A healthy view of self is a necessary building block to a quality life.
How do you develop that view?
Certainly, our life expression helps develop our self esteem as does our personality structure.
The whole structure versus nurture dynamic.
But, for the purposes of this blog, I’d like to focus on some instrumental factors that help create a good self esteem.
There are several variables at play in the creation of our view of self, but those five seem to be very potent.
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Sense of belonging
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Self awareness
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Self regulation
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Self soothing
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Sense of competence
Let’s briefly dissect these:
Sense of belong
Where do you feel loved, valued, heard and seen? A space where you accepted. For many of us those places can be home, church, friendships, work, neighborhood, sports team, etc. suggested as an example, Victor Frank has documented the survivors of the holocaust and has suggested those survivors had a strong sense of commitment/connection to the Jewish Faith. We all need community and sage spaces to simply, ‘be’.
Self Awareness
How do you discern your thoughts and feelings? Are you a good ‘self observer’? Do you know when you feel sad? Scared? Content? Curious? Happy? Hurt? , etc. Can you differentiate between what you’re thinking versus what you’re feeling?
Self Regulation
Do you have the tools to manage your behavior or feelings? Are those tired and true strategies you employ to regulate yourself? For example, I call my road bike my mental health machine. Exercise is my go to tool to assist in managing any big feelings.
Self Soothing
This is similar to self soothing. How do you provide ‘comfort’ to yourself? What are your self care tools? Do you have ways to provide healthy comfort to yourself? Playing a musical instrument for many is a self soothing strategy. For those of us with a Faith Walk, quiet time with God, prayer and reading scripture.. is our primary self soothing tool.
And lastly, Sense of Competence.
Do you know your skill set? Not just professionally or technically. Do you know where you ‘shine’? People with a healthy esteem have a balanced view of their competencies and work areas…
I trust this brief narrative has been helpful for you to think about where your self of self is correctly and where you’d like to be.
Take good care.