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hey this is Leo for actualize org and in this video I'm going to talk about self-esteem alrighty let's break into this topic of self-esteem self-esteem is a very rich and deep topic and it affects the quality and the success that you have in your life and also the happiness level that you achieve in your life and a lot of the information I bring to you here is coming from Nathaniel Brandon's amazing seminal work on self-esteem which is called the six pillars of self-esteem we're going to go into some definitions of what self-esteem is we're going to define it we're going to talk about some of the influences on self-esteem why you might have low self-esteem and how you might start to go about correcting it and we're actually going to go in and break down and look at each of the six pillars that Nathaniel Branden talks about it's a very rich topic so I encourage you to buy the book if you want to really know a lot more this is going to be kind of an introductory segment where I really tell you why self-esteem is important and what you should be doing with it all right so what is self-esteem let's take a technical definition and really it's a two parter definition and I'm going to read this off this is how Nathaniel Branden states it self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as being worthy of happiness let me read that again it's the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness I mean this is a really powerful powerful definition and it's got two components to it as you can see the first component is called self-efficacy self-efficacy is basically your ability to think for yourself and to direct your own life how confident do you feel that you can create a good life for yourself how confident do you feel that you can take care of yourself and handle the things that need to be handled so that's one big part of self-esteem where do you rank yourself on that ask yourself on a scale of one to ten would you say you have low self-efficacy that would mean a one or do you have a very high self-efficacy that would be a 10 high self-efficacy means that you think you can go out there and create the kind of life that you want you're not a victim you can do whatever you want you feel like you have the power you feel that yes there are tough situations in life but no matter what happens ultimately you can sort it out you know if you've got a bad relationship you can sort that out or find a new relationship if you've got a bad job you can figure that part out in your life or you can go find a new job if you've got trouble with your health or with anything else with your education anything you feel that ultimately you have control you are the master of your own life when it comes down to it if you're at that kind of level then you're at a 10 and if you're at the opposite end of that spectrum then you feel like you can't do anything in life you feel like you're a victim you feel like the world is is hemming you in that basically your hands are tied behind your back you feel like you're crippled you feel like that the world is out to get you that it's against you and that society is structured to hold you back that is low low low self-efficacy so that's the first part the second part of low self-esteem is self-respect how much do you respect yourself do you believe that you have value inherently as a human being as you are right now do you believe that you have a right to be happy do you believe that you deserve to be happy do you believe that people in relationships deserve to you know must treat you well and that you deserve to be treated well and that you don't deserve to settle for anything in life you don't need to suffer on behalf of anyone you don't need to endure situations you don't need to be miserable you don't need to be a victim you deserve to be calm it you just have to be happy to serve to be strong you deserve everything that you want where do you rank yourself on that let's put a scale on that as well on a scale of one to ten if you're at a 1 that means you have no self respect that means basically you don't value your own happiness and you are a doormat you let other people walk all over you and because you do do that people gladly come in there and they victimize you and they take advantage of you because you're a doormat on the other hand if you have very high self-respect then what do you believe you believe that you are valuable you believe that you are the most valuable thing in life because this is your life and you are the center of it so you're the most valuable thing you have an absolute right to be happy and that you don't need to go and change yourself for the people you can be happy right now as you are and you deserve everything that you want that would be a 10 so rank yourself there so basically we've got these two components self efficacy and self-respect ideally you want to be a TENS on both of these there's no reason you should be anything less than a 10 right you want full self efficacy full control over your life or at least the feeling of control and you want full self respect right deserving happiness having inherent value self esteem is nothing external this is an important point to make self esteem is every is has everything to do with the internals your mind sets who you think you are your beliefs your self-image your subconscious mind that's where the SEL the self esteem is coming from that's where its operating this is not about people this is not about life this is not about external circumstances it's not about your boss or the wife that nags you or the husband that abuses you it's not about that self esteem is here it's inside this is all what I call inner game right this is your psychology at play so you got to really ask yourself where are you on these scales and if you're watching a video about self-esteem then I can probably assume that you're somewhere low on this right a size of a sieve person is confident assertive life is going relatively well for them even if there's trouble they confident that they can go and fix it it's the lowest self-esteem person that really runs into problems because if you're ones if you're at a 1 and a 1 on both of these scales then it's going to be very hard for you to live an extraordinary life in fact your life is gonna be very very miserable because you feel like your hands are tied behind your back so you feel like you can't change anything and then you also feel like you don't deserve to be happy so this is the kind of situation that will lead to abuse this is the kind of situation that will lead to a very miserable type of life a very dysfunctional type of life dysfunctional relationships perhaps drug abuse various negative addictions that hold you back basically everything that draw that robs you of your dreams and your potential so it's very important to first of all recognize where are you on these scales go ahead and write down your numbers and after you figure out where you are on these two scales if you're low and by low I would say if you're at a 4 or below so for a 3 a 2 or a 1 if you rank yourself 4 or below then you got to tell yourself that ok I got a self-esteem issue I got low self esteem and therefore you know this is not the end of the world I'm not to blame don't blame yourself for it don't get discouraged don't get disheartened this is just being honest this is being introspective write this this is an honest evaluation of where you're at right now now you recognize that you've got some work to do you got to have a you gotta you gotta want to fix this problem so first to fix the problem you got to recognize you even have one so this is good that we've quantified it now you know where you're at if you're above a 4 let's say you're at a a 5 6 or 7 you're doing pretty good that's probably average and so there you would you know if you want to you could work on it or you could keep doing what you're doing maybe you have other priorities other issues you want worry about and if you're at a 8 a 9 or a 10 well you're doing awesome then you've got no problems at all and you probably maybe or maybe a little a little bit I've got too much self-esteem maybe that self-esteem is causing you some problems maybe a little bit too arrogant a little bit too self sure of yourself and that's getting you in from so it could even play it out like that but generally high self-esteem awesome if you don't go totally overboard and you don't abuse it so now for the low self-esteem people the first thing you got to realize is that what we're talking about with these numbers this is a general level of self-esteem right so this is not mmm this is not one particular moment where you felt a crippled or where you felt like you had no control this is not one particular moment where you felt like you shouldn't be happy I mean you're going to have ups and downs throughout your days and throughout your weeks so that's okay it's a it's an average what we're taking here is maybe like a weekly or a monthly average of your self-esteem don't expect it to always be perfect it's never going to be always at a 10 even someone who is at a 10 level of self-esteem on average he or she is going to have days where they're feeling like they can't do anything they're feeling like a victim or they're gonna have parts of their life where they feel like they don't have control or where they don't feel like they can be satisfied and that's okay what we're doing here is we're kind of taking an average right we're getting just a general scope of where you're at so let's talk a little bit about some of the causes of low self-esteem so we know now what self-esteem is it's got these two components what are some of the causes well most self-esteem issues are self-image issues right the self-image and I've got other videos that talk specifically about self-image and subconscious mind and ego you might want to check each one of those out but self-image here just to quickly recap that's basically an internal model of who you think you are this is who you think you are this is who you think you should be how you should behave what your values are how you see other people as perceiving you what you perceive your strengths and your weaknesses as all this is these are all beliefs and a lot of this self-image is completely unconscious its operating within you in your mind deep down in there and you probably don't realize even a little sliver of everything that's in that self image and that self image could be negative that self image can be limiting you in many many ways one of the ways it could be limiting you is that it's creating some sort of belief about who you inherently are and this is where I think most self-esteem issues come from is negative images and beliefs about who you think you are so maybe you feel like you're not smart like you're an inherently stupid unintelligent person maybe you feel like you're not attractive physically or in other ways you feel like you're not attractive to the opposite sex maybe you feel like you're clumsy you're a clumsy person maybe you feel like you're bad with money maybe you feel like you're bad in relationships maybe you feel like you're very shy maybe you feel like there's something else wrong with you or just a general sense that there's something wrong with you maybe you feel like you're unlovable maybe you feel that you're not perfect the way that you are right now maybe you feel like you don't deserve happiness maybe you feel like you have to work really hard to acquire love and to acquire happiness hey maybe you feel like you're bad with money so all of these could be potential limiting beliefs that you have somewhere in your self-image and usually where these come from is is childhood as a child growing up from about the age of 3 to the age of 12 well you're very impressionable and a lot of times if you grew up in a family situation it's not very stable and stuff happened you might have had just a you know stray situations that came in there and bit left a really big negative impression so maybe someone told you that you were fat when you were a kid maybe someone told you that you were ugly maybe someone told you that your going to be a failure you're not going to mount to anything maybe someone told you that they don't love you and nobody ever will love you maybe a parent told you this maybe someone at school told you this may be a bully told you this a sibling whoever and somehow you now have this programming running in the back of your mind and it is causing you to feel unconfident it's causing you to feel like you don't have control in life it's causing you to feel like you don't deserve what other people deserve and you see other people out there and they're being happy and they're being very confident and go out there taking action but you feel like you're crippled because you've got one of these kind of emotional scars operating deep down inside of you so I mean this is a really deep issue and I can't get into all of it here you can get therapy for that kind of stuff you can get coaching for that kind of stuff I coach people around that you can also do your own personal development to start to iron those things out and I have many other videos that cover those those types of techniques more in-depth so you'll want to search for those in this video I'm just going to say that a lot of your self-esteem issues are rooted in your childhood or some other traumatic events so if you've never sat down you might want to just sit down and do little bit of journaling and kind of look back at your life if you have low self-esteem look back at your life and just see what are some of the incidents that could have caused that it's important to go back there and to start to dig around a little bit because it's going to give you more awareness more understanding about what is really going on it's going to help separate you from it because right now if you've got low self-esteem you're very attached to it you feel like it's really you it couldn't be otherwise well you know what that's self-image it's a it's very malleable you can totally change it that's the nice thing about all this is that with enough personal development work an introspection and therapy and coaching or whatever other techniques you use books seminars you know however you want to do it you can work through all that stuff and you can get yourself back into a high level self-esteem this stuff is all changeable so we're not we're not pegging you at any place we're saying this is where you are now do a bit of work and you can be at ten all right so I think the best way to fix self-esteem personally that I found is through deep inner work being very honest looking very deeply into your past really cycle analyzing yourself and then action going out there and starting to take action is starting to correct this stuff because once you understand what the problems are then you also start to get a sense of what the solutions are and what the actions are the a to take to start to correct that and there are many books out there that will help you to figure out exactly works as well all right so enough of that that's how to fix it what I want to cover before I leave is I want to cover the six pillars of self-esteem themselves as Nathaniel Branden talks about them in the book and he literally has mountains of words to say about each one here I'm just going to kind of gloss over them so what are the six pillars of self-esteem and you can actually follow these to start to build yourself up and you can also rank yourself on each one of these pillars just to see where exactly is your low self-esteem focused in which of these pillars so number one is you've got the first pillar the first pillar is the practice of living consciously are you living your life consciously are you aware are you mindful of the behaviors and the thoughts that you're having if you're not then you're gonna have low self-esteem if you are you're going to have high self-esteem the second pillar is the practice of self-acceptance do you or do you not accept yourself as you are or do you always criticize and judge yourself and tell yourself you have to be better and smarter and prettier and all these other types of things or can you just accept yourself and be happy with who you are that greatly affects your self-esteem level the third pillar is the practice of self responsibility do you actually take responsibility for your life not just the good parts but the bad parts too right this is a two-way street you can't just take responsibility for the good stuff you got to take the responsibility for the bad stuff to the stuff that you think is hurting you the most the place where you feel like you're a victim are you willing to take responsibility for it because if you're not you're going to stay stuck a victim and you're going to have low self-esteem so self responsibility is so critical the fourth pillar is the practice of self assertiveness how assertive are you how assertive are you especially around other people how assertive argue with your own values your own principles your own your own philosophy your own goals do you feel like this is something that's important that it's worth fighting for that you have to go out there and fight for even in the face of resistance from others well it's really important to build up your assertiveness that also built up your confidence and that it's going to build up your self-esteem the next pillar pillar number five is the pillar of living purposefully so do you have a purpose in your life do you have something that your life is about something that's important something that's greater than just yourself do you have a life purpose I have so many videos that talk about life purpose I think this is one of the most important ideas in all personal development to be happy to be confident to be peaceful in your life and to be successful to you need to have a sense of purpose that's pillar number five and the final pillar pillar number six is personal integrity do you have personal integrity what that means is do you live up to your own expectations of yourself or are you always faltering are you always being lazy are you failing to execute on the things you know you need to execute are you keeping your own promises to yourself or are you living in line with your own highest values if you're not your self-esteem is going to be shot and if you are your self-esteem is going to go through the roof alright so those are the six pillars of self esteem you can take a look at each one of those and see where you're where you're lacking and then you can create a program for yourself to focus on it and to start to work your way out if you need help with that get coaching alright so this is Leo I'm residing off this is what I have to say about self esteem go ahead post me your comments down below I'd love to hear feedback please like this please share it click the like button right now spread the word and of course come check out actualize org right here sign up to my newsletter the reason you want to sign up is because I'm releasing articles and videos for free every single week to help you stay on track with your dreams the whole point of these videos and I've actualized org is to help you self actualize it's to help you create a life of like extraordinary quality how do you create a life where you really on track with your dreams and you're executing on it you're actually getting those dreams accomplished you're feeling excellent and you're always growing how do you do that well what I've discovered is that the best way to do that is to become a hobbyist of personal development watch this material whether it's my material somebody else's 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