Workshop 5 self esteem and stress

Editor's Notes

• #4: What is Self Esteem? Self esteem is the opinion I hold of myself. It is not dependent on the approval of others (though it may appear to be!). A recent survey showed that only 5-10% of Irish people have high self-esteem. Two components to Self-Esteem: The emotional component: The way we feel about ourselves. Performance based self-esteem: The level of competence we perceive we have. Dependent on each other: When you feel that you are good at what you do and that you perform well, you enjoy high self-esteem. This feeling reinforces your sense of personal value. If you do well, you feel good, if you feel good, you do well. Signs of low self esteem: Fear of rejection, Need for approval, Dependence on others, Addiction to work/study, Avoidance of challenges Signs of High Self Esteem: Looking for the good in others, Looking for the positive in all situations, Ability to easily forgive others, Ability to easily get on with a broad range of different people (with different temperaments, attitudes, values, opinions, etc).
• #5: Effect of building Self-Esteem: The more you like and respect yourself, the more you like and respect others. The more you consider yourself to be valuable and worthwhile, the more you will consider others to be also. People with low self-esteem will only be able to get along with a few people and only for a limited period. Their low self-regard manifests in anger, bitterness, cynicism, impatience, badmouthing etc. Building Self-esteem: direct relationship between the quality of your relationships and your level of self-esteem and self-acceptance. You can only like yourself to the degree to which you fully accept yourself. To experience self-acceptance you must develop self-awareness. Self-disclosure is the key to self-awareness. When you disclose your thoughts and feelings honestly to another person you understand yourself better.
• #6: Strategies to build your self-esteem through your relationships with others: Stop Criticising: If you want others to be impressed with you, then be impressed with them Attitude of Gratitude: say “Thank You” at every opportunity. Give Genuine Praise and compliments: Whatever you express to another, you also impress it into your own mind. Be Accepting – SMILE. This demonstrates acceptance. Even if you don’t feel like it, act it and the feelings will eventually follow. Give Compliments: Whenever you do or say something that makes another happy, you feel happy yourself. You boost your own self-esteem. Give Your Attention – Listen. We always give our attention to what we value most, our interests us most and is most important to us. By paying attention to someone you are saying that you value them, you consider them and/or what they have to say important. Listen to others – listening builds trust, self-esteem and self-discipline. Show interest in others and they will become interested in you. To be liked, start liking people. When people like you they are more willing to cooperate with you, listen to you To earn respect, give it. When you express admiration or respect to another, they will feel the same for you. Law of Indirect Effort: What you sow in the lives of others you reap in your own life. Successful people help make others feel good about themselves when in their company
• #7: Strategies to build your self-esteem through your relationships with yourself: Separate out your behaviour from your person. Your behaviour does not determine your worth and value. Self-worth is a given: You are already good enough! Our actions are typically the best we can do in that given moment. The aim is to learn from our actions and work to improve ourselves in a gentle and understanding way. We should avoid judging ourselves as weak, bad, incompetent or not good enough.   Thinking positive thoughts and saying affirmations. Emotion and sincerity out loud will have a real impact. The positive thoughts must come from the gut to change self-esteem.   Express your feelings appropriately Believe in yourself – this is what gives you the confidence to do the things you want to do. It is what allows your power to properly express itself. It is what allows you to be you. Become the unconditional loving parent to yourself. Love is the key – love yourself, love others and love life. Love others AS YOURSELF. Spending quality time with yourself is very important. Don’t dwell on anything that prevents you from loving yourself.
• #8: Feelings are part of everyday life. Feelings are neither right nor wrong, but are simply information (via physical and emotional sensations), usually about our needs at that time. Being unable to express feelings can causes relationship problems, conflict, poor self-esteem, personal development blocks and a range of health problems. We are always influenced by our feelings. It is essential to acknowledge our feelings and be aware of them. We are always responsible for how we act on our feelings. It is better if we choose to accept responsibility for the feeling. Our feelings always originate from our thoughts. What we think, we feel To change a negative feeling, we must first change the way we think about the situation that we are feeling bad about.
• #10: Your confidence level plays a huge role in determining your results in everything you do in life. As your thoughts guide your actions, your belief in your ability to succeed will determine your ultimate level of success. Any doubts lingering in your mind will show itself in your behaviour and/or outcome, making the undesirable outcome you feared a reality. Doing it with total confidence maximizes your chances for success. There are good reasons why we do not always feel confident. Usually, we doubt ourselves when we face a challenge where we have little experience or our belief in ourselves has been eroded by past failures. True self-confidence requires more that just a decision to put on a brave face and start "talking the talk." This feeling of inner strength comes from your ability to "walk the talk" and can only be earned over time. Using basketball as an example there are reasons for your belief that the ball will go through the hoop. These reasons would most likely include spending countless hours in a gym working out and shooting thousands of shots to train your brain as to how a successful shot feels. There's really no mystery behind it all. Confidence requires practice. Confidence requires mistakes and the courage to fail. Confidence requires learning and growth. Confidence requires some successful results. Mix these ingredients together and you can expect your performance to dramatically improve over time.
• #11: Our way of approaching life and is how we express our thoughts and feelings. The one thing we can change about ourselves. Its when things go wrong that we gain a clear picture of the type of attitude we have. Success in life is 85% attitude and 15% Aptitude (Harvard Study) Have The Right Attitude We can’t always control what we are facing, but we do have a choice in how we face it. We can choose the attitude we take, and whether we face each challenge as a threat or a challenge. The following steps can help you to move yourself into a more empowered frame of mind, if you need to. Understand The Role Of Attitude Your attitude can help to determine how stressful a situation feels for you, and how you approach your options. In fact, attitude can affect which options you see and do not see, which can also affect your stress levels, and the outcome of your actions. Examine Your Thought Patterns Your thought patterns may feel automatic, but you can choose where your focus lies. To begin to make that choice, it helps to become aware of your habitual thinking patterns. This exercise can help you to see these patterns more clearly, and can help you to relieve stress in the process. Practice Positive Self-Talk Positive self-talk means using more optimistic language in your head, and focusing more on possibilities. It involves more than merely trying to look on the bright side, although that is part of it. Learn the specific areas where you can shift your focus and in the process, alter what is possible for you, and how stressful or stress-free your life feels.   Change What You Can Sometimes there are certain aspects of a situation you can change, even if you cannot change the situation as a whole. For example, you may, for financial reasons, be unable to quit a job you don’t enjoy, but you can connect with co-workers more, alter your attitude while you’re at work, and use your break time for stress management activities, all of which can alter how you feel when you are at this job. The following steps can help you to make changes where you can, and relieve stress as you do. Try Solution-Focused Coping Solution-focused coping means taking action to change your life where you are able. These changes can be large in scale, or small but targeted. Change itself can bring stress, so it’s important to choose the changes that will matter the most. Find And Eliminate Tolerations Tolerations are those nagging stressors in your lifestyle that you put up with almost without realizing it, but which bring you constant low-grade stress. The thing about tolerations is that they add up to bigger stress. Cutting out tolerations can bring stress relief so you can tolerate more of the things you can’t change.
• #12: negative statements from others can erode our sense of self-worth. ratio of positive-to-negative comments be at least five to one for a relationship to be healthy and survive long-term. Our self talk, or the words our inner dialogue uses when we think, can increase our stress levels, limit our potential, and color our experience with a negative pen Language Colors Experience; words we use can alter expectations and even our perceptions of reality. For example: If you’ve been told that a difficult person is ‘a nightmare to work with’, you will probably perceive that person as more frustrating than if you’ve been told they’re ‘particular’ or ‘somewhat demanding’. If your dentist tells you, ‘This will hurt. A lot!”, you will probably find a procedure more painful than if you’ve been told ‘You may experience some discomfort.’ As it subtly colors what you perceive and what you dwell on, negative self-talk can alter your experience of stress in the following ways: Increased Perception of Stress: When your self talk is negative, you may perceive things as more stressful. Using self-talk that is optimistic rather than pessimistic has stress management benefits, productivity benefits and even health benefits that have been proven by research. Self-Limitation: If you say “I can’t handle this”, you more likely can’t.   Limited Thinking: When you tell yourself you can’t handle something (or some other self-limiting thought), you tend to stop looking for solutions.