Tag Archives: Self-esteem

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Understanding Self-Worth and Self-Esteem

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Self-worth and self-esteem are closely related concepts, but they have distinct nuances:

  1. Self-Worth:
    • Definition: Self-worth reflects your intrinsic belief in your value as a person. It transcends external validation and arises from a deep understanding of your inherent worthiness.
    • Importance: Recognizing your self-worth empowers you to navigate challenges, set healthy boundaries, and maintain resilience.
    • Action Steps:
      • Practice Self-Compassion: Treat yourself with kindness and understanding, especially during setbacks.
      • Acknowledge Achievements: Reflect on your accomplishments and recognize your contributions.
      • Avoid Comparison: Focus on your unique qualities rather than comparing yourself to others.
  2. Self-Esteem:
    • Definition: Self-esteem pertains to how you perceive and feel about yourself. It can fluctuate based on external factors like performance or approval.
    • Importance: Healthy self-esteem fosters confidence, assertiveness, and positive interactions.
    • Action Steps:
      • Positive Self-Talk: Challenge negative thoughts and replace them with affirming statements.
      • Set Realistic Goals: Achieving small milestones boosts self-esteem.
      • Seek Constructive Feedback: Learn from feedback without taking it personally.

Building Self-Worth and Self-Esteem in a Professional Setting

  1. Define Your Value:
    • Recognize your skills, expertise, and unique contributions.
    • Assign value to your abilities and recognize your worth.
  2. Identify Your Purpose:
    • Consider the qualities you want others to recognize in you.
    • Align your actions with your core values and purpose.
  3. Remember Your Successes:
    • Reflect on past achievements.
    • Celebrate your progress and growth.
  4. Ask for Feedback:
    • Constructive feedback helps you learn and improve.
    • Use it as a tool for growth.
  5. Build Good Relationships:
    • Connect with colleagues who appreciate your worth.
    • Surround yourself with positive influences.
  6. Take on Meaningful Work:
    • Engage in tasks that align with your values and interests.
    • Contributing meaningfully enhances self-worth.
  7. Focus on Solutions:
    • Instead of dwelling on problems, seek solutions.
    • Problem-solving reinforces self-esteem.

Remember: You Are Invaluable

Your self-worth extends beyond professional achievements. Embrace your uniqueness, practice self-compassion, and recognize your worthiness. As you cultivate self-esteem and self-worth, you’ll thrive both personally and professionally.

Ray Barbier

References:

  1. What is Self-Worth & How Do We Build it?
  2. Self-Worth Vs. Self-Esteem: Understanding the Differences
  3. Self-Worth Matters And How To Improve It
  4. 6 Ways to Improve Your Self-Esteem at Work
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Boosting Your Self-Esteem: Tips for Dealing with Low Self-Esteem

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Hey there! Today, I want to talk about something that affects a lot of us: low self-esteem. It’s a tough thing to deal with, but the good news is that there are things you can do to help yourself feel better.

First, it’s important to understand what self-esteem is. Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself and your worth as a person. When you have high self-esteem, you feel good about yourself and believe in your abilities. When you have low self-esteem, you might feel like you’re not good enough or that you don’t deserve good things.

So, what can you do if you’re struggling with low self-esteem? Here are some tips that might help:

  1. Practice self-care: Taking care of yourself is important for your overall well-being. This includes things like eating healthy, getting enough sleep, and exercising regularly. When you take care of your body, you feel better physically and mentally.
  2. Challenge negative thoughts: Sometimes, we can be our own worst critics. If you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself, try to challenge them. Ask yourself if they’re really true or if you’re just being hard on yourself.
  3. Surround yourself with positivity: Surrounding yourself with positive people and things can help boost your self-esteem. Spend time with people who lift you up and make you feel good about yourself. Surround yourself with things that inspire you and make you happy.
  4. Celebrate your accomplishments: When you accomplish something, no matter how small, take the time to celebrate it. Recognize your hard work and give yourself credit for a job well done.
  5. Seek help if you need it: If you’re struggling with low self-esteem and it’s affecting your daily life, consider seeking help from a therapist or counselor. They can help you work through your feelings and develop strategies for improving your self-esteem.

Remember, it’s okay to struggle with low self-esteem. You’re not alone, and there are things you can do to help yourself feel better. Just take it one day at a time and be kind to yourself. You deserve it.

creative commons, friends, Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts Oct. 23rd, 2022

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Life in itself can be quite challenging at times, trying to navigate the pitfalls in relationships and maintaining a certain level of self-respect along with good self-esteem is a hard thing to achieve. Not only do you have to endure the negative comments of peers and family, you also have to keep your own negative thoughts down as you try and keep positive. Some people are fortunate and have a great family and group of friends to help them through it all, but most have a mixed bag of supportive and semi-toxic peers and family.

In my case, I had a supportive mother but my father was not around as much as I needed and when he was he just couldn’t relate to me. My brother was one of those womanizing alpha male types who tried to dominate me and mold me into a younger version of himself. I think both my dad and brother had good intentions in their actions, just they didn’t know how to relate to or deal with me since I was more of a passive easygoing person who had some self-esteem issues.

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Low self-esteem and poor self-image plagued me throughout my life. I went through the blaming my dad and brother stage until I realized that I am the one holding on to those feelings and that it was a collection of experiences I went through in life in general that contributed to the problem more than just those two people in my life. In a nutshell, my peers and family may have contributed to my poor self-image and low self-esteem but it is I who held on to it and believed the negative thoughts in my mind.

Relying on others to define your worth through their opinions is one of the key contributors to low self-esteem. Even if you don’t do that consciously, you absorb both the positive and negative opinions of your peers and family. You need to shake off the negative and start re-enforcing the positive by focusing on your positive traits. The sooner you realize you are unique and that you are just as important as everyone else in the world the sooner you will start to heal.

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Be yourself, love who you are, and know that you are not lesser than any other person. You may have had different circumstances and have lived in a different environment than others, but you have the same opportunity to change yourself and succeed in life as long as you are willing to work for it. Sometimes you may have to work harder due to circumstances, but if you hang in there and give it your all you can rise above those circumstances. Just remember to be open to others helping you along the way and be there to help others along the way as well.

Comparing yourself to others is not a good way to evaluate your self-worth. Each person is unique and therefore we all will not succeed in the same way or at the same things. Instead of comparing yourself to others, find a person who inspires you, one that you would like to be like,, and strive to be similar to them. You will never be exactly like that person but you will be similar and the differences between you and that person makes you unique.

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Try to avoid defeatism, stop saying you can’t do something until after you have given it your best shot. Too many people will fail at doing something without ever trying because they get stuck in the I can’t do that loop. Change I can’t into let’s see if I can or yes I can do this. You will never know if you can do something until you at least attempt to do it once. It’s far better to fail after giving it your best shot than to not try at all due to your fear of failure.

Being we all are unique and are individuals, how we have to deal with self-esteem and self-worth may vary. In the end, it is all about how you respond to the opinions of others.

Ray Barbier

creative commons, Family, friends, Personal, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

Random Thoughts 4/20/2022

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People wonder why there is so much low self-esteem in the world, if you take a good look at television shows, commercials, social media, movies, and even the news on cable news stations you just may see some of the reasons for low self-esteem, but then there is also how one’s family treats them, their peers and the educational system.

When you are constantly bombarded with images of thin, fit, and muscular actors, advertisements aimed to push miracle vitamins and supplements to fix all your shortcomings, it is very hard to hold on to a good self-image and even harder to build it up. Constantly being told that having a perfect body weight, toned muscles, the right clothes, and accessories makes one beautiful and successful is making it hard for most people to maintain healthy self-esteem.

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Unfortunately, fashion, the newest electronics, and possessions play a big part in teenage self-image, which makes it hard for those who don’t have the money to compete with their peers. Combining that with parents that have to work 2 jobs or inconvenient hours to maintain the quality of life they have only makes it harder on teenagers and kids.

The ones that seem to suffer the worst during school years are those that don’t quite fit the norm, the overweight, the below-average to average looking, and the sensitive passive individuals. Bullying from those who think they are cool, tougher, and better than others does not help the situation at all. The consequences of bullying are usually mild and it seems it’s hard to catch kids bullying or maybe some just overlook it.

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Parents and siblings also play a large part in the development of a child’s self-esteem, they can be either a positive or negative force when it comes to a child’s self-image. Siblings usually are competing for the parent’s attention, love and favor so they tend to be very mean to one another. Parents on the other hand usually are trying to do what’s best for the child but don’t realize what works for one child does not always work for the other. Each child is a unique individual, they have different needs and need help in different ways. Some parents, unfortunately, don’t know how to deal with their children at all so they try to treat them as if they are adults way before the child or teen is emotionally and mentally ready to do so. This usually results in conflict and the child/teen becomes rebellious and has a poor self-image.

If the low self-esteem is not addressed and corrected during the child/teen years then it is carried into the adult years. That makes it very hard for the Adult to achieve a healthy relationship with a significant other and even harder for them to become successful in the work world.

Raising kids is not an easy task, being a parent means you have to be a caregiver, advisor, instructor, friend, leader, cook, counselor, and of course an ATM for the children lol. Helping a child navigate the battlefields of youth and preparing them for the many challenges they will have to face in the future is not an easy thing to accomplish. All you can do is give it your best shot and always be there for them when they need you.

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I myself have had self-esteem issues throughout my life, I have been battling low self-esteem for many decades. I could go down a list of all the things that caused my low self-esteem but what is the use of that now that it now falls squarely on me to repair the damage and improve myself. Plus the first step in moving on and building up your self-esteem/self-image is to forgive those who helped in destroying it and letting go of your own contributions to the whole mess as well.

Just know this, there is no one better than you, but then there is no one lesser than you. We all are unique, we all have our own gifts to embrace and shortcomings that we need to deal with. There is no one on this planet that does not have some emotional or psychological baggage to deal with. How much money you have, and how many toys you have has nothing to do with who you are or how good you are. What defines you is how you live life, and how you treat others and yourself.

Being successful sure feels good, being financially well off does make life easier in many ways, but money, possessions, and success are fleeting, they can be gone in an instant. Family and friends to me are far more important along with how I treat others, and how I live my life. Those things will be with me throughout my life.

Well, I wish you happiness, remember it does not matter what others think or say about you, it is what you know about yourself that matters the most.

Ray Barbier

creative commons, Poems and Writings, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

Random Thoughts–2/6/2017

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018  Acceptance, something most of us crave and need to be a functional and somewhat happy individual. A lot of the time we are accepted by our peers but we have a hard time accepting ourselves.  Our brain takes what we think about ourselves and uses it to filter the world around us, so even if someone is loved, appreciated and accepted they may feel the total opposite of that if they have a poor self image and can not accept themselves for who and what they are.

If most people would just spend 1/4 of the time they do on trying to be accepted by others on improving their self image and in accepting themselves then they would be much happier in their lives.  Learning to accept yourself with all your faults and bad habits is not a walk in the park, but it is not a non obtainable goal. The first thing is learning to forgive yourself for the things you did that you consider wrong or mistakes. The baggage of past actions only builds guilt, which guilt has a purpose but it is not meant to be lifelong thing.  Forgive yourself, your only human and you will make mistakes along the way. Learn from them, forgive yourself and move on. Let go of your past, don’t live in the past for it only steals away today. If you have things you do still that bother you then work hard on changing them, but until you change them learn to accept that side of yourself and forgive yourself for not being perfect.

Focus on serving others, to do good for others is a great way to improve your self image and worth. It also teaches you to consider others above yourself at times. Find activities that make you feel better about yourself and get out and socialize, being an island unto yourself is not the best way to live, it only opens you up to being lonely and disconnected from the world we live in.  Just remember no matter what you have done in your life, that you deserve to be happy and live life to its fullest.  Even if it was something horrible, that was then and this is now, learn to be a better person and live a happy and productive life like we all should live.

 

Blessings and happiness to you all

Raymond Barbier

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Random Thoughts 1/4/2015

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tpl_7_pplForgiveness is important in living a happy life, most of the time forgiving someone else isn’t the problem. The forgiving of your own mistakes is the biggest problem. Most people are harder on their selves than they are on others, this leads to the loss of self-confidence and self-love. we all need to learn to embrace who we are as is and instead of putting so much emphasis on being the perfect person we should put more emphasis on improving and accepting the person we are. No person is perfect, we all have flaws , short comings and make poor choices.

Focus on your good qualities and make them shine while learning to control and curb the qualities that are not so good. Eventually you may rid yourself of the lesser qualities or at least keep them in check to where they do not cause any harm. Either way by focusing on the good qualities and bringing them to the forefront will at least help you grow emotionally, mentally and even spiritually.

 

Ray Barbier

Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

Random thoughts–Thursday July 7th 2014

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warp1bWe go through our lives believing it’s the opinion of others that dictates our worth. This is but an illusion, though the opinions of others can either hurt us or bolster our self-image they are not what makes us who we are nor does it set our worth in life.  Our worth is based upon our actions, words, thoughts and how we chose to live our life and treat others as well. The opinion that we have about ourselves is far more important and has the greatest impact upon both our self-worth and who we are truly deep within.

It is your life and  your life is your own story, you are the lead role and if you’re a hero, villain or just another face in the crowd is decided by your actions, words and thoughts. You are the author of your own story and you alone chose the path you will follow in life. You have the choice to take control of your life or let your life be decided by circumstance and the will of others.

Ray Barbier

Personal, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

have love as well as compassion towards one another.

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017See that person next to you? they too have feelings, they also have struggles in life and they have as much importance as you do in the universe. Step outside your “Me, Myself and I” box and realize you are not alone nor are you the center of the universe anymore so than the guy or gal next to you.  Even those élite socialites and so-called alpha males and females that strut around as if they were superior, they too are your equals. They just live in a fantasy where they believe they are better in one fashion or another. The only difference between them and the rest of us is either good circumstances, random chance and of course probably some hard work or positive thinking and a lot of right choices.

Positive attitude plays a big part in both our self-image and self-esteem which in turn helps set the course of our life path.  How we perceive and how we treat others plays a big part in it all as well, if we know in the grand scheme of things we all have the same worth and that neither one or another is greater than the other, we then see people for who and what they truly are.  So the next time you see a beggar or a wealthy person see them as they are, just human beings trying to survive and trying to do so as best they can.  No malice should be aimed toward either and both should be subject to the same amount of love and basic respect that all living creatures deserve.

I have known both beggars and wealthy people in my life and they are pretty much the same far as wants, needs and basic desires. They both want to have their needs of food, lodging and the basic necessities, they both long to be accepted, loved and to be happy in their existence. The only real difference is what hand they were dealt in life and how they played the game.

The true riches of life are things like family, love,friendship and being happy with the blessings you have. To have peace within and finding contentment within ones life is the truest form or wealth. Possessions  tend to eventually possess the beholder and so it seems so does wealth. Greed and Envy drive the economies of the modern world more so than our needs.

So greet each other as equals and have love as well as compassion towards one another. For we are all part of the massive family we call human kind. Put greed and envy in the Trash Bin where it belongs and live life in the fullest. Be yourself and accept others for who they are.

Raymond Barbier

Poems and Writings, Random Thoughts, Religious, Thought of the day

random thoughts–1/28/2014

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HPIM0319To Love others as God loves us, this is what we were taught to do yet we seem to miss that mark so easily. Why is it so hard to accept and love one another unconditionally? What makes us want to either judge others hastily and without compassion or causes us to choose to deny others love. We all want to be loved, accepted and to be a part of a group or community, but we tend to deny ourselves these things as much as we deny it to others due to our image of what we think makes one worthy of such.

The fact is we all deserve love, acceptance and to be a part of a community. God gave us his love so we could spread his love and cause it to multiply between us all. We all belong to the great community of humankind even though some people believe otherwise. No man s greater or lesser than his brother in the eyes of God nor is any person without sin or fault. To declare or to put oneself above another is but vanity and self centeredness in its purest form.

To claim to be wise usually is a sign one is a fool, to see that you are but a fool is usually the first step towards wisdom. To know thyself with out self-delusion or self-glorification is to be humble and to see the truth of what one is. I claim not to know the answers I only claim to know some of the questions and express that which I believe and understand as theoretical ideals.  I urge you to seek your own answers in life for you are responsible for what you choose to believe and what you teach others directly or indirectly.

Live life to the fullest, but do so with compassion and a charitable heart. Forgive not only others,also learn to forgive your own self, for one must face their own shortcomings and go beyond them in order to see the grace in forgiveness. Think for your self and follow not the mainstream ideology, for the path to ruin is wide and so is the path to hell. Seek the truth and be not persuaded by wolves in sheep’s clothing, for many profess to be leaders in Christ and are but men of wealth and greed.

I am but a fool who seeks to become wise, I am but a man who tries to be a good man, nothing else.

Ray Barbier

Personal, Poems and Writings, Random Thoughts, Thought of the day

Who and what we truly are

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002Why do we allow the opinions of others to effect our self-image, emotions and outlook on life. We tend to seek acceptance and reassurance from others, we learned this behavior as children. We need to see that though opinions of others have meaning and some weight, that our own opinions are just as important if not more so when it comes to our self. Others do not know you as you know yourself and they usually judge you on preconceived notions based on just one if not a few encounters they had with you. They don’t know your heart or mind, they have little fact or evidence to support their impression of your personality.

Even those that have known you for years still may not truly know who you are truly. Sometimes we do not even know ourselves as good as we should. We tend to be like a chameleon and change with the crowd and circumstances around us to blend in. We try to blend in and we rarely show our true selves out of fear of not being accepted or loved. The problem with being a chameleon or being a person who tries to fit in by putting on a mask is that we are never accepted or loved for who we are. Thus we are not accepted or loved at all, for they love the part we play not for who and what we are.

We try to kid ourselves they love us and accept us even though they see a disguise not our true image. But deep inside we will know is all a lie and falsehood. So it is far better to be loved and accepted by a few as who and what we truly are then to be loved and accepted by many for who we are not.

Be yourself, Believe in yourself and Be true to yourself. Worry not of the opinions of others and love yourself for who you are.

Ray Barbier