Self-esteem is the experience of being capable of managing
life’s challenges and feeling worthy of happiness.
(National Council for Self-esteem)

Do you see the value of living with self-esteem? Would you like to know how to master the building of it? There are two tools to work with that will enable you to actively build and maintain your self-esteem. One tool is to celebrate your strengths and your competency. The other tool is to develop a loving relationship with yourself as well as your feeling that you are worthy of love and happiness.

Working with competency

First, what do you believe about your competence? Complete this simple checklist to gain a better understanding of your belief in your own level of competence.

Reflecting on the above will provide you with an understanding of the level your day-to-day competencies. Note that belief in your own competency is neither comparative nor competitive with others. When you are competent you take responsibility for yourself. You do not view yourself as a victim, a pawn, unlucky, or out of control. You do not blame others.

Should you have answered ‘No’ to most of the points in the checklist above, then you are likely to find this next exercise extremely beneficial for you. The tool you will explore is celebrating your own strengths. Another effective way to develop a sense of personal competence is through goal-setting, a topic to be addressed in a later article.

Using the ‘strengths tool’

Create an image of a brick wall with separate bricks either on your computer or on paper. This is your own brick wall! Now record all your personal strengths, talents, positive personality traits, attributes and qualities by placing one in each brick.

You may find this difficult as it is something you have never been encouraged to explore before. We live in a highly critical world and we need to give ourselves permission to acknowledge our strengths and to record them. You are now consciously observing strengths in yourself. Over time, you should continue to add others that you identify to your brick wall. When you receive positive feedback from others, add this information too.

Now that you have identified your competencies, how are you going to use this information? Why is this self-knowledge important? The fact is that this information enables you to evaluate opinions, comments and feedback from others. You can make a decision about whether the information is correct, valuable and serves you or whether it is undermining and unhelpful. You now have the power to either accept or discard input from others. Those with little self-knowledge often take the opinions of others as law and allow them to become their reality. Self-knowledge enables you to be discerning.

As you become more comfortable acknowledging your strengths, you should be able to acknowledge and communicate the positive in others. You can live in the world as a competent person with an attitude of possibility.

You have recorded your qualities, how do you feel? Would you like to spend time with a person with similar qualities, or perhaps even make him or her a friend? The following list of personality traits should assist you with your brick wall:

Personality traits which apply to me

Make sure that your brick wall is accessible and visible to you. You could use it as the screensaver on your computer, or stick it up in a place in your home or office that you visit frequently.

Working with my relationship with self

Have you ever had that empty feeling – as if there is a hole inside you that needs to be filled? Many people look outside to externals in order to fill that hole.  They might tend to rely on others to make them feel whole, or perhaps on alcohol, drugs, shopping, exercise, continual acknowledgement of their performance at work, physical appearance, or the acquisition of material things. These things may assist them in feeling whole for a time, but that wholeness is short-lived.

You may ask how all these dependencies have come about? The answer lies mainly in the type of loving we received initially in our family, later on at school, and in other social systems. We need to take responsibility for our own wholeness, that is, we need to fill ourselves.

Self-esteem is dependent on having a loving relationship with yourself. The next tool is about living in the world believing that you deserve to live as an equal. It’s about believing that you deserve as much sunshine, happiness and love, and as many opportunities, as the next person. No more and no less.

Often we need to address the belief that loving yourself is selfish and tainted. The self-love that is referred to here is a love that acknowledges the potential in everyone including your own self. It is only when we love ourselves that we are able to love others. Just as food fills us physically so love fills us emotionally.

How do you define love? Let’s explore your kind of love? Does it include qualities such as respect, trust, commitment, physical affection, communication, time, understanding and honesty? Are these the qualities that you share in a loving relationship with another? The question now is: Do you exhibit these same qualities in your relationship with yourself?

Using the ‘filling the glass’ tool

Take time now to write down the qualities that are important to you in a loving relationship. List at least six ways in which you are going to have a loving relationship with yourself on a consistent basis.

You need to make a decision that you will be responsible for consciously filling yourself. This involves treating yourself in the same way as you would treat someone whom you love dearly, making use of these six identified qualities on a daily basis. For example today I showed myself respect by making a decision and sticking to it even when someone tried to persuade me to change my mind. I set a goal for today and I trust that I will do what it requires to achieve it. And so I begin to fill my glass.

The image of filling a glass with water until it is overflowing is a vivid one. When your glass is full then you are able to love others. {Perhaps repeat this point as a separate design feature to highlight its importance}The belief is that when you trust yourself, you can trust others. When you respect yourself, you can respect others and so on.

Now the challenge is to start to fill your glass by making conscious daily decisions to treat yourself as a person who is worthy of love and a person who is special and unique.