In the previous article you looked at the various factors that influence your self esteem and determine why some people have high self esteem and others low self esteem. You saw that your nature, nurture, locus of evaluation and self talk all contributed to creating your self image. Knowing why you feel the way you do about yourself may empower you take some steps to change your unfavourable self concept.

As nature refers to our inherited personality predispositions and nurture to our environmental influences there may be very little that you can do to change these, and it therefore could just be the ‘luck of the draw’ that determines your nature/nurture makeup. You may have more control over your environment as you get older, but a lot of damage may already have been done in the early years.

So what power and control do you have to change your negative self perception?

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One of the most troublesome concepts we have to deal with today is that of Self Esteem. It is the source of many emotional responses and psychological malfunction. Anger, anxiety, depression, passivity and aggression can all be attributed to some extent to Self Esteem. Lack of motivation and drive, procrastination and the inability to succeed can also point a finger at Self Esteem.

Self Esteem relates to the way you see yourself. In itself it is not a problem, but as it is an evaluative word and you use it to appraise the level of regard you have for yourself, it can become a problem. How you live your life is very much influenced by your level of self esteem. A person with high self esteem will most likely see them self as a worthy individual deserving a good and successful life. A person with low self esteem will most likely judge them self as unworthy and inferior to others. They wouldn’t expect much joy from life and in fact would believe they deserve disappointment and misery. In this way your self esteem becomes a  judgmental statement qualifying the life you live.

So why is it that some people have High Self Esteem and others Low Self Esteem?

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