Realizing himself, a person inevitably asks the question of how others perceive and evaluate him, what place he occupies in a social community. Self-esteem is born from the answers to such questions.
Self-esteem is a personal characteristic that reflects a person's assessment of his own personal qualities. American psychologist W. James presented it as a fraction: the numerator is a person's claims, and the denominator is his real capabilities. If the denominator is equal to the numerator, this is an adequate self-esteem, if the numerator is greater than the denominator, it is overestimated, and if it is less, it is underestimated.
A person with high self-esteem is the most unpleasant subject, an “aggressive loser,” who blames anyone for his failure, but not himself. A person with low self-esteem gives less trouble to others, but more in need of psychological help.
Not all psychological problems are solved by increasing self-esteem. A person with adequate, especially with an overestimated self-esteem, will not benefit from its increase.
Signs of low self-esteem - fixation of attention on their own failures, devaluation of successes, indecision up to behavior of the "avoidance of failures" type. A striking example of such a person is a schoolboy who is afraid to answer at the blackboard (“it’s better not to do anything at all”). Only in this case it is advisable to talk about the need for an increase.
The first thing to do is to remember your successes and achievements, you can even put it all in writing, starting from school age. For example, a woman may suffer from low self-esteem due to an uncomplicated personal life - which means it's time to remember that she graduated from school with a gold medal, and the university with honors, entered graduate school on the first attempt, defended her thesis, became an assistant professor, her the last scientific article was praised by Professor N himself, etc.
The ideal option would be to forbid yourself once and for all to say “I'm a failure”, “I won't succeed” and other similar phrases that inspire low self-esteem, but this is not feasible. Such thoughts will come to mind, but refutations must be prepared for them: "I am imperfect - no one is perfect", "I can’t cope with anything - I did an excellent job with this and that”.
It is important to learn how to properly accept compliments. People with low self-esteem react to them as if they are embarrassed by their own achievements ("What are you, I was just lucky"). Compliments should be answered, if not with pride, then with dignity: "Thank you, I tried," "I am very pleased that you are satisfied with my work."
It is difficult to unlearn the fear of failure - this inevitable companion of people with low self-esteem, it will have to be overcome every time before starting any business. Fear retreats before logic: it is necessary to analyze what kind of failure it can be, what fallback options can be foreseen if something does not go as planned.
You should not get too carried away with preliminary analysis: you need to get down to business as soon as possible, otherwise indecision can take over.
Having learned to take on business, overcoming fear, a person will achieve success, real success also contributes to an increase in self-esteem.
