What is Self-Esteem?
As a Confidence Coach I’m often asked what is self-esteem and how is it different from confidence?
Confidence is defined as a feeling of trust in your abilities, qualities and judgement
Whereas self-esteem relates to your self-worth and how you value yourself in the world.
Someone with low self-esteem would have an overall negative belief about themselves. They’d tend to focus on their weaker points and blame themselves for any difficulties or mistakes.
If your self-esteem is higher, you generally believe you’re okay and recognise your strengths. When there are tough times in your life you can cope with them without feeling a victim or taking all the responsibility.
If you’re not sure where you are on the self-esteem scale then look at these types of behaviours and decide which describe you the most, or perhaps you demonstrate both types of behaviour?
High self-esteem behaviours:
- Have a balanced view of your positives and negatives
- Take care of yourself physically and emotionally
- Willing to trust others
- Independent
- Optimistic
- Willing to take risks
- Compassionate to yourself
- Learn from your mistakes
- Open-minded to others
- Trusting yourself and your intuition
- Collaborative
- Take responsibility for your actions and not always blaming others
Low self-esteem behaviours:
- Focused on your perceived negatives
- Self-blame and criticism
- Pessimistic
- Fear of taking risks
- Blaming attitude
- Avoid taking responsibility for actions
- Fear of confrontation
- Perfectionist behaviours
- Oversensitive to others comments
- Comparing yourself to others
- Needing to be right
- Dependant on others for decisions
Your self-esteem can fluctuate with your current experiences in life and most of us are somewhere around the middle of the scale . To work on building a healthier self-esteem I suggest starting by getting a clear picture of your positives and strengths as well as your flaws.
For more information and support on building your self-esteem and confidence please contact me for a free consultation or sign up for my blogs.
Jo