Building Self-Esteem
This list does tend to work best when done in order. I'm not trying to
pick on anyone; I'm trying to make lives easier for those who for whatever
reason think they're less-than-wonderful. I hope this doesn't make me come
across like some psycho-babbling "by the book" shrink or whatever... it
isn't meant to. This is meant to come from one "ugly duckling" (how I
viewed myself, not how others saw me) to anyone else who feels the same way.
These are mostly directed at women but men can apply them the same way.
- Learn how to accept a compliment.
This first step is the most
important. When someone says, "You're beautiful," the correct answer is,
"Thank you," not, "No I'm not." They were trying to be nice; let them. You
may not agree with them but chances are, they wouldn't say it if they didn't
think so. Even if you think you're worse than a pleasure
GELF's true form, not everyone will think so, and some people WILL still
find you beautiful. Let them.
- Take care of yourself.
A little hygiene goes a long way.
This isn't to imply that there are people on the list that have problems
with it; it's just important towards feeling good about yourself. If you're
clean and your hair isn't a tangled mess (way back in Ago my hair was so
tangled I finally had to cut it and start over to get the tangles out), you
feel a lot better about yourself. You don't need makeup or perfume if you
don't like them; just be clean. When you're clean people will want to be
near you more than if you aren't. And being clean just FEELS good.
- Treat yourself.
If you think something looks good on you,
then get it. Wear it. Do your hair occasionally. Buy bubble bath. If you
want that candy bar, go eat it. If something makes you happy, do it.
Happiness goes a long way towards being beautiful.
- Believe.
The more we hear something, the more we tend to
believe it. The more we believe it, the more it becomes true. When people
first started telling me I'm beautiful/smart/pretty/whatever, I thought they
were full of crap. But when I started to accept the compliments, I started
believing them a little, and when I believed them a little it started to
radiate from within. The more I believed, the more it radiated, which
caught the attention of more people, who in turn would compliment me, which
would cause the radiation to be greater, and so on and so forth.
- Become impervious.
While all of this is great advice, the
fact of the matter is that there WILL be people who have negative things to
say. And if you're already inclined to believe the negative, it'll impact
you far more than the positive will. The hardest step is to learn how to
ignore people with nothing good to say. A nice "Fork you too" will go a
long way though that's not always easy. Probably the easiest way to deal
with the negative people is to consider that they're probably putting you
down to make themselves feel better. Now I KNOW that one sounds like
textbook shrink, but that really is the only way some people know how to
feel good. In those cases, a "you're just jealous," even if it's just in
your head, goes a long way.
