Great Self Confidence

...to live the life you want

7 Practical Tips For Boosting Your Self-Esteem

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I’m forever coming across short articles or blog posts with seemingly useful tips.  But can such brief tidbits of information really do any good. For instance, with this article will any of the tips really “boost” you self esteem?

7 Practical Tips For Boosting Your Self-Esteem

by Ricky P O’ Shea

Having healthy self-esteem is the building blocks for happy, vibrant living. It means you have confidence in yourself and your abilities whereas as having low self-esteem can mean you lack confidence in yourself and never reach your true potential.

The good news is that if your self-esteem could do with a boost then there are small changes that can make a big difference. It all starts with reprogramming your beliefs and weeding out the negative inner-dialogue. To help you get started, consider the following tips for boosting your self-esteem.

Selective ignorance

The feedback and solicitations from others can greatly impact your own state of being. Choose to source your information wisely, limiting negative media in place of more positive media such as seminars or educational activities. Surround yourself with others who are positive and bring out the best in you and avoid allowing the negativity of others to affect your own judgement.

Comfort Zone

If we don’t push ourselves outside of our comfort zones then we have nothing to build on. You’d be surprised what you can achieve if you put your mind to it so take the plunge once in a while and take on new challenges. In doing so you’ll naturally grow in confidence and give your self-esteem a much-needed boost. [Read more…]

Self Confidence more useful than Self Esteem?

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The title of this post is similar to a recent one at Herald-Net, which appears to be an on-line newspaper in Washington, USA.  I’ve added the question mark! Their post has a sports focus, so its unsurprising that the argument is very much in favour of self confidence being the key factor.

self esteem
Who Cares about Self Esteem then?

The author James McCusker  states that coaches preparing teams for games know that the enemy isn’t the opposition, but a lack of self confidence. And, as  in other aspects of life, self confidence is frequently the key to success. He throws in a great quote:-

Automotive pioneer Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” That is what self-confidence is all about, the belief that you can do what needs to be done, that you can succeed.

Self Confidence not same as Self Esteem

Unfortunately people interchange “self confidence” and “self esteem” as if they are the same thing.  Mr McCusker gives a neat definition of the difference:-

“Self-confidence is built on achievement; self-esteem is built on opinion.”

If you have a good opinion about yourself, if you believe in your worth as a person, you generally have high self esteem.  If you depend on the opinions of others to feel good, then your self esteem has a very shaky foundation.

[Read more…]

Self Confidence from Failure

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I don’t know about you, but I dislike the word failure. It’s very negative and, to me, sounds quite final. However…

Failure and rejection won’t kill you. You may think that it does and it may feel like it almost will just after it has happened. But it won’t. Instead it makes you stronger. It makes you more confident in yourself.

That’s a quote from Henrik Edberg on his ever successful Positivity blog.  failureCoincidentally I linked to him the last time I devoted a post to the topic – Overcome a Fear of Failure.  On that occasion Henrik had been quoting Oprah; this time he has 10 great quotes and argues that by failing you build an inner strength and grow as a person.

Do we have to learn from failure?

I‘ve also been drawn to another blog post on the topic, this time by Dragos Roua, who says [Read more…]

Review of Fabulous Self Esteem

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Fabulous Self Esteem

The above video is part of a promotion used for Amy Twain’s ebook, “Fabulous Self Esteem ~ Right About Now“. This is both well written and very contemporary.  She has lots of calls to action, some of which were new to me.

What I liked

Amy starts with an explanation of what self esteem is and how it differs from self confidence.  This is a useful introduction that illustrates how people try to sustain their self esteem with unsustainable strategies:-

“most individuals having low self esteem often-times depend on how they are doing presently to determine how they feel about themselves.”

The ebook also includes an eleven question quiz to help evaluate your self esteem. The first three chapters look at the origins of low self esteem and some of the common character traits, or facades, we don.  [Read more…]

Definitions of Self Esteem

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self esteem definitionEarlier this week I read a blog post Building Self Esteem by personal development blogger Alex Shalman.  I've followed Alex for a while, taking part in his happiness project about 18 months ago.

Alex has just started dental school – good luck to him as dentistry is a total turnoff to me!  But he was reflecting on a class where his tutor defined self esteem as:-

…it’s a feeling that you are a valuable human being by possessing a quality that makes you such. This could be for a number of reasons, including but not exclusive to, having a skill, talent, job, relationship, helping people, being attractive, etc.

Do we have to possess some quality to make us valuable? If someone spends all day at home watching TV, with no interaction with others, does that mean they have no value? And by this definition, low self esteem?

If you do a search on Twitter for "self esteem", the main attributing reason people describe their self esteem as low is through how they look.  Unfortunately many deem themselves unattractive – thats why the Dove video looking at image manipulation was so effective.

[Read more…]