SELF ESTEEM & SELF REGARD

Self-esteem and self-regard are interrelated. Self-esteem is having confidence in yourself, in your own words, in how you carry yourself and present yourself. We all tend to take action to feel positive about ourselves. Sometimes we do it directly or sometimes we seek validation from others to feel good about ourselves. Our subconscious and conscious brain work hand in hand with each other without our knowledge of it. We manipulate our thoughts to accept our egos. Having low self-esteem makes us detrimental to our life and we aim for the least, numb ourselves, and block our feelings and emotions. We get on a brain of constant self-improvement to make our brain love us. This results in us getting involved in various themed activities with the thought to be able to find who we are and satisfy our ego. As every aspect of a coin has two sides, so does self-esteem. Self-esteem can be practiced conditionally or unconditionally.

Unconditional self-esteem is a lovely aspect of self-esteem. Your relationship with yourself is not constant, rather it varies with your acceptance. You have this balanced self-love and hate relationship with yourself and your thoughts. You are confident and not afraid to be yourself. Instead of trying to meet other people’s criteria, you bring your own to the table. The fear to be by yourself and alone feels more like a mystical magical journey full of adventures and adrenaline with the endorphins popping inside you constantly. Unconditional self-esteem is not the solution to every problem or it is not forever ongoing happiness, comparatively, it is a balanced journey with your soul and others.

Conditional self-esteem comes out of inadequacy and insecurity. Your relationship with yourself is unstable and defined by the terms of external circumstances. You seek to meet the criteria listed by your brain to accept yourself. Most of the time we are unsure of what this criterion is and requires a lot of self-reflection to come to terms with it. A few common trends could be defining your values around what others think of you, whether you are felt, whether they want to fuck you or not, whether they find you attractive, and whether you are matching and meeting other people’s vibes. And that brings you to set goals and needs which are misapprehended. Lower self-esteem can arise due to various factors such as bad experiences with people, past traumas, and negligence from close ones. People with low self-esteem are socialized to a belief that the verdict of their values comes from others' opinions. It induces low and high chronic stress because you cannot be independent and constantly keep seeking assurance while being unstable.

While trying to work hard to meet the delusional criteria, one should shift the drive and put all that work to attain unconditional self-esteem. We cannot seek expectations from others, they are not our vending machines where you insert your boils to obtain snacks until you feel good about yourself. This shows objectifying people and underestimating yourself and your needs. Our brain gravitates towards putting conditions that may be conscious or subconscious. Certain alterations towards attaining unconditional self-esteem could be easily performed by individuals via incorporating a few new self-reflection activities. List down all criteria’s that your brain has set up for you to meet. Once you do so, alter these criteria by identifying what matters to you and what reveals your personality. Start finding ladder thoughts to change from conditional to unconditional. You may begin by listing down 10 thoughts and rating them on a scale of 1 to 10. Rating 1 being you feel comfortable facing the thought to extreme thoughts on a scale of 10 and then reflect on your experience during those scenarios. The best way to do so is to plan ahead of time and interact with one thought scenario at a time. Try the “AND” approach. For example, I didn’t go to a planned event today AND I still have values. Practice thoughts about positive self-esteem and believe in them.

Self-esteem comes from our thoughts, and we can change them to attain unconditional self-esteem. It is not about living a fairy tale with yourself but having a baseline to stabilize and balance it. Being a perfectionist and always feeling amazing is just a fantasy and not a reality. You are allowed to have negative thoughts, have bad days, and feel low on certain days. But what is important is to be acceptable and okay with it and give yourself the benefit of doubt.