Acknowledging and valuing your good points

All of us can relate to the feeling of questioning ourselves and our capabilities at some point in our lives, but author Melanie Fennell has the answer. Here we share an excerpt of Melanie’s practical tips and advice from The Overcoming Low Self-esteem Handbook to help you understand and transform your self-esteem.

Questioning self-critical thoughts

People with low self-esteem notice some difficulty, or something wrong about themselves, and on that basis make judgements about themselves as whole people (‘stupid’, ‘incompetent’, ‘unattractive’, ‘rotten mother’, etc.). These judgements completely ignore the other side of the picture. The end result is a biased point of view, rather than a balanced perspective. The bias expresses itself in self-critical thoughts, which result in painful feelings (sadness, disappointment, anger, guilt), and keep low self-esteem going.

When you condemn yourself as a person on the basis of an error or something you regret, you are drawing a general conclusion about yourself on the basis of biased evidence, taking only negative aspects of yourself into account. So, you need to be realistic: give yourself credit for your assets and strengths as well as acknowledging that, like the rest of the human race, you have weaknesses and flaws.

If you pay attention only to what you do wrong, you lose the opportunity to learn from and repeat what you do right. Similarly, if you write yourself off every time you make an error, you lose the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and to work constructively on aspects of yourself that you wish to change.

Learning to accept and appreciate your positive qualities

Changing the negative biases in how you see yourself to a more balanced perspective is not always quick and easy. Change may take time. Be persistent, and keep an open mind, so that you can take advantage of the three steps described here to move further towards healthy self-esteem – the sense that it is OK to be exactly who you are.

Learning to acknowledge and value your good qualities involves three steps:

1. Recognising
2. Reliving
3. Recording

Step 1: Recognising

• The first step to a balanced view is simply to learn to recognise them and bring them into focus, rather than letting them pass you by.
• A helpful starting point is to make a list of your qualities, talents, skills and strengths. As well as enhancing your self-esteem, this will sharpen your awareness of how you discount and ignore your good points – you will see something that keeps you stuck in low self-esteem as it actually happens.

Step 2: Reliving

• On its own, a list is a good first step – but it is not enough. Your list will be most helpful to you if you use it as a basis for raising your awareness of your good qualities, aiming for the point where recognising, acknowledging and valuing them has become second nature, and where accepting them becomes something you can feel on a gut level, rather than something theoretical which you can easily ignore or forget.
• You will need to practise deliberately directing attention to them. One way of doing this is to call up vivid memories of times when you have demonstrated them in what you did. Give yourself a few days to notice more items to add to your list and then, when you feel you have taken it as far as you can for the time being, once again find yourself a comfortable, relaxing spot and read the list to yourself.
• Pause and dwell on each good point and quality you have recorded, and let it sink in. When you have read slowly and carefully through the list, go back to the top again. Now, as you consider each item, bring to mind a particular time when you showed that quality in your actions. Take time to make the memory as clear and vivid as you can. Close your eyes, relax, and recall it in detail – almost as if you were living it again.
• Notice what effect this exercise has on your mood and how you feel about yourself. If you can absorb yourself in it fully, recreating what happened in your mind’s eye and calling up the feelings you had at the time, you will find that the items on your list become much more vivid and meaningful to you. You should find your mood lifting, and you may begin to notice a growing sense of self-acceptance and confidence.

Step 3: Recording

• The next step is to make awareness of your good qualities an everyday event. A good way to do this is by recording examples every day on a Good Points Chart, as they occur. Your objective is to reach the point where you automatically notice examples of your good qualities, without needing any reminder or record. You may reach this point in a few weeks, or it may take longer – give it whatever time it needs. Once you get there, there is no further need for the record, though in fact you may like to continue, and it may also be helpful to return to recording if something happens to give your confidence a knock.