Depression Therapy Blog

One thing that we all learn at an early age is how to interact with others and because we are human and possess a bevy of emotions and esteem building raw materials, how those other humans react to us is all important in constructing our feelings toward ourselves. We learn that it is important to be a good listener and treat others fairly, and very definitely the way our parents treated us as infants and then children played a big part in our formation of our picture of ourselves and our feelings of self worth.

When we were kids, we never took classes or even thought about how to improve our self esteem—we didn’t even know what self esteem meant—and making a good first impression or being a good listener or giving the other fellow the benefit of the doubt was just something you did to make yourself liked. That’s what it all boils down to—-acting and speaking with others in such a way that they like being around you, and when this dawns on you, you like having them around and it makes you feel good about yourself deep inside.

There are zillions of books in print molding away on bookshelves all over the world, telling us the ins and outs of how to improve our self esteem, but in reality all we need to know us the Golden Rule, and practice it. Good self esteem comes from feeling positively about your station in life and interacting with others in a positive way so they in turn feel the same about you. A negative self esteem is when you feel you have no purpose in life, and disdain the life you are living—-quite often this feeling is accompanied by depression and listlessness, and who wants to spend much time around someone feeling like that.

The Golden Rule is a great motivator for everyone to remember, because it embodies a large factor in what makes people tick in their interactions with each other. If you treat others as you would want them to treat you; with respect, understanding, genuine interest in what they had to say and their ideas; then they will usually respond in kind with you and as a result you feel very positively about yourself in that response and your self esteem is bolstered. People who are driven, know what they want out of life and go after it, and in the course of their lives treat others fairly; are those that others want to be associated with because they exude success.

So many of us dwell on outer appearances and what other people think of us or how we present ourselves to them, when what we need to be doing is building ourselves up in our own minds so we feel good about being who we are, and in turn react to others accordingly. The rest follows without much prodding: good things happen to those who treat others as they would want to be treated.

As we start out in life, we are a blank slate on which everything that defines who we are and will be later in life is imprinted, happening by happening. If the majority of those happenings are positive, then you are blessed with a very positive image of yourself and you project that to others around you, who respond in like fashion. Similarly, if your blank slate is covered by slurs and negativity and you grow up feeling you are worthless and wish you had never been born, then that slate is going to need some serious cleaning and work to get you on the path to a healthy self image and self esteem, so you feel that you are special and good, and have something to offer the world.

Success in life is measured by several different factors, and a positive self esteem is essential to reaching those goals that define success. One of the first things someone must do in order to progress upward and onward, is to learn how to improve his/her self esteem and then use that knowledge to make things happen for the better. Folks with a good self image and lots of positive self esteem go farther and faster than those that are held back by fear, insecurity, and feelings of ineptness or inability to perform because those folks see themselves as losers rather than winners.

Eve Francis writes, discusses and publishes works regarding Self Esteem Games. For more information on Self Esteem Inventories visit our site.