Self-esteem. Recreate the narrative.

Self-esteem, the worth in which you hold yourself, can be a challenge for people with low self-esteem because they often use belittling language towards themselves. Their ‘attribution style’ sees positive things as being temporary or down to ‘luck’ so they don’t build on achievements or learn from them. They use an attribution that anything ‘bad’ is due to them and that it’s likely to repeat over time. This narrative builds on ‘confirmation bias’, the cognitive routine that highlights evidence of what we believe, and reinforces the self-esteem spiral as negative opinions are ‘proved’.

It’s vital that we recreate our narrative - the broad journey of our lives and how we see ourselves moving forward - as well as learning to catch ourselves when we knock ourselves down, Learning to reframe is key by creating language with a time-bound limit of negativity. Instead of saying 'I’m really not good at this’, learn to say “I’m really not good at this now, or today’. The creation of a time-bound element forces the brain to solve the problem of how to improve. So ‘how will I be later’, or even better ‘how will I choose to be better later’.

The realisation that all thoughts and actions are a function of choice provides the opportunity to choose differently and to begin to develop a realisation that you have ‘a voice’ that you can listen to when you choose to do so.