How To Boost Self Esteem
How to boost self esteem
by Dr David Purves
Self esteem is that feeling of being worthwhile as a human being. It is the feeling of assurance that you hold value in the world and have the personal tools and resources needed to navigate your life forward.
When self esteem is low it hampers everything you try to do. It can feel like a cloud of doubt dampening all your efforts to prove yourself worthwhile. If your self esteem is low it is for reasons that can be changed. By taking control over your self esteem you take control over your life and this is powerful stuff.
To begin to boost self esteem
Ask yourself this question... and this is a question I always ask my clients. What is the most negative belief you have about yourself? Well, sometimes people say, My feet are too big and I say, no thats not what it is.
Commonly people say things like, Im worthless, Im disgusting, Im no good, Im unlovable, Im a failure, Im a fraud, Im useless, Im stupid. These are very negative beliefs to hold about yourself And if you hold one of these beliefs its a very distressing thing to recognise and to bring out into the open. Its a distressing piece of information to carry with you, therefore it always causes a problem by decreasing your self esteem.
If you recognise one of these negative beliefs as being applicable to you or if you ask yourself the question and you realise that you have a similar negative belief, then its difficult to live a satisfactory life with that piece of information which gives you basically three choices.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number One
The first choice, and this is the choice that is very commonly adopted by many people ignore it. If you ignore your low self esteem you think it might go away. If you ignore it you can carry on as if it doesnt exist. You can put it behind you. You can get on with your life. The trouble is that ignoring it wont make it go away. It just puts it a little out of sight, so you dont have to look at it but it always exerts its influence.
Imagine there is a second moon spinning around the earth exerting its gravitational force. Every now and then the extra moon and the regular moon align then were going to have massive gravitational forces disrupting life. You can ignore self esteem issues, to a degree, for a period of time... maybe. And then its going to be really distressing. Its going to be upsetting. Its going to cause things to go wrong. Ignoring it is a commonly adopted strategy but it doesn't work very well in the long term.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number Two
The second strategy is to accept that your negative belief is true; accept that the most negative thing you believe about yourself is correct.
If I believed my most negative belief is that Im a failure, then I will accept as true that 'I am a failure'. Commonly people who are depressed will sit in my consulting room and say, I am a failure. Like 100%? Yes. That acceptance of the most negative belief typically goes along with a substantial mood disorder.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number Three
The first two options out of the three possible options are not very adaptive, not very useful and will definitely cause a problem at some point. The third options a bit more interesting, however. The third option is to ask yourself these questions:
Is my most negative belief about myself accurate?
Is my most negative belief about myself true?
Does my most negative belief about myself stand up to scrutiny?
For instance if my most negative belief is that Im a failure I would habitually say of myself, I am a failure.
If I was doing my own therapy at the same time I would then say, do you work? yes I do work.
Do you hold down a job and get a salary? I reply Yes.
Can you drive? Again Yes.
Are you able to maintain a relationship? Yes.
Are you interested in things? Yes.
Have you achieved any academic successes? Yes.
So then I ask, given all of those answers 'are you really a failure?
Self Esteem Help Are you a failure?
When people say, I am a failure. They dont mean I have failed in being able to make a cheese sandwich they say, I am a failure. This is a global interpretation of their whole being. It is without any kind of context and it is devoid of examples that illustrate it.
Looking at my most negative belief objectively can I sustain the view that I am a failure? No, I cant.
When people say, I am a failure, which is a common thing for people to say. But after they have challenged is, only a little, its hard for them to sustain because it doesn't match the evidence.
The evidence does not support that theyre a failure. The evidence only supports that they feel a failure. that is a completely different proposition. A feeling is not a fact and by challenging this distorted emotion we can boost self esteem back to normal levels.
I have established that there is usually a disconnect between your feelings of low self esteem and the reality of your life. A little introspection will support this statement. So on the one hand we have, this is what I know to be true and on the other hand we have this is how I feel. These are not the same things.
How you feel is causing the most negative belief you have about yourself to have energy.
What you feel is not always well calibrated to the world you live in and that is why ignoring it and accepting it (options 1 + 2) are both the wrong solution to this problem of low self esteem because how you feel will not change. It is immune to evidence. Its immune to effort. How you feel will not change unless you challenge it and change it.
So what we have to do if we have a problem with low self esteem and want to boost it is take the third option get self esteem help. Use CBT therapy to boost self esteem
CBT Therapy to get boost Self Esteem.
As part of getting self esteem help you have to examine your most negative belief about yourself. You have to examine its structure, you have to become interested in your problems with self esteem . When you understand your most negative and troubling beliefs you have to then challenge them and change them.
It is of fundamental importance to take this feeling of, 'I am disgusting, I am not good enough, Im worthless, Im unlovable, Im a fraud, Im a failure, Im stupid,' and challenge it. Make it account for itself, bring it in line with what we know to be true because we can demonstrate it to be true. This is CBT therapy.
Our feelings are not a good guide to reality in a lot of circumstances and in particularly when we have very negative beliefs and feelings about ourselves. So the third option of using CBT therapy to boost self esteem is life changing. Self esteem is far to valuable to be left to chance. You don't leave the engine oil levels to chance in your car then don't leave the psychological lubricant of self esteem to chance either. If we dont take control over our self esteem we are helpless to do very much without every step feeling like a mammoth internal struggle. It doesn't have to be that way. There is a video that accompanies this article it can be found at.
http://drpurves.com/how-to-boost-self-esteem/
How-to-boost-self-esteem
by Dr David Purves
Self esteem is that feeling of being worthwhile as a human being. It is the feeling of assurance that you hold value in the world and have the personal tools and resources needed to navigate your life forward.
When self esteem is low it hampers everything you try to do. It can feel like a cloud of doubt dampening all your efforts to prove yourself worthwhile. If your self esteem is low it is for reasons that can be changed. By taking control over your self esteem you take control over your life and this is powerful stuff.
To begin to boost self esteem
Ask yourself this question... and this is a question I always ask my clients. What is the most negative belief you have about yourself? Well, sometimes people say, My feet are too big and I say, no thats not what it is.
Commonly people say things like, Im worthless, Im disgusting, Im no good, Im unlovable, Im a failure, Im a fraud, Im useless, Im stupid. These are very negative beliefs to hold about yourself And if you hold one of these beliefs its a very distressing thing to recognise and to bring out into the open. Its a distressing piece of information to carry with you, therefore it always causes a problem by decreasing your self esteem.
If you recognise one of these negative beliefs as being applicable to you or if you ask yourself the question and you realise that you have a similar negative belief, then its difficult to live a satisfactory life with that piece of information which gives you basically three choices.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number One
The first choice, and this is the choice that is very commonly adopted by many people ignore it. If you ignore your low self esteem you think it might go away. If you ignore it you can carry on as if it doesnt exist. You can put it behind you. You can get on with your life. The trouble is that ignoring it wont make it go away. It just puts it a little out of sight, so you dont have to look at it but it always exerts its influence.
Imagine there is a second moon spinning around the earth exerting its gravitational force. Every now and then the extra moon and the regular moon align then were going to have massive gravitational forces disrupting life. You can ignore self esteem issues, to a degree, for a period of time... maybe. And then its going to be really distressing. Its going to be upsetting. Its going to cause things to go wrong. Ignoring it is a commonly adopted strategy but it doesn't work very well in the long term.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number Two
The second strategy is to accept that your negative belief is true; accept that the most negative thing you believe about yourself is correct.
If I believed my most negative belief is that Im a failure, then I will accept as true that 'I am a failure'. Commonly people who are depressed will sit in my consulting room and say, I am a failure. Like 100%? Yes. That acceptance of the most negative belief typically goes along with a substantial mood disorder.
Raising Self Esteem Option Number Three
The first two options out of the three possible options are not very adaptive, not very useful and will definitely cause a problem at some point. The third options a bit more interesting, however. The third option is to ask yourself these questions:
Is my most negative belief about myself accurate?
Is my most negative belief about myself true?
Does my most negative belief about myself stand up to scrutiny?
For instance if my most negative belief is that Im a failure I would habitually say of myself, I am a failure.
If I was doing my own therapy at the same time I would then say, do you work? yes I do work.
Do you hold down a job and get a salary? I reply Yes.
Can you drive? Again Yes.
Are you able to maintain a relationship? Yes.
Are you interested in things? Yes.
Have you achieved any academic successes? Yes.
So then I ask, given all of those answers 'are you really a failure?
Self Esteem Help Are you a failure?
When people say, I am a failure. They dont mean I have failed in being able to make a cheese sandwich they say, I am a failure. This is a global interpretation of their whole being. It is without any kind of context and it is devoid of examples that illustrate it.
Looking at my most negative belief objectively can I sustain the view that I am a failure? No, I cant.
When people say, I am a failure, which is a common thing for people to say. But after they have challenged is, only a little, its hard for them to sustain because it doesn't match the evidence.
The evidence does not support that theyre a failure. The evidence only supports that they feel a failure. that is a completely different proposition. A feeling is not a fact and by challenging this distorted emotion we can boost self esteem back to normal levels.
I have established that there is usually a disconnect between your feelings of low self esteem and the reality of your life. A little introspection will support this statement. So on the one hand we have, this is what I know to be true and on the other hand we have this is how I feel. These are not the same things.
How you feel is causing the most negative belief you have about yourself to have energy.
What you feel is not always well calibrated to the world you live in and that is why ignoring it and accepting it (options 1 + 2) are both the wrong solution to this problem of low self esteem because how you feel will not change. It is immune to evidence. Its immune to effort. How you feel will not change unless you challenge it and change it.
So what we have to do if we have a problem with low self esteem and want to boost it is take the third option get self esteem help. Use CBT therapy to boost self esteem
CBT Therapy to get boost Self Esteem.
As part of getting self esteem help you have to examine your most negative belief about yourself. You have to examine its structure, you have to become interested in your problems with self esteem . When you understand your most negative and troubling beliefs you have to then challenge them and change them.
It is of fundamental importance to take this feeling of, 'I am disgusting, I am not good enough, Im worthless, Im unlovable, Im a fraud, Im a failure, Im stupid,' and challenge it. Make it account for itself, bring it in line with what we know to be true because we can demonstrate it to be true. This is CBT therapy.
Our feelings are not a good guide to reality in a lot of circumstances and in particularly when we have very negative beliefs and feelings about ourselves. So the third option of using CBT therapy to boost self esteem is life changing. Self esteem is far to valuable to be left to chance. You don't leave the engine oil levels to chance in your car then don't leave the psychological lubricant of self esteem to chance either. If we dont take control over our self esteem we are helpless to do very much without every step feeling like a mammoth internal struggle. It doesn't have to be that way. There is a video that accompanies this article it can be found at.
http://drpurves.com/how-to-boost-self-esteem/
How-to-boost-self-esteem
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