Many people define self-esteem as the way you feel about yourself, which seems a little redundant. Let's define self-esteem as the perceptions and beliefs you have about yourself. Raising your self esteem One method is simply to rate it on what I call the Self-Esteem Rating Scale (SERS). Here's how it works: On a scale of one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, rate your self-esteem in these four ways: 1. What it is now.
2. The worst it's ever been.
3. The best it's ever been.
4. How you would like it to be. Now consider these things: What, which you might need to eliminate, were you doing when your self-esteem was the worst? What were you doing when it was the best, which you might need to resume doing, continue doing or do more of in the future? If your self-esteem now is higher than the worst it's ever been, what did you do to change it, which you might want to continue to do? Now take a look at the difference between what your self-esteem is now and what you would like it to be. The difference is the ground you need to cover to improve your self-esteem. Now for a seemingly bizarre and unrelated question: How do you like your pizza? Just bear with me here. However you like your pizza, what would happen if you tried to eat an extra-large version of it in one bite? That's right: You couldn't do it and would probably choke. So you slice it into smaller pieces and then take even smaller bites to accomplish the task. It's the same with self-esteem. For example, let's say your selfesteem is now a five and you would like it to be a 10. That's a difference of five self-esteem levels. If you tried to jump from a five to a 10 all at once, you probably would become frustrated, discouraged and would give up. It's just too big a leap. Make progress one step at a time What you can do is begin to break it into manageable pieces by asking yourself, "What will it take to move from a five to a six, a six to a seven?" and so on. In this way, you are biting off manageable chunks that will givee you the opportunity to achieve small successes, which can then propel you on to the bigger success of accomplishing your self-esteem goal. Although using the self-esteem rating scale can be a quick and easy way to improve your self-esteem, that's not to say it won't involve some struggle. |
