- Understanding Self-Esteem: Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as able to cope with the basic challenges of life and as being worthy of happiness. It is divided into two parts: self-efficacy and self-respect. High self-efficacy means you believe you can create a good life for yourself, and high self-respect indicates you value your happiness and believe you deserve to be treated well. Ideally, everyone should seek to rate themselves as 10 on both these scales as self-esteem is determined by internal mindset, beliefs, and self-image, not external circumstances.
- Impact of Low Self-Esteem: People with low self-esteem can face issues like feeling helpless, a lack of control over their lives, victim mentality, abuse, dysfunctional relationships, addictions, etc. It is essential to assess where you stand on the self-efficacy and self-respect scales and acknowledge if there is a self-esteem issue.
- Role of Self-awareness: Self-esteem and its components can be influenced by learned behaviors during childhood or traumatic experiences. Gaining awareness of these influences is the first step towards addressing low self-esteem. Negative self-image and limiting beliefs about oneself can hinder personal growth and happiness.
- Improving Self-Esteem: Techniques for enhancing self-esteem include therapy, coaching, personal development, introspection, and engaging in deep inner work. The six pillars of self-esteem by Nathaniel Brandon - living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully, and personal integrity - provide useful guidance.
- Leo Gura's Work on Self-Esteem: Gura discusses self-esteem extensively, giving insights gained from studying personal development. He offers coaching and resources on actualize.org for developing self-esteem and achieving personal development goals. He encourages a consistent consumption of material on personal development and staying connected with the necessary resources and tools for success.
- Recognition of Self-Esteem Level: In order to improve self-esteem, it is vital to first be aware of where you rank on the self-esteem scale. If you rank yourself at 4 or below, acknowledge that you have a self-esteem issue, but avoid blaming or discouraging yourself. It's merely an honest evaluation of your current status and indicates that you need to work on improving it.
- Understanding Self-esteem Fluctuation: Self-esteem levels vary across days and weeks, not corresponding to how you felt at one specific crippling or control-devoid moment. Aim to understand your self-esteem levels on an average weekly or monthly basis rather than striving for perfection, as dips are completely normal.
- Root Cause of Low Self-esteem: The major cause of low self-esteem is a negative self-image, likely developed from one's childhood experiences or traumatic events. This self-image, composed largely of unconscious beliefs about your strengths, weaknesses, and how others perceive you, can be limiting. Negative beliefs may revolve around feelings of stupidity, unattractiveness, lack of money-handling abilities, relationship troubles, shyness, or an overall sense that something is wrong with you.
- Addressing Low Self-esteem: Negative programming from childhood or traumatic events could be causing low self-esteem and confidence. Though a complex issue, it can be addressed through therapy, coaching, and personal development techniques. Reflecting on past incidents that have contributed to low self-esteem, conducting deep inner work, and taking action can be effective strategies to improve self-esteem.
- Gura's Instructions for Addressing Self-Esteem: Gura encourages the viewer to sit down and journal, examining their life and identifying potential incidents that could have led to their low self-esteem. Thus, gaining an understanding of the origins can be a crucial step towards improvement.
- Separation from low self-esteem: Leo Gura suggests looking into personal history and identifying factors that may have contributed to low self-esteem. Gura emphasizes that self-esteem is malleable and can be changed with work, introspection, therapy or coaching.
- Achieving high self-esteem through deep inner work and action: Gura believes that one can improve self-esteem significantly by deeply analyzing oneself, understanding internal flaws and then taking corrective actions on that basis.
- Nathaniel Branden's Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: Gura covers Nathaniel Branden's Six Pillars of Self-Esteem as effective tools to gauge and build ones self-esteem. The pillars are:
- 1) Living consciously: Being mindful of actions and thoughts.
- 2) Self-acceptance: Embracing oneself as they are, rather than constantly criticizing oneself.
- 3) Self-responsibility: Taking responsibility for both the good and the bad parts of one's life.
- 4) Self-assertiveness: Standing up for their own values and goals.
- 5) Living purposefully: Having a purpose beyond oneself.
- 6) Personal integrity: Living up to personal expectations and values.
- Resources for personal development and achieving dreams: Leo Gura calls for engagement with his content on Actualized.org that offers free articles and videos aimed at helping individuals to stay on track with their dreams. He believes in consistent engagement with personal development materials; reading books, watching videos or attending seminars, to stay connected with resources and tools necessary for success. Subscribers to his newsletter also get access to exclusive content including a 19-part video series and a chance to win free coaching with him.