Mindful Living

I recently read an article in Psychology Today that helped to clarify my views on self esteem. One of the goals for people who come to therapy often is to "improve self esteem", and to be honest, as clinicians we don't always consciously know the right recipe to help with that- but fortunately, we intuitively know what to do. If someone has "contingent self esteem" (a feeling of self worth based upon outside validation), then we become puppets- happy or sad depending upon what is happening outside of us and who/what is validating us, or not validating us at the moment. For example, you are single and a few people are interested in you- boom! You feel great, but then take away the attention, and you feel down again. This often causes us to feel like yoyos and never have firm ground to stand on. The way to authentic self esteem is compassion. Treat yourself gently , especially when you make mistakes. Know that you will be crabby, you will say the wrong thing, you ...

What is self esteem? It seems like a not so well defined word that we use a lot in daily life. I see many people who think they do not have high self esteem, and it always takes some digging to find out what that means to them. How I define self esteem is this sturdiness inside and a love for ourselves on a deep level, even with our imperfections. It's the sense that we know we are OK. The most beautiful part of knowing that we are OK is that others are OK then too- and that is very powerful for relationships and healing. Self esteem is not thinking that we are all that, or that we are better than others, but also, we are not worse than others either. Most of the time when people come off as arrogant or act like they are very special, it's a false sense of importance in order to hide wounds and feelings of inadequacies. People with high self esteem are able to admit when they are wrong because it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with them . People with good self e...