First came the self-esteem movement. Then came the backlash to the self-esteem movement.
What’s pretty clear is we don’t get healthy self-esteem from constantly telling ourselves how great we are, or even from other people telling us how great we are. At the same time, it’s a rare person who isn’t sometimes — or often — plagued with painful self-doubt.
So what’s the secret? When you’re feeling lousy, what can you do to feel better about yourself? It turns out that we feel better about ourselves when we behave in ways that we find worthy of our own respect — such as helping other people, surmounting a fear, and the like.
Here are some suggestions that I try to remember when I’m feeling full of self-doubt and self-anxiety (a term I just made up — is there a more elegant term for this feeling?).
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Hi Gretchen,
The content of your article is quite useful for persons looking for ideas to help them with their low self-esteem and/or depression. The eight tips you share can be a catalyst for people to use their imaginations to search for a solution based on their own uniqueness. As a therapist I have a board at the doorway of my office entitled, Great Take Aways.” The thought is to inspire clients to take away something that has been said during the session and apply it to their lives. I believe that your points, especially finding a fear and finding a way to face that fear, is a great take away from your article. I enjoyed it and have gleaned some good information from it, thanks.
Thanks for the article. To me,some of the things that make me feel better about myself includes:
1. Helping others (mainly through donation and charity)
2. Be compassionate and loving towards myself.
3. Do some relaxation rituals such as meditation and yoga
4. Physical exercise such as swimming, brisk walking.
5. Listen to good hypnotherapy’s recording.
6. Be myself and accept my uniqueness and
7. Release the need to please others.
Love and accept yourself. As long as you can do that you can always be happy because you have someone who will always be with you.
Self-esteem IS a mental sickness and YOU Gretchen Rubin ARE mentally sick, delusional, psychotic!!! besides being ignorant and stupid.