Self-esteem and improvement: Techniques for its improvement

The beliefs that we have about ourselves, those qualities, capacities, ways of feeling or thinking that we attribute to ourselves, make up our “personal image” or “self-image”. We feel smart or foolish, capable or incapable, like ourselves or not. This self-assessment is very important, since the realization of our personal potential and our achievements in life depend to a large extent on it.

In this way, people who feel good about themselves, who have good self-esteem, are able to face and solve the challenges and responsibilities that life poses. In contrast, those with low self-esteem tend to limit themselves and fail. In this Psychology-Online article, we are going to give you advice on the self-esteem and improvement. In addition, we will provide you with a series of techniques to improve self-esteem.

Index

1. What is self esteem
2. How does self-esteem form?
3. Techniques and exercises to improve self-esteem
4. Step one: set a clear and concrete goal
5. Second step: establish the tasks that must be carried out to achieve it
6. Step Three: Organize Tasks in the Order They Should Be Done
7. Step Four: Put them in motion and evaluate the achievements that are being achieved

People are complex and very difficult to define in a few words. As there are so many nuances to take into account, it is important do not make generalizations from one or two aspects. Examples:

• We can be very talkative with friends and be quiet at home.
• Being a bad soccer player does not indicate that we are a disaster in all sports.
• The fact that an exam does not go well does not mean that we are not suitable for studies.

The concept of oneself is developing little by little throughout lifeEach stage contributes to a greater or lesser degree, experiences and feelings, which will result in a general sense of worth and incapacity.

Definition of self-esteem

Self-esteem is the assessment we make of ourselves based on the sensations and experiences that we have been incorporating throughout life. It is the result of the interaction of the picture we have about ourselves with him appreciation that we feel towards our person. Thanks to self-esteem we are able to face the challenges of the day with security and confidence.

In the childhood, we discover that we have hands, legs, heads and other parts of our body. We also discover that we are different beings from others and that there are people who accept us and people who reject us. It is from those early experiences of acceptance and rejection of others that we begin to generate an idea about what we are worth and what we are worth or no longer worth. The chubby child from a young age can be a happy adult or an unhappy adult, the final happiness has a lot to do with the attitude that others have shown towards their excess weight from childhood.

During adolescenceOne of the most critical phases in the development of self-esteem, the young person needs to forge a firm identity and to know in depth the possibilities of him as an individual; He also needs social support from others whose values ​​match his own, as well as making himself valuable to move forward with confidence into the future. It is the time when the boy goes from dependence on the people he loves (the family) to independence, to rely on his own resources.

If you have developed strong self-esteem during childhood, it will be relatively easy to overcome the crisis and reach maturity. If you feel unworthy you run the risk of seeking the security you lack in ways that are seemingly easy and rewarding, but ultimately destructive, such as drug addiction. In this case, you will have to learn to helping a teenager with low self-esteem.

Low self-esteem is related to a distortion of thought (inappropriate way of thinking). People with low self-esteem have a very distorted vision of what they really feel; at the same time, these people have extraordinarily perfectionistic demands on what they should be or achieve. The person with low self-esteem maintains a dialogue with himself that includes thoughts such as:

• Overgeneralization: Starting from an isolated event, a universal, general rule is created for any situation and moment: I have failed once (in something concrete); I will always fail! (It is internalized as that I will fail in everything).
• Global designation: Pejorative terms are used to describe oneself, instead of describing the error specifying the time in which it happened:! How clumsy (I am) !.
• Polarized thinking: All or nothing thinking. They take things to extremes. There are absolute categories. It is black or white. You are with me or against me. I do it right or wrong. Relative evaluations are not accepted or known. Either it is perfect or it is not worth it.
• Self-accusation: One is guilty of everything. I am to blame, I should have realized it!
• Personalization: We assume that everything has to do with us and we compare ourselves negatively with everyone else. He has a bad face, what have I done to him !.
• Thought reading: you assume that others don't care about you, that they don't like you, you think they think badly of you... without real evidence of it. They are assumptions that are based on strange and unverifiable things.
• Control fallacies: You feel that you have a total responsibility with everything and everyone, or else you feel that you have no control over anything, that you are a helpless victim.
• Emotional reasoning: If I feel it like that, it's true. We feel alone, without friends and we believe that this feeling reflects reality without stopping to contrast it with other moments and experiences. "If I am really useless"; because it "feels" that it is really like that

Self-esteem can be changed and improved. We can do several things to improve self-esteem, among many possible exercises, we have decided to develop the following project:

Develop projects for personal improvement and self-esteem improvement

An important part of our self-esteem is determined by the balance between our successes and failures. Specifically, achieving what we want and seeing our needs satisfied provides positive emotions and increases self-esteem.

It has been pointed out as a way to improve self-esteem to strive to change the things we don't like about ourselves. We are going to work on a method that can make these changes easier. This method is composed of four steps fundamental:

1. Consider a clear and concrete goal.
2. Establish the chores that must be done to achieve it.
3. Organize the tasks in the order they should be performed.
4. Put them in motion and evaluate the achievements that are being achieved.

Next, we will analyze each of these steps to improve self-esteem in the following sections.

A "goal" can be anything you want to do or achieve. Setting a goal clearly and specifically helps to be successful because it helps us identify what we want to achieve. The goals that we propose must meet a series of requirements:

• Sincere: something we really want to do or want to achieve.
• Personal: not something that is imposed by someone from outside.
• Realistic: that we see that it is possible to achieve in a relatively short period of time (a few weeks).
• Divisible: that we can determine the steps or things that we have to do to achieve it.
• Measurable: that we can see what we have achieved and what we are missing to achieve it.

Examples of goals and objectives:

• Get a good grade in a subject.
• Be more popular.
• Get along with siblings.
• Do sport.
• Save money.

Once they have achieved the goal they want to achieve, ask them to think about what they would have to do to get it. Not everything is achieved in one day; In order to improve in any aspect that you propose, you have to make small efforts.

To achieve set goals or objectives These should be preceded by small steps and short-term tasks. Take as an example the case of cyclists participating in the cycling tour of Spain. The goal of many of them is to win the race. But, for this, different stages have to be overcome over three weeks (flat stages, mountain stages, time trial). It is important to keep motivated people who want to improve their self-esteem.

If you try to carry out all the tasks at the same time, it is very likely that nothing will be achieved. To achieve a goal, it is very interesting that the tasks are ordered that must be carried out and a work plan is established.

Once they have a list of tasks to be done, ask them to put them in order. The order can be established in a logical way, according to the temporal sequence in which they have to be carried out (to make a house before the roof, the foundations will have to be made) or, in the If the tasks do not require time sequencing, you can start with the simplest tasks that require less effort, leaving the most difficult or expensive.

Once the personal project has been prepared, it will be necessary to commit to it and put into practice. To achieve this, it is important to evaluate the efforts made. This can be difficult to do yourself, but it is relatively easy if you ask a family member or friend to help us assess our progress.

Let's see an example in the following image in which a person makes a personal improvement project In order to overcome shyness:

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Self-esteem and improvement: Techniques for its improvement, we recommend that you enter our category of Personal growth and self-help.

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