Within the family: Learning how to develop self-esteem

By SUZANNE-INNES KENT

The subject of self-esteem has drawn a great deal of comment from readers. These are people who recognise themselves in my description of the torment created by not having enough of this vital ingredient in their make-up.

Today I want to suggest some strategies for returning to a state of relative equilibrium when one feels in the grip of a self-doubting moment.

I have previously said that the answer is not telling yourself you are wonderful, and building yourself up to have complete self-confidence.

For a start, you would become a pain to live with. You would also have trouble believing yourself. This is too much effort spent in the wrong direction.

The thing is, you may not be wonderful. You might be like everyone else, a mix of wonderful on the one hand, primeval beast on the other, and extremely ordinary somewhere in the middle. The task is to accept all those facets of yourself, without getting blown up or deflated by the thought. It may be the task of a lifetime, and the task is not to change your basic view (why tackle the impossible?).

The useful task is to learn to live beyond self-deprecating obsession, so that it does not rule your behaviour.

My own and many other people's experience suggests that the following strategies are particularly useful:

Strategy 1. Give up the goal of being perfect. There's a T-shirt slogan that reads, I may not be perfect, but I'm so close it's frightening. It would be frightening. The nicest, most inspirational people I have ever met are people who have made mistakes, and lived to laugh at themselves. There are much better things to strive for than perfection. Being gentle with yourself and others might be one.

Strategy 2. Challenge the voice of anxiety. We know from writers like Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence, that worry exists in the mind's ear. In other words, when we tell ourselves that we are hopeless, we are using words to lecture ourselves. The most effective ways of overcoming the words which reinforce self-doubt are either to stop them or to challenge them. Stopping them means recognising quickly that you are playing an old tape and using your internal voice to say Stop or Go Away. Challenging them is to argue back. Am I ALWAYS useless? No. I know where that voice comes from, and I don't need it just now!

Strategy 3. Create satisfying activities and achievements. I have often observed those who do not have a particular problem with self-confidence. I see in their environments all kinds of reinforcers - that they are appreciated, that they are clever, that they are noticed. This occurs because they are active in setting themselves achievable goals, in offering assistance to others, and in providing those reinforcers to others. They initiate contact, and never feel invisible because they never wait to be noticed.

Strategy 4. Practise trusting your judgment in decision-making, and bypass the doubts. Believing you make stupid mistakes leads to relying on others too readily. The more you rely on them, the less confidence you have in yourself. Try working out consciously what you want to do, and following it through. You won't find you're always right - you'll bungle sometimes, get things right at others. But you will gain in equilibrium.

* Suzanne Innes-Kent is a relationships consultant, author and broadcaster.