The keys to improving self-esteem are important when you want to increase confidence in yourself. Self-esteem is the basis of your self-concept. Since you are very little, you have many adults around you who are sending you messages of all kinds at all hours, which affect the development of your self-esteem, positively or negatively. That is why I have written this article to give you keys to improve self-esteem when you feel that you are in poor shape.
When you are little, the brain still does not know how to distinguish well if what they say to you is serious and literal, or if you have to make adaptations to its meaning. But the fact is that they tell you.
Everything they tell you, which usually refers to who you are, what you are and what you do, They can direct it in an unconditional way (references to your being) or (references to your doing) conditionally, and equally in a positive or negative sense.
Positive messages to improve self-esteem:
Negative messages that damage self-esteem:
The effect of key messages to improve self-esteem
Throughout your growth, you are continually receiving messages that improve or do not improve your self-esteem. First of all, with these messages you acquire a concept about:
With these key messages to improve self-esteem you will draw conclusions. As a consequence of them, you integrate the idea of whether you are capable of contributing things to yourself and to others, if others are capable of contributing to you and themselves, and if life brings you things that are good for you, or not. With these conclusions you form your self-concept, because with them you tell yourself:
Self-concept is key to improving self-esteem
Self-concept is the way you see yourself along with the opinion you know or believe others have of you. In fact, everything that happens in the first years of your life determines who you will be later on, and the type of adult you will be, as well as the results you will obtain.
The keys to improving self-esteem can shape self-esteem. Because self-esteem is manifested through your behaviors, and all behaviors are learned, it is normal to think that with adequate cues to improve self-esteem, it can be shaped.
Furthermore, with keys to improve self-esteem you can learn new behaviors at any age. Of course, if you already have a series of established bases, learning becomes more clumsy, it costs more, but despite this, it is possible.
Teachers give keys to improve self-esteem
Teachers are very important, but certainly when they come into your life, you have already established the foundations of your self-esteem.
The basic structure of personality develops between 0-6 months of life , and at that age you still don’t go to school to be in contact with teachers. At that age the pillars of what your personality is going to be have already been laid, because with the aforementioned messages; You realize, for example, whether when you complain you get what you want or not. Whether when you run out they help you, or when you lock yourself in the room, they look for you, etc. And so, you make the composition of the behaviors with which you get what you want and you repeat them, until they become automated. These automatisms are integrated before school age.
Because the development of the basic structure of your personality occurs at such a young age, it is a time when you have not yet mastered words. You perceive actions, gestures, sounds, closeness, contact. This is the language that you are interpreting, and the idea is forming in your head “I am okay doing this, or I am not okay doing this.”
Learning vocabulary is one of the keys to improving self-esteem. Once you learn the vocabulary and start going to school, the teacher can redirect you to those attitudes in which he sees that you are not having self-esteem, that you do not have affection for yourself, or that you do not accept yourself.
Functional self-esteem indicates use of cues to improve self-esteem
The term “functional self-esteem” refers to the fact that the concept you have developed about yourself does not help you access your internal resources with which to make decisions, enjoy a day in the field, share a conversation with a friend… because you feel in inferiority of capabilities, because you think of yourself that you are worthless, or you think of the other, that what another has to give you is of no use to you… These concepts build victimistic, arrogant, or authoritarian personalities.
Negative words and actions influence you to have negative behaviors
Certainly, actions and words influence you. And if they are positive, they stimulate you to have constructive behaviors, love yourself more and have more options to develop certain capabilities.
But although it is often thought that the negative is negative, and that the positive is positive, this is not necessarily always the case. It may happen that you receive so many positive stimuli, that you have been told so many times how good you are or how well you do… that you feel overwhelmed and that stops you at a given moment from trying to continue developing, for fear of not being as good. /or as they say.
Because you have a high level of demand as a result of these hyperpositive messages, you tend to be a perfectionist. Therefore, in certain situations you can block yourself if you see that you are not going to achieve that image of perfectionism that you have been surrounded by, or that you have interpreted about yourself.
Another consequence of these messages could be that you distort reality so much that you do not see that there are problems. Since they have always told you that you are wonderful, everything doesn’t matter to you; For you there are no consequences for what you do. You live in a fantasy world, you waste, and anything goes. You don’t take responsibility for their actions, because since they told you that you’re cool and you believed it, nothing happens. Your ego is inflated.
Related article: “Narcissistic Personality Disorder: causes and symptoms”
Positive reinforcement is one of the keys to improving self-esteem
If in doubt, to avoid inflated egos, when giving positive reinforcement (especially in very young children) You have to give them very in time with respect to the moment in which an achievement is achieved and then space them out when the child is older and so many reinforcements are no longer needed, because he is already believing in himself, to avoid these extremes.
Negative reinforcements must also be incorporated. Convey “I know you are learning and I allow you to learn, but I tell you what you don’t do well, I teach you and I let you learn how to improve it.”
As a consequence of a balance between both types of reinforcement, you teach the child to feel good in his life; You make it easy for him to think that when faced with problems he has resources, and that he always has people around him to turn to.
Thinking that you have someone to turn to avoids the lonely feelings of low self-esteem
When inside you are certain that you always have people to turn to, the vision of “I feel alone and I suffer because of it” does not enter. This vision of suffering loneliness arises when your self-esteem is not functional that is, when faced with a problem you remain blocked, due to perfectionism, egocentrism, victimhood, or any other adaptation that you have made with your personality.
Imagine that, when faced with a problem, you think that others have nothing to contribute to solve it, that you have no resources for them, and that, therefore, you end up thinking that this happens because you are not worth it. This is a devastating conclusion that does nothing to improve self-esteem.
You may be interested: “Do you really know what self-esteem is?”
Keys to improve self-esteem
The behavior is learned; Everything that has been learned can be unlearned and relearned. Therefore, it is good that you unlearn what does not work in your self-esteem.
The unlearning process is the most difficult, because it is in which you have to realize what is happening to you and become aware; like when the chip falls on you and you say “oh man, I’ve been doing this like this my whole life, and I could have done it this other, much simpler way, and without hurting myself so much.”
Without a doubt, it takes a lot of willpower and desire to dare to enter the process of unlearning. However, when you get to the other side is when you say, wow!
Getting there is not easy. It is a very hidden place that you have to go to. Sometimes you want to go and arrive, and when you arrive, you see darkness. You see the b side of your personality and you say: “maybe I prefer not to look, maybe I prefer to leave it as it is, because since I don’t know the result it will give me, it makes me very panicked, and it makes me very afraid.”
That fear, held by a professional hand, who knows how to take care of you and how to guide you, is crossed, and what is behind is light. Make an appointment at my emotional therapy consultation and I will help you unlearn what ruins your self-esteem.
Conclusion
Coming to understand and see that you have a problem and that you can do things differently is possible as long as you are willing to take into account the keys to improving self-esteem: taking yourself into account, giving yourself the necessary approval, giving yourself recognition and validation for who you are, and not for what you do or achieve, giving yourself priority to take care of your needs. needs, and release dependence on external approval.
What key helps you to improve self-esteem? I read you in comments. If you liked the article, go ahead, rate it and share.
