Self-esteem – What does a healthy self-esteem feel like? How do you know when you have high self-esteem?

23 Sep 2008

23 Sep, 2008 Confidence, Esteem, Self confidence, Uncategorized, happiness, low self esteem, self esteem women

I recognised that I had low self-esteem a few years ago when I was doing some research and found a self-esteem test. My responses indicated that I had low self-esteem which explained the reason for how I was feeling and what was not happening in my life. Since then I have taken action to improve my self-esteem. However, I read the following article written by Gretchen Ruben in the Huffington Post the other day and it prompted me to reassess my levels of self-esteem.

‘The subject of self-esteem is a topic that has generated a fair amount of controversy over the last few decades, but one thing seems clear: you don’t get healthy self-esteem from constantly telling yourself how great you are, or even from other people telling you how great you are. You get healthy self-esteem from behaving in ways that you find estimable.

In other words, the best way to feel better about yourself is to do something worthy of your own respect: keep a difficult resolution, meet a challenge, solve a problem, learn a skill, cross something unpleasant off your to-do list. And one of the best ways to feel better about yourself is to help someone else — do good, feel good.’

Gretchen goes on to say how clearing up others people trash caused a feel good feeling inside and how a friend got through some rough times by doing good deeds for others. It struck me that a number of years ago I started doing voluntary work for the local school and young offenders team. My participation was some of the most fulfilling activity I had ever undertaken and made me feel good.

Telling yourself that you love yourself certainly helps raise your self-esteem a little however, it’s the action that you take that really gets things moving. The more you do and achieve the higher your levels of self-esteem. The higher your levels of self-esteem the more confident you feel, the more you achieve and the better you treat yourself. When you value yourself you make decisions that are good for you based on what you want so you create a happy fulfilling life. With high levels of self-esteem you are better able to recognise when there are people and things in your life that no longer support your values. Once you are aware you can take responsibility to change the situation.

So if you feel irritated by the things around you and what’s happening in your life then maybe you have made decisions that are not in your best interests and perhaps not based on what you value about life. Maybe you do not value yourself sufficiently which means that you have self-esteem issues.

You can take a free self-esteem test here