The Six Week Self Esteem Challenge
This 6-week course is designed to be a programme that you can fit into a busy schedule. All you need to do is:
1. Read the weekly article and do the exercises, which shouldn’t take more than half an hour.
2. On a daily basis, identify actions you are going to take to boost your self-esteem.
If you are ready to make that commitment, lets begin.
What is Self Esteem?
A simple definition of Self-Esteem is:
1. How you feel about yourself
2. How you feel about your capabilities
Feeling Good
We all want to feel good about ourselves. Feeling good is one of two primary drivers: we want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. Strategies for feeling good about ourselves might include:
- Doing a good days work and getting the feeling of satisfaction from crossing off a number of tasks
- Having a long walk or doing some other form of beneficial exercise
- Maintaining a healthy dietary regime
- Treating ourselves to a nice bath
Other strategies for feeling good that may be less beneficial and can be only short term include:
- Eating a whole bar of chocolate
- Gambling
- Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol
Some people’s strategies for feeling good about themselves can be detrimental to others, for instance, the person who achieves feelings of power by belittling others.
Origins of Low Self-Esteem
There are many factors that influence self-esteem. Parents and other members of the immediate or extended family can influence our sense of self, as well as teachers, peers and our experiences of the world and our own make up/personality. As children, we often don’t know enough to take charge of our self-esteem; for instance if someone tells us that we are stupid, we might believe them, but as adults it is up to us to take steps to improve our self esteem.
There is evidence that low self-esteem is associated with increased levels of stress. So it is in our interest to work on developing our esteem.
Low self-esteem may mean:
- Allowing yourself to be pressurised into things that you don’t want to do. For instance, according to research, many teenagers have sex before they feel ready
- Not volunteering for a project, as you fear that you are not up to the task
- Not believing in yourself and your abilities, even though you have proved your worth over and over. This is a common issue, even for people in senior posts
- Not recognising opportunities, as you have the belief that good things won’t come your way, or that you don’t deserve it
- Tolerating abusive relationships
Exercise 1:
How has low self-esteem affected you? Write a list of situations where low self-esteem affected how you felt, behaved or reacted.
Exercise 2: Take The Self Esteem Test
Indicators of low self-esteem are listed below. This is not a scientific approach, but is designed to give you some indication of your Self Esteem. [If you have done this before, it is still worth redoing it to see what changes you notice, and what differences you notice at the end of the course.] Score each statement and then total your scores.
Section 1: Score the following statements 0-3:
0 I don’t do this at all
3 I do this a lot/all the time
1. Feeling bad about oneself/poor self image __
2. Placing more importance on the opinions of others than our own opinions, especially towards oneself __
3. Destructive internal dialogue __
4. Being a people pleaser/being super nice in the hope that people will like me __
5. Needing others to agree with me __
6. Continually apologizing __
Section 2: Score the following statements 0-5:
0 I don’t do this at all
5 I do this a lot/all the time
7. Arrogance or aggression __
8. Putting others down __
9. Seeing yourself as being better than others __
Section 3: Score the following statements 0-3:
0 I don’t do this at all
3 I do this a lot/all the time
10. Finding it difficult to say sorry __
11. Finding it difficult to admit to being wrong __
12. Perfectionism __
13. Needing to be right, needing to win the argument __
14. Finding it difficult to acknowledge your own flaws __
Section 1 Total: __
Section 2 Total: __
Section 3 Total: __
Overall Total __
Scores (Maximum of 48)
0-16 If you scored between 0-9 then this suggests that you have very high self- esteem. If you scored between 9-16 then your esteem is still high.
17-32 Your score suggests you have average self-esteem. Look at your scores and identify the areas to focus on.
33-48 Your score suggests low self-esteem.
Taking Action
Step 1
Unless you scored zero, think about what steps you could take to improve your self esteem.
Step 2
If you scored more than 3, choose between one and three of the indicators, and consider some practical steps that you can take on a daily basis to start to improve your self esteem. Write these down. For instance, if you recognise that you apologise a lot, be mindful to only apologise when it is reasonable to do so. If you place more importance on the opinions of others than your own opinions, look out for a situation where you can state your own opinion, and recognise that in a world with billions of people, someone is going to disagree with you! Remind yourself that they are entitled to their opinion, and you are entitled to your opinion. If you need help identifying some action steps, read my free report ‘Six Steps To High Self Esteem’. Email me for a copy of this report.
Step 3
On a daily basis, at the beginning of the day, spend a few minutes reminding yourself of these practical steps that you are going to take. At the end of the day, maybe at bedtime, review the day, and record your successes. Note where you didn’t achieve your objectives. Be kind to yourself about this, and think about how you might approach the same issue tomorrow. Visualise yourself adopting the response that you want. So if you didn’t express your opinion, visualise yourself saying, for instance, “Is that how you see things? Interesting. I see it this way”. Repeat this several times, to reinforce the idea that you are someone who expresses their point of view.
Step 4
Post at the bottom of this blog the one to three of the indicators that you decided to focus on first. This is optional, but will give me some useful feedback, and you can do this anonymously. If you don’t want to do that, you can email them to me.
Step 5
If you know someone who might like to do this challenge, get them to sign up and read this blog post. Send them this link:
Hi ……….
I’m doing The Six Week Self Esteem Challenge. If you want to do it too, check out the first post here, and sign up at www.inspiringchange.co.uk for more free stuff.
Free Consultation
Are the issues mentioned affecting you? Contact me here for a free consultation.
SIMON PIMENTA is a hypnotherapist, coach and trainer working with people to boost resilience and performance, and minimise stress.
After working in a demanding job as the Director of a Housing Trust, he went off sick and remained unable to work for the next 8 years.
He discovered a pioneering approach to resolving health issues and quickly got back his health, and now trains others using these same techniques, to help them become happier, healthier and achieve their goals.