Christopher Hinds
Often when feeling down, people are encouraged to work on their self-esteem. They are encouraged to reevaluate how they appraise themselves and how much they are worth. And why not? We all want to feel good about ourselves. However sometimes the way we go about trying to figure out our self-worth, can lead to even more difficulties.
People often try to find a reason to be able to evaluate themselves positively. Reasons can include a positive quality about themselves or an accomplishment they have achieved. The underlying belief becomes having good self-esteem is dependent on having good characteristics and good accomplishments. Therefore self-esteem has to be earned. Not only does it have to be earned but it has to be earned over and over again to last. If you think about some things you have done well in your life, think about how long that feeling that made you feel good about yourself lasted. Not very long? Then, in order to keep self-esteem, we have to keep somehow earning throughout our lives. If we can get away from constantly evaluating ourselves as “good” or bad” we can avoid feeling happy when things are going well and down when we did not perform as well as we hoped.
