This is the last post in the series of the life lessons I have learned. And the last lesson would be self-esteem and why high  self -esteem became an important part.

I have always been a perfectionist, and this nature of mine never let me give time to myself. While I began introspecting, I realized I was so busy being perfect to others that I hardly thought about myself. At times, I did not want to think because it hurt because I only could think of all the failures and broken relationships and that is why I had stopped introspecting . Keeping myself busy  with was an escape from the reality.

In the recent past, I wanted to be friends with myself,  it began with self-love. In this cruise, I have come to realize that there are so many things that I don’t know about myself, like a treasure waiting to be found. At times I amaze myself by my wit, and at times by my sheer stupidity. In the entire journey of self-discovery, another important lesson that I have learned is to have high self-esteem.

It took me quite some time to realize my status of self-esteem. Like if someone asked you, about self – respect you would never say I am low on it. While the reality is you don’t even know. I was under the assumption that I had high self-esteem, until one day someone hurt my self-esteem. I realized I was so low on it that it took few days to make me realize that it was a huge blow to my self-esteem and not my ego. When your ego takes the blow, you prove that you are good enough but with the former, there remains no point in proving.

It needs such a deep sense of self-worth while I was so shy on accepting credits and when I actually deserved one I never received it. Such things curb career growth and you feel threatened. Body and mind react to it and results in anger and frustration, which brings no good. Although this is an extension of self-love, self-esteem is much more than that. It involves the following:

  1. Letting go of the baggage. 
  2. Saying No when it is necessary.
  3. Making mistakes and being okay with it. Open to failure.
  4. Be kind to yourself and others.

These are things I am doing, but skipping all the details of how good low self-esteem was a friend. I will tell you how I chose to unfriend it. I tell myself  now not to  worry about the choices I make and beat myself about it and that I can’t keep everyone happy and that certainly should not me by aim too. It was the most difficult thing and it still is. One can’t stop over thinking and worrying about others over-night. But my headaches had increased and my peace of mind became more important.

And a few days back I read this quote :

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky

While this may mean many things to many people, to me it means that until we don’t love and respect ourselves enough, loving others becomes tedious. One needs high self-esteem and only then can they accept and give back the love that they get from others.

The more I think about this quote, I feel so grateful to life that I realized about my self-esteem early, I pour my heart out to you without any shame because I am no longer that person and the change feels good and refreshing. My mind and heart are light and at ease.

We are our own enemies and having high self-esteem helps. It  removes the self-sabotage nature and over-thinking reduces by heaps. The emotional roller-coaster rides reduce and the inner-self is at peace and has space for other important things to think about. I have left behind the nagging feeling that pulled me down way behind in this journey.

This time I leave you with this quote,ask you to introspect and tell me all that came out of it and your thoughts on self-esteem:

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”   – Lao-Tzu

 I am taking my Alexa rank to the next level with Blogchatter . Also linking it to Friday Reflections

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