How can good self esteem teach us to trust ourselves?

One vital aspect of self esteem that is often overlooked in self-help books and advice columns is how it relates to trust.

In my own practice I have seen many clients achieve significant breakthroughs when they learn more about trust and how good self esteem enable us to trust ourselves. Self esteem, how well we feel we are doing in life, and the kind of feedback that we give ourselves, is related to self-concept. This is the concept or image we have of ourselves. It is often a rather muddled picture, pulled together throughout our lives from ideas and beliefs we have gained from our parents or carers and the images we have acquired of heroes/heroines and people we admire.

How good you feel about yourself is directly proportional to how much you are achieving, compared with these idealised images you have of how you should be performing. Good self esteem enables you to create thoughts, feelings and environments that support and nurture you. However, a huge number of people walk around feeling terrifically bad about themselves, constantly giving terrible feedback, all because they are comparing to an unrealistic set of standards. When we feel bad about ourselves, we are unclear about our rights and about what we do and don’t deserve.

Keith Cunningham says, in life you get what you tolerate. If your self esteem is low, you get less rewarding results from life because you don’t ask for enough. Good self esteem enables you to be objective in identifying who is good for you, and who is not. Having good self esteem is like having a very sensitive thermostat that helps you to identify which people and which experiences are going to be good or bad. When you have good self esteem you no longer buy into someone else excuses or pain and you won’t fall into the trap of accepting someone else beliefs about you, or their plan for your life.

Good self esteem and the ability it gives you to consider things for yourself, changes the way you look at life and makes you appreciate and value your experiences in a different way. You can view life experiences as useful feedback. This in turn, enables you to develop the art of leading a simpler, more rewarding life.