Self-Esteem

Are you ready to feel good about yourself? That is the key to health, happiness, fulfilling relationships, and success.

Negative thoughts hurt your self-esteem and positive thoughts help you feel good. To raise your self-esteem, say, sing, or write the following 50 affirmations (positive thoughts) until they become part of your automatic thinking. It is even more powerful if you add your name.

1. I, your name, am okay even when I am scared.

2. I, ____________, am a worthwhile person.

3. I, ____________, am important.

4. I, ____________, am good enough.

5. I, ____________, am okay.

6. I, ____________, am lovable.

7. I, ____________, am attractive.

8. I, ____________, am intelligent.

9. I, ____________, am creative and intuitive.

10. I, ____________, am competent and talented.

11. I, ____________, am a good person.

12. I, ____________, am wanted and I belong.

13. I, ____________, trust my decisions.

14. I, ____________, accept all my feelings.

15. I, ____________, am expressing my feelings in healthy ways.

16. I, ____________, am releasing my anger into a pillow and others and I are safe.

17. I, ____________, forgive myself for all my mistakes.

18. I, ____________, am forgiving others for all their mistakes.

19. I, ____________, am saying “no” and I am okay.

20. I, ____________, am self-caring and I am there for others.

21. I, ____________, am capable of taking care of myself.

22. I, ____________, am taking control of my life and seeing all of my choices.

23. I, ____________, am taking responsibility for my happiness.

24. I, ____________, am communicating honestly and clearly what I want and need.

25. I, ____________, am listening to what others want and creating win-win solutions.

26. I, ____________, am courageously facing the unknown, even though I am scared.

27. I, ____________, am allowing myself an abundance of love and prosperity.

28. I, ____________, see myself attractive, happy, and healthy.

29. I, ____________, am slim and in control of what I eat and drink.

30. I, ____________, am visualizing myself in a successful career.

31. I, ____________, am successful and people are very happy for me.

32. I, ____________, am modeling success for many people and I’m loved and safe.

33. I, ____________, am successful in my career and in my relationships.

34. I, ____________, am more successful than my parents and they love me.

35. I, ____________, am successful, because I want to be.

36. I, ____________, am prosperous and I am a good, honest person.

37. I, ____________, have an abundance of money and people want to be with me because they like me.

38. I, ____________, am successful and I have enough time for my loved ones and myself.

39. I, ____________, am allowing others to support and care about me.

40. I, ____________, am in a loving relationship and I am free to be me.

41. I, ____________, am in a lasting, fulfilling relationship.

42. I, ____________, am taking time to relax and play and I am productive.

43. I, ____________, am doing things effortlessly.

44. I, ____________, am taking total responsibility for my life and I am having fun.

45. I, ____________, am only responsible for my thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

46. I, ____________, like myself.

47. I, ____________, love myself.

48. I, ____________, feel peacefully powerful.

49. I, ____________, am creating what I want in my life.

50. I, ____________, believe that I deserve it all.

You sure do! Go for it!

©2007 Helene Rothschild, MS, MA, MFT, is a Marriage, Family Therapist, intuitive counselor, speaker, and author. The article is excerpts from her new book, “ALL YOU NEED IS HART!” She offers phone sessions, teleclasses, books, e-books, MP3 audios, tapes, posters, independent studies, and a free newsletter. http://www.lovetopeace.com, 1-888-639-6390.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Helene_Rothschild

A lot of people think that self-esteem is the same as self-confidence; however it is much more than just self-confidence.

‘Self-Confidence’ could be described as being an ingredient in the ‘Self-Esteem’ recipe.

The word ‘esteem’ shares it’s roots with the word ‘estimate’ meaning ‘to put a value on’.

We can conclude from this that ‘self-esteem’, really means ‘the value we put on ourselves’. Hence, someone who has low self-esteem does not value themself very highly.

On the other hand, someone with high self-esteem has a deep rooted sense of self; they like (and sometimes love) themselves; they are in control of their internal state and they act with purpose.

The good news is that anyone can learn to have high self-esteem. It is not something that only the select few are born with

How To Build Self Esteem

Accepting yourself as you are ‘warts and all’ is an excellent place to start to build your self-esteem. Although this may seem easier said than done, it is a vital ingredient in your step forward.Take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror, that’s you!, that’s the way you are, and accepting yourself for what you are will start you on the path to higher self-esteem.

The image you see in the mirror can bring to the fore feelings of frustration, as we look at ourself with an overly critical eye. Sometimes all we can see are the flaws and the things we would like to change. We don’t see all the great things about ourselves as we have hidden them away, even convincing ourselves they don’t exist.

Well, they do exist, so keep looking, take a deep breath and look at yourself as you are and not as you would like to be. Learn to love yourself as you are before you try to change anything.

I know the last sentence seems contradictory, why would we want to change something we just fell in love with? But, the fact of the matter is that too much energy can be wasted wishing you were something you are not and accepting yourself for what you are is the first step to take towards higher self-esteem.

Have you any idea the energy you must use to hide yourself away from the world. What if this energy were channelled toward more positive areas in your life.

The most crucial part of this exercise, is that you must acknowledge first that you are

fine the way you are.

Once you have discovered this self acceptance, you will find the courage and

incentive to delve deeper into personal relationships and a whole new journey will

begin.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Whitworth

You want to raise your self esteem, you know it will help you to lead a happier and more successful life. But low self esteem is like a trap. When you have low self esteem, it’s hard to allow yourself to be happy and to respect your own abilities. Here are 3 ideas for making those first steps that don’t need you to leap over enormous barriers.

1. Start Small. Find one or two areas of your life where you want to raise your self esteem – it could be your work, your relationship with someone, or it could be talking to new business contacts. Start by taking small steps.

If the problem is networking to find new business contacts you could then identify one small action that you could take to get started. Rather than trying to impress a whole group of people at once, you could start by just introducing yourself and letting the conversation continue.

Once you’ve established that this is o.k., congratulate yourself, you’re making progress. Now you’re ready to move on to the next step of contributing to the conversation and eventually to presenting your business.

2. Be Willing to take a risk. One of the most debilitating effects of low self esteem is that you can end up unable to take any risks at all. Evaluate the action that you perceive as risky. Is it really that risky? Do lots of other people do it every day? Use positive self talk to encourage yourself to take the risk.

Once you’ve done what you set out to do evaluate the experience. You will be surprised to find that more often than not you were more successful than you expected to be. Let yourself know that you are capable of coping.

3. Focus on your achievements. Work on your self belief by focusing on what you’ve achieved. If you start looking at the things that you perceive as failures, stop immediately. Reset your thinking and ask yourself what did I learn from that, how can I turn it into something good?

Spend some time at the end of every day reviewing what you’ve achieved during the day. Be honest with yourself, you have achieved something every day. Don’t worry if it’s only a tiny step, you’re moving in the right direction.

Always remember you can break free of low self esteem. Seeking external help can make a difference, but there are many things that you can do for yourself. If you apply the ideas in this article every day, you will start to notice your self esteem growing day by day.

Would you like to learn more about the six pillars of self esteem?

Get the free e-book Secrets of a Millionaire Mindset . Visit my website for more resources, articles, and support materials about success and personal growth .

Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to develop the understanding and skills needed to achieve the success that they want.

The six pillars of self esteem are a vital key to success. Self acceptance is one the six pillars of self esteem. If you don’t have a good level of self esteem and self acceptance then you will find that being successful is more difficult. Your interactions with people will not produce the results you want, you will suffer from poor motivation and you will drift from day to day running the risk of not facing up to reality.

The six pillars of self esteem include facing up to facts, being willing to stand up for ourselves, having a purpose, having integrity, and being responsible for our own actions.

The last of the six pillars of self esteem is self acceptance – being willing to experience who we are even if we don’t like what we see. Only a person with high self esteem can accept themselves for who they truly are. If you want personal growth and personal success, you will need to be able to accept yourself as you are.

A failure of self acceptance will cost you dearly

Being unwilling to accept yourself for what you really are can lead you to wasting enormous amounts of time and energy trying to be something you are not. In the long run this effort is usually wasted as you true self come shining through –warts and all!

While you are busy rejecting our true self, you are increasing our levels of unhappiness, stress and anxiety. If you have severe difficulty in accepting yourself, the mental consequences can be very serious indeed.

How to accept yourself?

Of the six pillars of self esteem, self acceptance is the one that is most closely associated with our past conditioning and it is most deeply rooted in our very core. Improving your levels of self acceptance can take time and patience, however the rewards in terms of personal growth and personal success are very worthwhile.

Very often we have the most difficulty accepting our own faults – we seem them as massive mountains, when if we could see ourselves as other see us, they would just be tiny molehills. So one thing to do is to get the opinions of people who you trust to be honest with you and who you know will help you.

On the flip side, if you are person who does not have the six pillars of self esteem firmly embedded in your makeup, it is very common to overlook many of your positive qualities in favour of beating yourself up about your weaknesses. Find some time to sit down quietly and think about the successes you’ve had throughout your life. Identify and write down all the positive qualities that have led to those successes.

Think about people you know well enough to recognise their good and bad sides. That should help you to realise that no one’s perfect. If everyone were perfect, the world would be a very uninteresting place. You need some imperfections to highlight your best qualities

Provided you faults don’t lead you to be dishonest, immoral, or cause harm to other people, accept that there’s nothing wrong with them.

Where your faults have led you to make mistakes, don’t beat yourself up endlessly for your perceived failure. Understand that there’s no such thing as failure or mistakes, they are just learning experiences. If you can use them to move forward you will be much better off.

Finally try at all times to make sure that all your actions are aligned with universal principles such as love, mutual respect, honesty, integrity… that way you don’t have anything to feel bad about.

Working on the six pillars of self esteem, which includes working on accepting yourself for what you are, both the good and the not so good is important for you to live a happy and fulfilled live, achieving personal growth and personal success. There are many keys to success that let you come to terms with yourself as you are. You can find out more about the six pillars of self esteem .

You can get a free e-course the success principle . Visit my website for more resources, articles, and support materials about success and personal growth .

Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to develop the understanding and skills needed to achieve the success that they want.