In module 12.6, we read about self-esteem, which is associated with our psychological well-being and how we view ourselves. Even though self-esteem can drop at times, it is not set at a fixed quantity. In fact, we can work to improve our self esteem to better how we function in the world and feel about ourselves. Self-esteem is often associated self-worth, which is something that develops with the goals that we set for ourselves. I was able to discover the quantity of my own self-esteem by my goals, my skills, by expectations, by the meaning of my life, my perfectionism, and my need for approval.
In the process of building my self-esteem, I try to acquire skills that enable me to meet and conquer the challenges I face. I have spent time building my academic, artistic, and social skills in order to become a more well-rounded person. Academically, I have pushed myself to get good grades and to join National Honors Society so that I will be able to use this skill in the future as I graduate high school, college, and finally enter into the work world. I am in the top quarter of my class and take pride in that. I sometimes get really hard on myself if my grades aren't as good as they could be, but I've started to care less and less. Now, the only time I really let my success in my academic pursuits affect me is when I'm compared to another person who is smarter than me or when I feel like I have a goal that is unattainable because of my lack of success by their standards. Artistically, I push myself to express myself as much as possible in my academic and creative pursuits. On the artistic level, I think that I have skills that I should improve. I can always be a better singer, actress, piano player, guitar player, or artist. However, I do believe that I have talents that not everyone has so, I'm pretty satisfied with that. Unless I set really high expectations for my academic skills, this doesn't really affect my self-esteem. I also am very proud of my social skills. When I want to, I can be a very conversational and outgoing person, which is a good quality to have in the real world when in the work environment and trying to make friends. I'm satisfied with my social skills because I'm way more comfortable with talking to other people than your typical introvert. I would rather be able to approach a situation with ease rather than having a loss for words or feeling social anxiety towards it. However, when I doubt my ability to make friends, my social skills (or lack there of) can have an affect on my self-esteem. When I am confident in all of my abilities, I believe that I possess skills that will help me to be successful in the real world, thus improving my self-esteem.
In order to build my self-esteem, a basic step towards doing so consists of setting realistic goals to aim to achieve. These goals don't serve as roadblocks towards improving my self-esteem, but they essentially help a person to feel at peace with their success in life if they are accomplished. For example, wanting to get a job & wanting to get a decent score in my classes are all very realistic goals to have. If I continue to make goals like this throughout my life, I can maintain a sense of self-esteem while conquering the basic stepping stones towards success. A different kind of goals that you can set for yourself is called self-efficiency expectations. These expectations is where you take those basic goals to the next level. After acquiring things like a job and good grades in school, I can work to add my personal creative twist on everything. I can take my assignments in school and begin to add my personal stamp onto it. However, I have began to notice that right when I begin to add my personal stamp, I get so focused on creating what I have inside my head that I forget to include other people in the work process. My trust towards other people declines because I begin to doubt that they will not meet the expectations that I have set in my mind. When I focus on not making this mistake, I have come to find that the outcome is usually better than what I intended.
Another step in improving my self-esteem is by creating a sense of meaning in my own life. For a long time, I felt like I was stuck in the same place and that there was no genuine purpose for why I am alive. However, when I traveled to Hungary, I got this huge rush of excitement. I never felt homesick and didn't want to return back to America because I felt such a great sense of purpose in the work that I was doing in Hungary and the relationships that I had built. For a long time, I have realized that my longing to travel the world has turned into a love for Europe. At this point, I feel very unfulfilled, living in the states, because I know that there is so much more that I could be doing than going to school and watching Gossip Girl every day. If I could be anywhere in the world, I would be in Europe without a thought. However, I realize that I need to create meaning in my life here, so I have made efforts to find my niche. For example, I joined advanced drama, advanced tv production, the plays/musicals, the television production crew at my church and so on. As long as I can maintain some sort of connection to the things that I am really passionate about, I feel satisfied enough for the time being.
In order to understand exactly who I am as a person, I need to challenge the perfectionist expectations that I have of myself. This is something that I seriously, seriously, seriously need to work on because it's destroying my ability to be content with who I am and what I have accomplished. Often times, I will take on much more than I know I can handle, being apart of countless clubs, extra curricular assignments, and taking advantage of any extra credit assignments that I can do. My closest friends always tell me that I do way too much and that one day, I will exhaust myself to the point where it is unhealthy to do as much work that I take on. When I take on a new project, I don't just accomplish it with a low level of quality. I strive for my projects and assignments to be near perfect. I make it a goal to surpass the level of effort that the peers that surround me take. I don't do these things on purpose, but I tend to not think of how much I actually can handle when my mind is consumed in something like this. Other times, I have noticed that I shy away from things that I know I cannot attain. This doesn't happen too often, but with things like college applications and auditions, I could potentially be holding myself back. When browsing for colleges, I would find so many schools that I would love to be involved in. However, the second I saw their requirement list, I doubted things like my grades and ACT scores and subconsciously convinced myself that I would never be good enough for a school like that. Now that I realize that this is a mistake that I have made in the past few months, it is too late to go through and apply to the colleges that I had initially found. I am going to keep myself accountable in the future so that I don't make these mistakes again. If I can stick to that new realization, I truly believe that nothing can get in the way of achieving my hopes and dreams.
Lastly, I need to challenge my need for constant approval in order to be content with who I am and the choices that I make as an individual. As stated in countless journals, I have spent a good majority of my life trying to please people and to create an image of myself that people will approve of. Throughout middle school and high school, I have wasted time trying to get the wrong people to want to be my friend. With things like Student Leadership Council, I have put myself on the line, putting as much effort that I have time for into being as successful as I can be in order to please the other people in my council. However, there will always be those people who will never be happy with what you do. I found that out the hard way, getting removed from being the president of my class without the rest of my group telling me about their decision first. No matter how hard you try and put time towards accomplishing goals and building relationships, there will always be people that disapprove. Because of situations like this, I try to receive approval for everything that I do. If someone has a single bit of negative feedback towards me, I can't help but to take it to heart. However, I've realized that this is such an unhealthy thing to do to myself because of the reaction that I have towards that criticism. I don't really know how to fix it, but I guess it's something that I should take some time to figure out. When I get out into the real world, it's not going to matter what my high school friends thought of me. I guess I'm trying to search for something, whether it be self-assurance or just friends who like me. By caring so much about what people think of me, I tend to doubt how many people actually care enough to be my friend. When I'm not keeping myself busy and distracting myself with my perfectionist tenancies, I tend to get really lonely really quickly. I know that I'm stronger than that, but at the same time, I care way too much. All that is going to matter is if I am satisfied with my own actions at the end of the day. No one has to set the standard of the kind of person I should be because that is my own job. If I am content with who I am and the decisions that I make, nothing really matters besides that. Easier said than done.
In the process of building my self-esteem, I try to acquire skills that enable me to meet and conquer the challenges I face. I have spent time building my academic, artistic, and social skills in order to become a more well-rounded person. Academically, I have pushed myself to get good grades and to join National Honors Society so that I will be able to use this skill in the future as I graduate high school, college, and finally enter into the work world. I am in the top quarter of my class and take pride in that. I sometimes get really hard on myself if my grades aren't as good as they could be, but I've started to care less and less. Now, the only time I really let my success in my academic pursuits affect me is when I'm compared to another person who is smarter than me or when I feel like I have a goal that is unattainable because of my lack of success by their standards. Artistically, I push myself to express myself as much as possible in my academic and creative pursuits. On the artistic level, I think that I have skills that I should improve. I can always be a better singer, actress, piano player, guitar player, or artist. However, I do believe that I have talents that not everyone has so, I'm pretty satisfied with that. Unless I set really high expectations for my academic skills, this doesn't really affect my self-esteem. I also am very proud of my social skills. When I want to, I can be a very conversational and outgoing person, which is a good quality to have in the real world when in the work environment and trying to make friends. I'm satisfied with my social skills because I'm way more comfortable with talking to other people than your typical introvert. I would rather be able to approach a situation with ease rather than having a loss for words or feeling social anxiety towards it. However, when I doubt my ability to make friends, my social skills (or lack there of) can have an affect on my self-esteem. When I am confident in all of my abilities, I believe that I possess skills that will help me to be successful in the real world, thus improving my self-esteem.
In order to build my self-esteem, a basic step towards doing so consists of setting realistic goals to aim to achieve. These goals don't serve as roadblocks towards improving my self-esteem, but they essentially help a person to feel at peace with their success in life if they are accomplished. For example, wanting to get a job & wanting to get a decent score in my classes are all very realistic goals to have. If I continue to make goals like this throughout my life, I can maintain a sense of self-esteem while conquering the basic stepping stones towards success. A different kind of goals that you can set for yourself is called self-efficiency expectations. These expectations is where you take those basic goals to the next level. After acquiring things like a job and good grades in school, I can work to add my personal creative twist on everything. I can take my assignments in school and begin to add my personal stamp onto it. However, I have began to notice that right when I begin to add my personal stamp, I get so focused on creating what I have inside my head that I forget to include other people in the work process. My trust towards other people declines because I begin to doubt that they will not meet the expectations that I have set in my mind. When I focus on not making this mistake, I have come to find that the outcome is usually better than what I intended.
Another step in improving my self-esteem is by creating a sense of meaning in my own life. For a long time, I felt like I was stuck in the same place and that there was no genuine purpose for why I am alive. However, when I traveled to Hungary, I got this huge rush of excitement. I never felt homesick and didn't want to return back to America because I felt such a great sense of purpose in the work that I was doing in Hungary and the relationships that I had built. For a long time, I have realized that my longing to travel the world has turned into a love for Europe. At this point, I feel very unfulfilled, living in the states, because I know that there is so much more that I could be doing than going to school and watching Gossip Girl every day. If I could be anywhere in the world, I would be in Europe without a thought. However, I realize that I need to create meaning in my life here, so I have made efforts to find my niche. For example, I joined advanced drama, advanced tv production, the plays/musicals, the television production crew at my church and so on. As long as I can maintain some sort of connection to the things that I am really passionate about, I feel satisfied enough for the time being.
In order to understand exactly who I am as a person, I need to challenge the perfectionist expectations that I have of myself. This is something that I seriously, seriously, seriously need to work on because it's destroying my ability to be content with who I am and what I have accomplished. Often times, I will take on much more than I know I can handle, being apart of countless clubs, extra curricular assignments, and taking advantage of any extra credit assignments that I can do. My closest friends always tell me that I do way too much and that one day, I will exhaust myself to the point where it is unhealthy to do as much work that I take on. When I take on a new project, I don't just accomplish it with a low level of quality. I strive for my projects and assignments to be near perfect. I make it a goal to surpass the level of effort that the peers that surround me take. I don't do these things on purpose, but I tend to not think of how much I actually can handle when my mind is consumed in something like this. Other times, I have noticed that I shy away from things that I know I cannot attain. This doesn't happen too often, but with things like college applications and auditions, I could potentially be holding myself back. When browsing for colleges, I would find so many schools that I would love to be involved in. However, the second I saw their requirement list, I doubted things like my grades and ACT scores and subconsciously convinced myself that I would never be good enough for a school like that. Now that I realize that this is a mistake that I have made in the past few months, it is too late to go through and apply to the colleges that I had initially found. I am going to keep myself accountable in the future so that I don't make these mistakes again. If I can stick to that new realization, I truly believe that nothing can get in the way of achieving my hopes and dreams.
Lastly, I need to challenge my need for constant approval in order to be content with who I am and the choices that I make as an individual. As stated in countless journals, I have spent a good majority of my life trying to please people and to create an image of myself that people will approve of. Throughout middle school and high school, I have wasted time trying to get the wrong people to want to be my friend. With things like Student Leadership Council, I have put myself on the line, putting as much effort that I have time for into being as successful as I can be in order to please the other people in my council. However, there will always be those people who will never be happy with what you do. I found that out the hard way, getting removed from being the president of my class without the rest of my group telling me about their decision first. No matter how hard you try and put time towards accomplishing goals and building relationships, there will always be people that disapprove. Because of situations like this, I try to receive approval for everything that I do. If someone has a single bit of negative feedback towards me, I can't help but to take it to heart. However, I've realized that this is such an unhealthy thing to do to myself because of the reaction that I have towards that criticism. I don't really know how to fix it, but I guess it's something that I should take some time to figure out. When I get out into the real world, it's not going to matter what my high school friends thought of me. I guess I'm trying to search for something, whether it be self-assurance or just friends who like me. By caring so much about what people think of me, I tend to doubt how many people actually care enough to be my friend. When I'm not keeping myself busy and distracting myself with my perfectionist tenancies, I tend to get really lonely really quickly. I know that I'm stronger than that, but at the same time, I care way too much. All that is going to matter is if I am satisfied with my own actions at the end of the day. No one has to set the standard of the kind of person I should be because that is my own job. If I am content with who I am and the decisions that I make, nothing really matters besides that. Easier said than done.