It is important that you do not under estimate your worth, as you are what you think you are, self-esteem is all about thoughts and what you think of yourself.
If you think confidence then you will appear confident, and then this will show on the outside, when people realize their worth, they are able to face life with greater confidence and optimism about the future. They are more likely to be able to reach their goals and gain experience, satisfaction and happiness from life, are better able to form lasting relationships that work and are better able to cope with whatever life throws at them. A person who realizes their self-worth is a happy well adjusted person who posses the ability to cope with anything and anyone throughout their life and is capable of doing anything they set their mind on doing.
Problems caused by under estimating your self-worth Many problems can occur in your life simply by under estimating your own self-worth, a lack of self-worth affects your sense of well being, causes problems with your feelings and needs, affects your ability to make good
healthy choices in relationships, work and life in general and cause fears such as abandonment and problems such as people continually striving for perfection but never seeming to reach it. A lack of self worth has been attributed to being indecisive, addictions such as smoking, drinking, drug abuse, compulsive shopping disorder and problems with eating such as bulimia and anorexia.
Realizing your self-worth
Each one of us is capable of realizing our self-worth, we do not have to do anything special in order to gain or deserve self-esteem. The key to realizing your self-worth is getting that little voice inside your head to stop putting you down all the time, it is our own thoughts and feelings that drive us to develop a low self-esteem. This little voice has developed over a long period of time, casting self-doubt onto ourselves until we genuinely believe that we aren’t worthy or capable, it is our own minds that develop our feelings of low self-esteem, not some outside force. There are several ways in which you can begin to change your pattern of thought and boost your self-esteem that in turn begins the process of realizing your true self-worth, the basics behind making this correction are:
Learning to recognize self-critical thoughts and stopping them
Learning to replace self-thoughts with more positive ones
Sticking with the habit of correcting your negative thoughts with more positive ones
There are many ways in which you can begin to set the pattern of changed thoughts but perhaps the easiest one is using affirmations, which are simple positive statements and using these to replace any negative thoughts, examples of positive affirmations could be:
This is a new and exciting challenge – this could be used to replace thoughts such as this is too hard or I can’t do this it’s beyond me.
I am a confident, worthy individual – replace this when you have thoughts such as can I do this or I could never do this.
I can do anything my heat desires if I put my mind to it – this can be used to replace thoughts such as I’m not sure if I’m capable of completing this task or I don’t know if I can complete what is asked of me.
All of these are simple affirmations that you can use to gradually change the way you think, which in time will change the way you feel about yourself and encourage you to realize your true self-worth.
Developing your full potential
While many of us are happy in life and do accomplish to some extent what we set out to do, there aren’t many that actually push themselves that little bit further and go on to develop their full potential. While we might be particularly good at doing certain things in life we could excel if only we had the courage and belief in ourselves to go for it.
As children we are full of excellent ideas, they never stop flowing because we have an open mind and belief in ourselves that we can accomplish just about anything. However, as we grow up fear of if we are doing the right thing and of speaking out and being ridiculed takes over and we stem the flow of our imagination and ideas. We hold back our thoughts and this can stop us from developing our full potential.
There are many ways you can start developing your potential, it’s never too late. You should remember that there is no right and wrong way of thinking and many times the reason why others try to make you feel inferior when you voice opinions and ideas is because they wish they had had the idea and courage to speak up. So focus on your skills and abilities and let your thoughts run free, put them to use and truly excel in life.
In order to be successful you should realize that you will sometimes make mistakes, no one is perfect and mistakes are ok providing you acknowledge them and learn from them. Characteristics that you can nurture and that will lead to developing your true and full potential include:
Working hard – putting your all into everything you do when working towards what you want in life
Having patience – things don’t happen overnight so have patience and you will be rewarded
Determination – stick to your guns and never give in when things don’t go your way or you come across hurdles
Commitment – be committed towards your goals and what you what to achieve, set goals in mind and don’t let anything or anyone stand in your way of reaching them
Organizational skills – the more organized you are the easier the road to success will be, plan out your ideas to their fullest before putting them into action
Learn from mistakes – you will make mistakes along the way but you can learn valuable lessons from these and move on
Confidence in yourself – you have to be self-confident and believe in yourself and your ideas, there is no room for doubt
Stay realistic – don’t set yourself goals that you cannot realistically achieve in a set amount of time, by setting yourself unrealistic goals you are setting yourself up for failure again and again.
When developing your full potential the two most important things to remember are, what you want out of life and what you can realistically do to make that possible. Once you have these facts clear then you can go full steam ahead towards achieving what you want.
Boost your Self-Esteem by Running
Running is a great self-esteem booster, especially if you are a beginning runner. Running will allow you to test and expand your limits like never before. With each milestone you reach you will find yourself more confident and able to take on the world.
Starting out slow reaps big rewards
Even if you can’t run to the mailbox without huffing and puffing, you can run to boost self-esteem. The first time you run to the mailbox, down the street, around the block or whatever distance it is, you will feel a great sense of pride and accomplishment. The first time you go out, you will probably do a lot more walking than you will running. However, if you keep at it, you will soon find yourself running more and more until one day your run the entire route without stopping.
The important thing to remember is to start out slow and not overdo it in the beginning. Your body does need to adjust to your new activity levels, especially if you previously lead a sedentary lifestyle. Overdoing it and causing overuse injuries can be a big discouragement, especially after seeing the progress that you made. Most people won’t want to increase their weekly mileage by more than 10%. However, do what works best for you, some people can handle a larger mileage increase and others need to increase the mileage much more slowly.
Running is 90% mental
Despite how your muscles may feel, 90% of running is purely the mental capacity to be able to do it. Building up this side of your brain by telling yourself you can do it, you can finish the race, you can run for 30 minutes non-stop, or whatever your goal is will invariably be a surefire way to build up your self-esteem. What happens is that while running, in order to finish, you will have to come up with some good things to say to yourself, often referred to as positive self talk. This self talk not only gets you through your current run, but will start seeping into the rest of your life and you’ll find yourself using it at work, while doing dishes and burdensome tasks will no longer feel so bad.