I think we all know what high and low self-esteem look like.
You have the successful business entrepreneur that just got a job promotion last week and the soft-spoken engineer that gets awkwardly pushed around at work.
These are stereotypes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or a girl, successful or not, you can still have low self-esteem. Yes. You can be a world-class lawyer that is still highly insecure about herself.
So how does this work?
What Is Self-Esteem?
It’s basically how we feel about ourselves. We are talking about restrictedly just how you feel about ourselves as human beings. Not abilities, not societal worth, not our net worth, etc.
The biggest indicator of our self-esteem has to do with how we treat other people. Are we able to treat other people as our equal? Not inferior or superior, but as equals. Because how we feel about ourselves will be projected onto how we treat others.
How Does Self-Esteem Affect Us?
What Is The High Self-Esteem Mechanism?
The mindset grows with every accomplishment.
Your failures are steps to success so you never really lose.
You have the confidence to face challenges, because you have faith in your own capability to solve the problem.
You are more resilient after a traumatic event.
You are not afraid to share your opinions with others even when they are different.
You still feel anxiety, but you know how to manage it when you are in social situations.
You are able to show yourself grace when you have made a mistake.
You are less afraid to show your vulnerabilities and weaknesses, because you know your self-worth isn’t dependent on it.
When facing life, having high self-esteem has a great propensity for growth.
What Is The Low Self-Esteem Mechanism?
Preservation.
Your main goal isn’t to reach out to have your needs or desires met, it’s to survive on the bare minimum.
You go through life trying not to make any mistakes, not to offend anyone, not be a burden to anyone.
You act instinctively and responsive towards how you are feeling at the moment as if the emotions are controlling you rather than you controlling it.
When you want to talk in a conversation but you couldn’t it’s not because you don’t want to, it’s because your anxiety wouldn’t let you.
It’s an extremely defensive approach. There is nothing wrong with approaching the world with caution, but if it is driven by fear, you are no longer seeing things from an objective perspective anymore.
When someone compliments you and you reject it, it’s not because you don’t want to be praised, but because your mind tells you that you are unworthy of it. Since low self-esteem's aim is preservation, you usually end up feeling lonely, isolated, unloved, your needs unmet, dissatisfied with life, and depressed.
As the direct opposite of high self-esteem, low self-esteem reinforces the fact that you are more unworthy with every mistake you made. While the same mistakes for a person with high self-esteem mean that this is just a step towards success, a low self-esteem individual becomes paralyzed with fear & consequences of that mistake and is unable to move on.
A low self-esteem individual wants success just as much as everyone else, but the voice of criticism keeps him/her from his/her own potential.
First Step -
What is one thing that you like about yourself the most?
- Augustus
Losing Interests, Losing Relationships [Free PDF]
- Understanding the 5 CAUSES for an emotional wall between you and everyone else.