Self Esteem by Nuala Duignan

Good Self esteem is one of the most essential components of a human being's personality. It is basically the image you have of yourself in your own opinion. You have a good opinion of yourself, you have high self- esteem, you have a bad opinion of yourself, you have a low self- esteem.  It is the foundation of our life and something that helps us immensely in living a life that is worthwhile. Until and unless you believe in yourself and your abilities it is almost impossible to achieve success in any walk of life. In other words, we simply need to value ourselves for what we are and what we are capable of rather than wanting to be what we are not.

Low self esteem, on the other hand will affect all areas of life including our career, work, family, relationships, social life, health and what not. It creates an overall unfulfilling feeling whereas on the contrary high self esteem gives us immense confidence and belief that I am sure has the potential to take us a long way in life.  Since we know that this is an extremely important issue and that thousands and thousands of people suffer from low self esteem throughout the world regardless of their health, wealth and knowledge, we need to figure out some important and easy ways of increasing our self esteem. Some of the most effective ways I believe are as follows:

1. Keep a Victory Log
This one is one of my favorite ways of keeping my self-esteem high. Maintain a log book where you jot down all your accomplishments throughout life. It does not matter how big or small your accomplishments may be, you just need to remember what you have accomplished. It maybe the extraordinary skills you possess or the beautiful possessions you have. It might be good grades that you had received or a trophy that you had won. It might be a financial reward that you might have been given or a promotion that you received. It might even have been an approving glance from a person of the opposite sex or the day you scored a hat trick in the school game. It could just be any positive accomplishment that you have made in life.

Just make sure that you have all written in your log book starting today. We all have high and low times and what we need in low times is some spirit lifting. Go through your log book every time you are feeling low or are having any negative thoughts and you will see how this log will give you the great moods once you start thinking of all the good things that have happened to you in life. It simply serves as a reminder of the fact that you have done it before and there is no reason that you will not be able to do it in the present and in the future.

2. Honor Your Abilities
Sit in a quiet place and think of the great abilities and skills that nature has gifted you with. Stop blaming yourself for all the wrong things or even the right things for that matter. Just do not blame yourself. Simply look at the good things and the positive things in your personality and in your life. Be grateful to God for all the great things that you have in yourself and honor it. Remember, if you want the world to honor and love you, you need to honor and love yourself first.

3. Do the right things
Always try to do the right things in life. We all are grown up people and have the conscience to differentiate between the wrong and the right. Make sure that you do your best to do the right things. Believe me you are going to feel a whole lot better when you know that you are doing the things worth doing and the things that are good for your character, health and well being.
To give an example, I personally feel great when I wake up early morning, pray, have a good breakfast, exercise, read the newspaper, work hard, do my daily chores and set my priorities right. I feel that I am doing all the important things that I need to do in order to keep myself energized and to keep my self- esteem at a higher level.

4. Mingle with Positive people
Always mix, meet and mingle with people who are positive and energetic, people who have a positive image about themselves, have confidence in themselves and a positive outlook on life. We need to build our network of friends where we are surrounded by good, enthusiastic, determined and positive people.

5. Be Kind
It is really not possible to feel good about ourselves if we are inconsiderate, mean and selfish. It is essential to treat others with respect and with love. The more respect and love you give, the more you get it back. Everyone has a special quality and a special resource through which one can contribute to life. Be kind, be humble, help the poor, help the under-privileged and be a part of a noble cause whenever and wherever possible in order to be of help and support to the world and at the same time be worthy of respect and value in your very own eyes. This will pick you up and place you on top of the world.

6. Be Honest, hardworking and productive
Another important factor that helps in raising self esteem is to be honest, hardworking and productive. Again it seems quite contrary to have high self esteem when a person is dishonest and unproductive. When one is honest, there is a satisfaction that is felt within him resulting in a great self image. At the same time, it is important to be a hardworking, sincere person that results in high productivity and again leading to high self- esteem.

The above are some of the major ways that you can use to raise yourself image and self-esteem. Always keep in mind that self- esteem is not what others think of you but what you truly believe about yourself. It has to be genuine respect for oneself. In other words it is self respect.

Hal Urban says "Self Esteem is how we genuinely feel about ourselves, regardless of what others say. And how we feel about ourselves is closely related to how our character develops. Ultimately the development of personal character is both a choice and responsibility." Before we conclude, here is a little reminder:
"To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives." Denis Waitley

Eight out Ten (Unemployed) Cats...

David Jones wonders what it is the unemployed most miss about working.

It might seem like a stupid question, but what do people miss most when they’ve no job?

The obvious answer is money. The average annual wage in Ireland is €32,000 before tax. After tax that gives a take home pay of about €480 a week. The dole on the other hand is €204. Losing your job therefore costs the average single man or woman about €276 each week. That’s means they are €14,352 worse off in a full year. That’s a considerable sum of money by anyone’s standards. It certainly puts a dent in holiday plans, socialising, and buying things like cars, furniture and so on.

The minimum wage in Ireland is currently €8.65 an hour. After tax that works out at about €7.40 for a single worker. Based on a 39 hour week, the dole works out at €5.23 an hour. A single unemployed person is therefore €2.17 an hour worse off than if he or she was working for the minimum wage. So if you’re single and unemployed, you’re €85 worse off each week compared to what you would be if you were working for the minimum wage.

Put another way around, the minimum wager’s real pay for getting up every morning and going to work is €2.17 an hour. At the end of a hard week’s work, he or she prospers to the tune of just €84 compared to staying at home and watching TV. Not much of an incentive really is it?

Of course, for higher earners things are very different. Life on the dole can represent a dramatic, and traumatic, decline in living standards. People may be forced to move house, sell the car, take the children out of school or college, or downsize in whatever way they see fit.

Apart from money, what else do the unemployed most miss? Company is the obvious answer. You’re at work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If you stop to think about it, you probably spend more time with your work mates than you do with your family. It’s a big wrench to suddenly find yourself home on your own.

Being unemployed can be a lonely and boring experience. Having time on your hands is all very well if you’ve lots of things to do and people to share it with. But what if you’ve neither? What do you do all day if your partner’s at work, if the kids are at school, if most of your friends are working? What about all the unemployed people who are living alone, or those living in rural areas? What do they do? No wonder depression is such a common problem amongst the jobless.

The winters are harder, of course. Cold, wet, miserable days are ten times worse when you’re on your own. Keeping warm is also expensive. Life on the dole is definitely far better in the summer; there’s a million more things to do when the sun shines.

It’s also often said that being without a job isn’t half so bad at weekends when most people are at home, as it is during the week. It’s during the week days that are worse. It’s as though your psyche doesn’t expect you to be at work on a Saturday or Sunday; but it’s really hard Monday to Friday. It’s when everyone else is at work that you really miss it.

There are other things too that you miss about not being at work. Depending on the type of job you had, people claim to miss mental stimulation, challenge, travel, even physical activity. We might moan about our jobs when we have them, but job interest really is a big positive feature in most of our lives. It’s certainly something we miss when it’s taken away from us.

A sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth are the other things most commonly missed. For most of us, our job defines who we are. One of the first questions we ask when we meet somebody new is, ‘What do you do?’ To some extent the answer dictates our standing in society. “I’m a pilot, a teacher, a nurse, a banker, a bookkeeper, a lorry driver, a chef or a builder seems so much better than “I’m unemployed”. Being without work has traditionally cast us as a second class citizen. It’s a stigma that still associated with being unemployed.

What else do you miss about having no job? The company car, access to the internet, the odd free phone call, the office canteen, flirting with the opposite sex, Friday night in the pub, the craic, the gossip, the jokes, the Christmas party?

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it certainly was true once that most romances began at work. Certainly a lot of illicit affairs also happen between work colleagues. What’s going to happen now more and more of us are on the dole queue? Somehow I don’t see us meeting our future partner across a crowded Social Welfare or FAS office, but maybe I’m wrong.

Apart from money, socialising and self esteem are the big losers if you’re unlucky enough to become unemployed. I don’t think TV and radio programmers have yet realised there’s a new breed of unemployed people now staying at home. The new unemployed want a different sort of progamme to the traditional nonsense that fills the schedules from 9am to 5pm. Maybe that’s why the internet is taking over more and more of our leisure time?

That’s certainly food for thought for daytime TV and radio producers. They’d better wise up fast before they, like the rest of us, join the ever lengthening dole queues.

Copyright © David Jones 2009