Healthy Self-Esteem

Having a healthy self-esteem is very important for all areas of your life. The sooner you work on your self-esteem the better things will be for you not just now, but when you get older. The following are just a few areas in which a healthy self-esteem will determine good outcomes and a low-self-esteem can be bring unecessary pain, heart break, sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.


Your Appearance:

Healthy Self-Esteem:You look your best and you treat your body with love- that means exercising it and feeding it healthy foods.

Low Self-Esteem: Too chunky, dumpy, frumpy, and lumpy, is one way an author described the appearance of people who have low-self esteem. Unless you have some kind of medical condition and you have problem with weight, it could be your self-esteem. People who have low self-esteem tend not to have such a good relationship with food. Either they are very controlling so that they do not gain any weight or they use food as comfort and are chunky.

Dumpy is this look of deep sadness people with low-esteem carry with them always. Shoulders are hunched over, no eye contact, and they do not say much.

Frumpy/Lumpy- How do you dress your body? This one could be hard when you can not buy your own clothes. I completely understand, when I was a teen we were poor so I had to wear hand me downs and whatever my parents could afford to get me. Which was sometimes frumpy/lumpy embarrassing clothes so I had to get creative. Especially when I noticed that my best friend always looked sharp even though her family was in the same economic level my family was. I do not mean buy name brand or expensive clothes to look better than anyone else. What I mean is dress your best (does not have to be expensive) so that you feel good about yourself.


Your relationships:

Healthy Self-Esteem: You tend to attract people who are a positive influence in your life and have an upbeat, optimistic, attitude. You also have healthy boundaries. You do not allow people to use nor abuse you. You stand up for yourself if the need arises using peaceful communication.

Low Self-Esteem: You attract lower energy people. This means the angry, sad, anxious, selfish, negative, mean people. Possibly even a bully. People take advantage of you or mistreat you because they know they can.


School:

Healthy Self-Esteem: You recognize that while you may have trouble in some subjects it does not mean you are stupid or not capable of getting better. You do not beat yourself up for setbacks in school because you know it only means that on the subjects that do not come easily to you, you need to put an extra effort.

Low Self Esteem: You believe that any setback in school is proof that you are not good enough or your are stupid. Sometimes it may not even have anything to do with you, it could be the teacher or school administration. Yet you assume that the problem is you. I say this because of my own experience and also when I tutored in high school there was a girl who kept saying she was stupid because she did not get the math problems. Well, when I went to her class to tutor her I noticed that her teacher had some serious issues. She was especially mean to the girl I was tutoring. The girl was not stupid either. I tutored her and within a short time she mastered what she had so much difficulty with. She even said, "This is so easy, why did the witch make it look so complicated?"


Life Challenges:

Healthy Self-Esteem: People with a healthy self-esteem know that life challenges are normal as long as we are living. There is a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I never read it myself, but the point is that bad things happen to everyone. People with a healthy self-esteem know this and do not perceive themselves as bad when unwanted things happen. Instead they find a way to rise above the challenge.

Low Self-Esteem: Every challenge or setback is taken personally by people with low-self esteem. They feel there is something wrong with them and they must be bad to be attracting bad things or causing mistreatment from others.They do not recognize that bad things happen to everyone.


As I mentioned in the beginning I was just going to list a few areas in life in which self-esteem is important. A couple more areas are (which will come later in life, but you should still keep in mind): You need a healthy self-esteem to get a good job and to attract a healthy, loving, fulfilling. romantic relationship. If you do not work on your self-esteem you will get what is left at the bottom of the barrel.