THE BIG THREE OF ME: SELF-ESTEEM

Self-image is how you see yourself in relation to everything in your environment. You are not born with an image of yourself. Self-image is discovered, learned and accepted. Messages about you began to come to you while you were still in your mother's womb. After you were born those messages increased, coming from every direction. Parents, grandparents, kin folks, neighbors, friends, television, computer, books, teachers and the list goes on. Your experience with life created some self-messages about how you saw yourself in those experiences. And, you had a lot of feelings about what you saw. Those feelings about yourself are self-esteem.

Self-image is how you see yourself, self-esteen is how you feel about what you see. The mind is a theater and the images your have of yourself are the images on the screen. As you watch that movie you have feelings about what you see, as you would in any theater. Those feelings about yourself are self-esteem.

So, if you have poor self-esteem you generally feel negatively about how you see yourself. Self-image determines self-esteem and self-worth. It would be difficult to feel happy about yourself if you see yourself in a very negative, incapable, incompetent manner. Self-images need to be inventoried and examined in order to know what they are and whether they are true or false.

Your day-to-day emotional state is largely dependent on how you see yourself and how you feel about what you see. Happier people tend to be more happy with how they see themselves. A confident person is generally happier than an individual who sees herself as incompetent and vulnerable. Self-image and self-esteem can be changed for better or worse. A self-confident child can be ridiculed and shamed in such as way as to destroy that confidence. An anxious person can begin to see themselves as competent and capable.

Self-esteem is a critical component of your life and largely dependent on your self-image. It is always a good idea to take a self-image, self-esteem inventory. Making sure that what you see is what is really there and finding if those things about which you feel so negative are actually true. Remember, you can change the way you feel about yourself by changing the way you think about yourself. So, go ahead...do it.