When you're learning about something new, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of relevant information available. This informative article should help you focus on the central points.
So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.
Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won't even remember. Don't let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So which dart pins should you avoid?
Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment Beware of "dog eat dog" theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.
Dart Pin #2: Other People's Behavior Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers... all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.
Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment You can't be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.
Truthfully, the only difference between you and Self esteem experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to Self esteem.
Dart Pin #4: Past Experience It's okay to cry and say "ouch!" when we experience pain. But don't let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.
Dart Pin #5: Negative World View Look at what you're looking at. Don't wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.
Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn't mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people's experience, so you'll never have to encounter the same mistakes.
Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn't come down from heaven and tell you - "George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self."
In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life's options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means 'self change'. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.
Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.
There's a lot to understand about Self esteem. We were able to provide you with some of the facts above, but there is still plenty more to write about in subsequent articles.
Nothing on earth happens purely by accident. A person is living because he was meant to live, and he has talents and abilities that are totally his own or her own, unique to him or her. Your job then, as a person, is to learn to be yourself. If you do, you will like yourself. I believe you will discover, you're quite a person after all. You will recognize and accept the things that you cannot do as well. You will also understand and appreciate those things that have been given to you, to do well.
You will accept yourself for what you really are, one of a kind, as different from anyone else, as much as your fingerprint or signature.
There is a trend in the education of our young people that has been developing strength for sometime now; all signs show that it is an important one, a part of learning that will continue to flourish, as long as we seek to expand human potential. We are not talking about genetics or computer science, but rather the building of self- esteem, and self-image.
It has been said that the more we search outward, the more we discover inward. The discovery of the strength in ourselves, to live a life unshackled from the bonds of self-doubt.
Let us explore the essence of personal courage and see how this inner strength develops as a vital by product of a healthy self-image.
Imagine that you are seated in a theater looking at the curtain which hides the blank screen. You wait for the feature picture to begin. How will you be changed by the coming attraction? How will it effect you? What impact will it have on your life? Will you feel moved, perhaps even to tears, will you laugh at a comedy, or feel terrified at the crisis faced by the hero, of heroin, will you feel wonderful waves of love, and compassion, or surges of resentment? You may be overcome with emotion, this special feature you will view is all about you, the most fascinating person in the world, you, and you alone!
In this theater, which is in the mind and heart of each of us, you are the producer, director, writer and actor, hero and the villain. You are the film technician up in the booth, and the audience that reacts to this thrilling drama.
The exciting story unfolding upon this inner screen, is one which is invented every second of your life, yesterday, tomorrow, but most important, right now. You watch that image upon that screen, and you invent that image upon that screen, right now.
Will that story have a happy ending? Is this feature a story of joy, and accomplishment, or loss, and failure? The mystery is already there, and the focused eye will know the outcome to be. There is one realization that can comfort you. The truth being you are the dramatist, the actor, the director, you can change the story as it unfolds, now, this instant and for your whole lifetime.
Now and forever on, you can make this a success story, you can be the hero and conquer the villain. You can make this a heart warming story which can enrich the lives of all who know you, rather than a drab mechanical tale, a chronicle of boredom.
Everything is inside you, it all depends on what you do with that image you carry in you, an image which is your most important tool for good, or for ill. Everything therefore depends on you and your self- image.
The self-image is your own conception of the sort of person you are. Your self-image is a product of past experiences, successes and failures, humiliations, and triumphs and the way other people react to you, especially in early childhood. From these factors and from others, you build up a picture of yourself which you believe is true. The picture may be false, and in many cases is false, but the important fact here, is that you act just as if it were true, for all intense and purpose, it is true.
If you have developed a good, healthy, successful self image, fine. However if it can stand some improvement you can change it for the better and start getting the kinds of results such a change will bring about.
We must live by the standards we choose for ourselves, challenge yourself, choose high standards, be a person that you can be proud of. We can set new limits in place of the old limits, but we can not surpass the limits of our current self- image.
Our self-image determines the size and kind of person we become. We can remove our self-imposed limitations by enlarging our self-image.
We form a mental picture of ourselves through experience, and we can change that picture the same way, through experience. If the actual experience we need is not available to us, we can, according to self-image psychology, create that experience, synthetically.
Now scientist agree that the human nervous system is incapable of distinguishing between actual experience and the same experience imagined vividly, and in complete detail. Worry is a good example of this synthetic experience. When a person worries about something he projects himself mentally, emotionally, even physically, into a situation that has not even occurred. The man who worries himself about failure, finds himself experiencing the same reactions that accompany actual failure, feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and humiliation. As far as his body and mind are concerned, he has failed.
Now everything can be viewed in either of two ways, positively or negatively, constructively or destructively. Worry is the negative use of creative imagination, it is a negative synthetic experience. But most people apparently never realize that positive results, just as real as the negative results of worry, can be achieved through using our imagination constructively. By concentrating on the success we all desire, by synthetically experiencing that success, we can expand our self-image into that of a person for whom success is normal, expected.
Both Gary Aschenbrenner & Howard Platt are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.