem outlines as follows:

1.    Low self esteem in childhood: Manifest in cheating, bullying, defaulting in class, shy to participate in class which leads to becoming underachiever.

2.    Low self-esteem in adolescents and adulthood: A suffer is a loner and generally unhappy. Since a human being is a social being, low interaction with other children will result in poor communication skills, inability to make friends and becoming hostile. Unfriendly person tend to exude negative energy which disallow any form of relationship; thus isolating a suffer, and contributing to depression.

3.    Other relationships issues resulting from low self-esteem: The ideal scenario in making friends with others is compatibility in terms of both academic and economic levels unless is for mentorship. For an example, a university lecturer who dates a bus driver seeks continuity of unquestioned submission. It is a skewed relationship and it is loaded with possible emotional issues associated with manipulations.

How to overcome low-self esteem!

A person with high self-esteem focuses on self-development and maintains open mind to learn and utilize identified talents and spiritual gifts as follows:

1.    Objectively looks and analyzes behavior that is not proactive towards self development. Remember you cannot change what you have not identified as needing change.

2.    Identify your strengths -talents and spiritual gifts. A talent is a natural ability to easily learn and acquire identifiable skills depicted in Seven Intelligences: Visual – spatial, Bodily – kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Linguistic, and Logical – mathematical.  Spiritual gifts are supernatural abilities to undertake spiritual functions such as: word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healings, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in different tongues and interpretation of different tongues.

3.    Focus on developing identified talents and spiritual gifts. It is good to know your weakness so that you can identify triggers; but never dwell in this corner!

4.    Hire a life-coach to assist you to review your goals and strategies as well as how to access resources in order to achieve them.

5.    Unlearn habits that are counter-productive to your personal growth and acceleration of momentum to your identified goals. Learn to say ‘no’ to situations or persons who derail you from your goals or contribute to procrastination.

People who suffer from low self-esteem fear making mistakes which is often mistaken for a virtue because that could be perceived as upholding high standards.  The condition is treatable through counseling and coaching. The latter is a positive approach to empowerment because it seeks to teach a sufferer how to identify and utilize inner strengths.