Conscious of himself, a man inevitably asks himself how he is perceived and evaluated by others, what place he occupies in the social community. From the answers to such questions, self-esteem is born.
Self-esteem is a personal characteristic that reflects a person’s assessment of his own personal qualities. The American psychologist W. James presented it as a fraction: the numerator is the claims of a person, and the denominator is his real possibilities. If the denominator is equal to the numerator, this is adequate self-esteem; if the numerator is greater than the denominator, it is overstated, less is underestimated.
A person with high self-esteem is an unpleasant subject, an “aggressive loser, ” blaming anyone for his failure, but not himself. A person with low self-esteem causes less trouble to others, but more needs psychological help.
Not all psychological problems are solved by increasing self-esteem. A person with an adequate, especially with an overestimated self-esteem, her increase in benefit will not bring.
Signs of low self-esteem are fixing attention on one’s own failures, devaluing successes, indecision up to the behavior of “avoiding failures”. A striking example of such a person is a schoolboy who is afraid to answer at the blackboard (“it’s better not to do anything”). Only in this case it is advisable to talk about the need to increase.
The first thing to do is to remember your successes and achievements, you can even set out all this in writing, starting from school age. For example, a woman may suffer from low self-esteem due to an uncomplicated personal life - which means it's time to remember that she graduated from school with a gold medal, and the university with a red diploma, entered the postgraduate course on the first attempt, defended her thesis, became an assistant professor, her Professor N himself praised the last scientific article, etc.
An ideal option would be to once and for all forbid yourself to say "I am a loser, " "I will not succeed, " and other similar phrases that inspire low self-esteem, but this is not feasible. Such thoughts will come to mind, but for them the refutation must be prepared: "I am imperfect - no one is perfect", "I can’t cope with anything - I coped with this and that very well."
It is important to learn how to properly accept compliments. People with low self-esteem react to them as if they are embarrassed by their own achievements ("What are you, I'm just lucky"). Compliments must be answered, if not with pride, then with self-esteem: "Thank you, I tried, " "I am very pleased that you are satisfied with my work."
It is difficult to unlearn the fear of failure - this inevitable companion of people with low self-esteem, it will have to be overcome every time before starting any business. Fear recedes to logic: it is necessary to analyze what kind of failure can be, what fallback options can be envisaged if something goes wrong as planned.
Preliminary analysis should not be too carried away: you need to get down to business as soon as possible, otherwise indecision can prevail.
Learning to take on business, overcoming fear, a person will achieve success, real success also helps to increase self-esteem.