Article by Francis Macansantos

Self-esteem is a phrase that has come to mean a lot of different things. In some ways self-esteem can be a self descriptive phrase, but it surely has also become some controversial concept with several meanings. We know self-esteem is extremely important to have, but have also been taught that you can have too much self-esteem. You’ll also find many derivatives of self-esteem we discuss that may confuse us once we try to define self esteem; things like self-confidence, self-worth, self-assurance, self-love, self-acceptance, self-assertiveness, and self-responsibility.

Like the health of the body is a consequence or effect of many inter-related causes, so it can be with self-esteem. If we wish to increase our health, we could only do so by working on it indirectly- by working on our diet, our exercising, our mindset, our natural environment. So it is using self-esteem. If we prefer to increase our self-esteem, you can easily only do so by focusing on it indirectly- by working on those things that create it.

“To trust one’s mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem. “- Nathaniel Branden.

Self-esteem is the relationship that you have with yourself, your sensation of personal worth. Self-esteem might therefore feel like a totally private issue. However, your self-esteem affects not only your own life, but it affects the lives of everyone around you.

Your amount of self-esteem affects how you treat others you interact with or avoid interaction with. You likely have been the victim involving someone with low self-esteem one self. Maybe a colleague who was trying to impose his or her way on others, a teacher who did their own best to make your daily life miserable, or maybe simply grumpy neighbour. The best (and worst) example with the negative impacts of other’s low self-esteem is perhaps each time a parent with low self-esteem behaves within a non-loving manner towards their own children who in turn will grow up with a low self-esteem and do the identical to other people. Every word that you really say to others, every gesture and every single action is influenced because of your self-esteem. If you contain a low self-esteem you will generally contain a more negative effect on other people.

Your level of self-esteem is thus obviously just not a personal matter. Compare in your mind a country where all the political leaders have high self-esteem which has a country in which the many leaders have low self-esteem. If I lived in the country with low self-esteem politicians I might demonstrate for sending every one of them on a self-esteem course!

Your self-esteem has larger impact over other people’s lives than your abilities in mathematics, physics, new music, history or any many other school subject. Yet self-esteem is not really officially taught in colleges. When I was a child, we had a textbook called “I am fantastic enough”. Now as a mature I can guess that it book was supposed to educate us self-esteem, but most of the students (including me) hated those classes because they were so boring. The teachers did not recognize how to teach self-esteem to young kids. They probably didn’t even realise why they were supposed to teach it. Fortunately or unfortunately, these classes were almost no.

Teachers should be been competing in how to help their students to get maximum higher self-esteem. There should also be self-esteem trainers in all big companies so that will their employees can carry on and develop their self-esteem. This might be a huge investment to both schools and the companies because of the benefits that higher self-esteem among the students and employees might bring.

Leaving people to learn how to raise their self-esteem by themselves is too risky. The whole world would benefit if more people learned methods to develop a high self-esteem.

Just like the health of the body is a consequence or effect of many inter-related causes, so it is with self-esteem. If we wish to increase our health, we can only do so by working on it indirectly- by working on our diet, our exercise, our mindset, our environment. So it is with self-esteem. If we wish to increase our self-esteem, we can only do so by working on it indirectly- by working on those things that contribute to it.