Boost Self Esteem Quotes

Be an Encourager: When you encourage others, you boost their self-esteem, enhance their self-confidence, make them work harder, lift their spirits and make them successful in their endeavors. Encouragement goes straight to the heart and is always available. Be an encourager. Always.

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves it s amazing what they can accomplish.

We are exactly what our history made us to be.

Accepting personal responsibility for your life frees you from outside influences – increases your self-esteem – boosts confidence in your ability to decisions – and ultimately leads to achieve success in life.

For us to regard others as worthy, we have to begin by regarding ourselves as worthy.

What we perceive about ourselves is greatly a reflection of how we will end up living our lives.

The first place where self-esteem begins its journey is within us.

A failure is always in the passenger seat in his or her life.

Each person has got a voice inside them. Communicate with it and take hold of it. Do not let it push and shove you around – you are its master!

A good self-esteem level is mostly dependant on how we value ourselves without any bias.

How we relate with other people is dependent on how we rate ourselves and what we think about ourselves.

A person today who seems to have a great sense of self-esteem has his or her childhood days to thank for it.

When you’re comfortable and content with who you are, the voices of others who try and define, control or direct you are not important.

If someone does not consider those around them to be valuable and hold only themselves in high regard, they too have a very bad self-esteem.

Acknowledgement is possession. When you acknowledge, think or have conviction in something, it actually will come true.

Feeling indifferent or reserved about doing something is a signal that it is probably not correct after all.

Whatever you lay your hands on, self-esteem is visible.

Our own self-esteem is something we can actually twist in whatever way we want.

If we can acquire an attitude of self-belief, then we will surely determine our future actions and our future life opportunities.

The witch reached into the picnic basket and pulled out a light brown chamois bag about the size of a playing card. “Maybe this will help you. It’ll boost your self-esteem.” Now we’re getting somewhere. Riley took the bag and opened it. She looked to the bottom to find … nothing. “Ah, it’s empty.” “Of course,” Ayden replied. “It’s up to you to fill it. Find things that mean something to you, that represent times where you’ve overcome an obstacle, learned something important. Put those items in the bag and they’ll help you find your strength.

Putting someone down with name calling reveals your own low self-esteem.

Saying thanks to the world, and acknowledging your own accomplishments, is a great way to feel good and stay positive.

Insecurity is the lack of trust in your abilities and worth. When you enter into a secured state of consciousness, everything that helped boost your confidence will return.

And as far as moving on with your dignity intact is concerned, I believe self-esteem boosts should always be a priority.

Feeling LOW? Go on mountains.

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.

Emotionally immature people often have difficulty engaging in humor in ways that strengthen bonds with others. Instead, they push humor on others, even when others aren’t amused. They also tend to enjoy humor at someone else’s expense, using it to boost their self-esteem. For example, they may enjoy humor that involves tricking people or making them look foolish or inept. This trait is a good indicator of how they will eventually treat you.

When you encourage others, you boost their self-esteem, enhance their self-confidence, make them work harder, lift their spirits and make them successful in their endeavors. Encouragement goes straight to the heart and is always available. Be an encourager. Always.

Failing to make it to the list of the best 5 students in class or not being named the team captain should not make anyone feel like they have failed.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.” —Walt Whitman

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.” —Natalie Goldberg

Your every positive action in your life will increase your self-esteem and this self-esteem will boost you for more positive action to take you on success

By making yourself a life-long leaner you’ll keep discovering new and exciting things about yourself and others.

The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything.

Salvador Dali offers these helpful reminders: “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing,” and “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.

We stay in the same old situations because we're comforted by the familiar, even if the familiar is terrible.

How many green lights do you need in order to proceed?

Neither boost about your own strength nor dignity but the sacred grace of God.

I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me’…I decided to start anew—to strip away what I had been taught—to accept as true my own thinking.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.” —Salvador Dali

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined. - Henry David Thoreau

If you are drawn to the refined, take up calligraphy or grow a bonsai.

Take out the garbage. Stop junking up your mind with stinky things bullies have said to you. Toss them into the trash, then pick up a good thought to replace it.

It is hard for extroverts to understand how truly oppressive a party can be for an introvert.

Fat people are not here as a foil to boost your own self-esteem. Fat people are not your inspiration poem. Fat people can be competent, beautiful, talented, and proud without your approval.

So remember three crucial steps when you are upset: Zero in on those automatic negative thoughts and write them down. Don't let them buzz around in your head; snare them on paper! Read over the list of ten cognitive distortions. Learn precisely how you are twisting things and blowing them out of proportion. Substitute a more objective thought that puts the lie to the one which made you look down on yourself. As you do this, you'll begin to feel better. You'll be boosting your self-esteem, and your

In his seminal article, “The Capacity to Be Alone,” psychoanalyst and child development expert D. W. Winnicott asserted that the ability to be alone “is one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.

...There were the studies, beginning in 2007, which found that the suicide rate among women who had received breast implants were twice the suicide rate of the general population. So there's an alarming relationship between being deeply unhappy, being unhappy with your body, and having liquid-filled plastic bags surgically inserted into your body that kind of contradicts the whole "boost your self-esteem" line about the real reasons to have cosmetic surgery.

Bullying is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important. The more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids. They judge them to be less valuable human beings, and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis. Like the boys in Sheri Levy’s study, they get a boost in self-esteem. It’s not that bullies are low in self-esteem, but judging and demanding others can give them a self-esteeem rush. Bullies also gain social status from their actions. Others may look up to them and judge them to be cool, powerful, or funny. Or may fear them. Either way, they’ve upped their standing.

James W. Pennebaker and his associates at the University of Texas have conducted extensive research on the benefits of journaling. His findings: if you want relief, write about your most upsetting experiences, write through the pain, and connect painful events with your life story.

There is no such thing as failure. Life sometimes gives you setbacks. It reminds you to be humble, to sit and contemplate, to cope, to support and reinvent yourself based on newly accumulated experiences. It’s a continuous learning process people sometimes don’t fully understand. But, just wait. Just breathe. Let yourself be carried away. With each day you are better - you know more, you experience more - you have more and more resources in order to adjust, to act, and to win.

Life gives us paths to take, but in the end, it’s up to us individually to decide which alternative suits us better. Don’t let yourself be told whom to love and how to love! Don’t bend your inner values or needs for someone who can’t understand you, but also don’t throw away a relationship just because you forgot to communicate or pay attention to it. Face the true nature of your heart and live truthfully to yourself and those around you! Pay yourself and others the respect all people deserve!

Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. - Margaret Lee Runbeck

Celebrate what you want to see more of. - Tom Peters

Bilbo smiled and laughed happily.

Children who cannot tolerate boredom and solitude become stimulus addicts, choosing the quick filler over the richness of possibility

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

So next time someone enters your contemplative space and tells you to get happier, say you’re busy attending to “the poignant enormity of life experience.” Bet that will get you some alone time.

Those with low self-esteem tend to have highly developed egos; they long to be Best at every Thing and valued highly by everyone they meget, and imavine their ego is repressed, weak and needs boosting

about? You have no interest in joining that club!” But that’s how programming works: society’s assumptions sink in, and we don’t even know it until we hear ourselves restating those assumptions—automatically, without thought. We change by becoming aware. We become aware by observing: watching our own conversations, noticing the lies, seeing the truth. And once we get clear about the truth, we can try something radically different: honesty. “Never

Introverts generally prefer a rich inner life to an expansive social life; we would rather talk intimately with a close friend than share stories with a group; and we prefer to develop our ideas internally rather than interactively.

This intense desire to control is an attempt to maintain dignity in spite of low self-regard. Think about it. In addition to keeping everything safe, the exercise of power temporarily boosts angry men's low self-esteem. [...] Like many kings and other powerful people, however, angry men will soon doubt the affection of those they control. They will always wonder if they are "really" loved by family members, or if their family is just acting that way out of fear.

Lewis rightly points out that this desire to be part of the “Inner Ring” is not really about friendship at all. It is about our own insecurity and yearning to matter. It is about using “friends” as tools to gain what we want. We value someone, not because of who they are, but because of what they can do for us. We want them to boost our self-esteem and self-importance and get us privileged access to things we might otherwise not be able to get at all. In fact, our longing to be part of an “Inner Ring” debases friendship. Real friendship is about shared affection, respect, and interests. As Lewis concluded, there is “no ‘inside’ that is worth reaching.” What really matters is friendship, pure and simple.

She was addicted to achievement in the same way an alcoholic is hooked on booze; the winning of awards, certificates, and prizes were all concrete markers of her accomplishments, signifiers of attainment that helped boost her self-esteem.

How did high schools all over the country decide that athletes needed pep rallies to boost their pride and self-esteem? Isn't it enough that people actually pay money to see these kids compete in games? That people cheer from the sidelines? And they get their names in the paper? Why don't they take all the lonely ghost floaters in every high school and have a pep rally for them? Make all the most popular kids in school sit on the hard bleachers and cheer until their asses hurt like hell?

I wanted to show how humans can have ugly feelings that they might prefer not to acknowledge; how we’re all caught up in our own problems and limited by our own life experience,” she says. “To judge somebody else, to declare them substandard, to conclude that their misfortunes are due to inherent character flaws, can be a way of boosting our own self-esteem, because it must follow that our comparative success or happiness is not mere luck or chance, but the reward for superior morals or talent.

Socially Accessible introvert looks like an extrovert on the outside and sees extroversion as a bar that he or she can never quite reach. These individuals are often very successful in social arenas, but fault themselves for not having more fun. This self-alienation is rampant among American introverts, as is the self-interrogation—society’s puzzled attitude turned inward. Alienation from self can lead to depression, which is, at best, a loss of empathy for the self and, at its worst, self-hatred.

Dear Earth, What are your golden rules? Is it to just go with the flow? Love endlessly without regret? Live and learn from your mistakes? Or is it something simple, such as continue to have faith while we reach for the stars? If so, could you give me a boost?

As you recall from chapter 1, people who are reminded of death typically defend their worldviews by becoming especially harsh toward critics of their culture. But when Americans who are naturally high in self-esteem or who are given a self-esteem boost are reminded of their own death, they don’t react negatively toward those who express anti-American sentiments. Self-esteem takes the edge off our hostile reactions to people and ideas that conflict with our beliefs and values. With it, we face things that would otherwise upset us with far more equanimity.

The industrial and technological revolutions have made our lives simpler, in terms of what is physically required of us on a daily basis, but they have also made it possible for us to do a whole lot less than we ought to be doing, and we suffer for it. We have become flabby and overweight; our joints and muscles have become stiff from lack of use. We suffer from all sorts of problems related to our lack of physical exercise; it affects us on all levels, causing high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, anxiety, depression, insomnia and the list goes on and on. We know, too, how much better we feel for a bit of exercise. Those “feel-good” hormones lift our spirits, boost self-esteem and improve our overall sense of well-being. It’s a sort of built-in reward system. There’s a reason for that. It’s because we are meant to be active.

I cannot live up to my parents’ standards – and that makes me feel terrible. I cannot live up to your standards – and that makes me feel terrible. I cannot live up to society’s standards – and that makes me feel terrible. I cannot live up to other societies’ standards – that makes me feel terrible. Perhaps the solution is to set my own standards? But I cannot keep them either – and that makes me feel terrible, unless I set incredibly low standards. Are low standards a solution? Not at all. That makes me feel terrible because I realize I am the type of person who has low standards. Trying to boost our self-esteem by trying to live up to our own standards or someone else’s is a trap. It is not an answer.

Introvert integrity means going the distance for what we love: moving from apology to acceptance, from acceptance to acknowledgement, and from acknowledgment to activism. And just as distance running requires training, we build introvert integrity through practice. We give ourselves regular sessions of solitude. We find friends who listen. We exercise the right to talk less and think more. We allow others to be uncomfortable, disappointed, and different. We practice trusting our own thinking, even when the thoughts “are not like what anyone has taught” us. When you can say with a smile, “Yes, I’m not an Extrovert,” people will want to know what you’re up to. They’ll wonder what they are missing out on by being so social. And, if they are wise, they’ll back off, shut up and wait. Maybe they’ll even apologize.

draw on the following Bill of Rights for support: Unless someone is bleeding or choking or otherwise at risk of imminent demise, you have a right to think about it. Someone else’s pressure is their pressure. You have a right to let them keep it. If someone makes a request and demands an immediate response, say “no.” It is easier to change a “no” to a “yes” than it is to get out of something. You have a right not to know until you know, especially when you’re asked a big question. We all carry around a sense of knowing—that internal, inexplicable sense of when something is or isn’t right, but we can’t access that sense while under pressure. You have a right to obtain more information. If you don’t know, find out more. You do not have to jump in with affirming comments when you don’t feel it. You have a right to remain silent. Flow

Everything from self-help guides to teen magazines regularly feature tips on 'being your own best friend' and 'reaffirming your self-worth'. Advice includes such gems as writing down 'amazing things about yourself every morning'. So if we wonder where Generation Snowflake gets its sense of self-regard from, the self-esteem movement must take some of the credit (or blame). It is an industry dedicated to creating ego-boosting, self-oriented youth.

resources on self-promotion, specifically targeted to introverts and accessible online, now abound. Popular examples include Beth Buelow’s The Introvert Entrepreneur blog and podcast (bethbuelow.com) and Nancy Ancowitz’s Self-Promotion for Introverts® site (selfpromotionforitroverts.com). Ancowitz, business communication coach and author of the book Self-Promotion for Introverts, recommends that introverts build on what they do naturally rather than try to replicate extroverts:

But when an introvert is hanging out with a friend, sharing reflections, he is in his element. The conversation is “mind to mind” rather than “mouth to mouth.” Extroverts share ideas too, but the ideas are secondary to the interaction and develop between the two people as they talk. The focal point is external. For introverts, the focal point is internal, with each participant bringing the other inside and working things out there. A good conversation leaves an introvert feeling more connected, but also personally richer.

An introversion party is three people sprawled on couches and pillows, reading and occasionally talking. Or a couple cuddling by a fire at camp, savoring the music of crackling wood and crickets. Your introversion party might be a solitary walk where thoughts are exposed to air and become clear. You might find your party in meditation, when time expands and everything seems possible. Your party might come with popcorn as you passionately observe the big screen of the theater or with a steaming cup of Ethiopian blend as you watch people from your table at the coffeehouse, or with a cold beer as you watch the world go by from your porch.

Note that there’s no option to answer “all of the above.” Prospective workers must pick one option, without a clue as to how the program will interpret it. And some of the analysis will draw unflattering conclusions. If you go to a kindergarten class in much of the country, for example, you’ll often hear teachers emphasize to the children that they’re unique. It’s an attempt to boost their self-esteem and, of course, it’s true. Yet twelve years later, when that student chooses “unique” on a personality test while applying for a minimum-wage job, the program might read the answer as a red flag: Who wants a workforce peopled with narcissists?

Books, books, books! We can’t seem to get enough of them. A good book is like a friend waiting for you at home, providing comfort and familiarity alongside excitement and adventure. In contrast to “quick fix” diversions, a book lets the reader inside. You have time to get to know the character—her thoughts and secret yearnings—to live inside of a story, or to master a subject. Through a single book of nonfiction, you can obtain inside knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of experience. And through fiction, you can inhabit another life, another time, even another world. Reading is like travel, allowing you to exit your own life for a bit, and to come back with a renewed, even inspired, perspective.

Executives and managers need to consider how introverts—at least half of their employees—produce. Employees require energy to produce and, conveniently, introverts come with their own generators. Instead of trying to entertain us, mute the chatter and give us some space. Instead of rewarding the introvert with a party, give her a gift certificate to a restaurant, spa, bookstore, or coffeehouse. Instead of requiring attendance at a staff retreat, give introverted employees their assignments and send them to private cabins. Instead of insisting that introverts attend meetings, give us the option to submit written ideas. Employers are learning that, for many employees, less is more: less discussion, fewer meetings, and less so-called fun.

To all of you reading this who are on the fence about therapy because of the cost: It’s smart money, spend it. That one hundred bucks an hour pays off down the road when you learn through therapy how to get out of your own way, stop self-sabotaging and thus make good decisions about relationships and career. Think of it as an investment in yourself. Simply going to therapy helps. Just carving out an hour for yourself, and deciding that you and your life are worth spending some time and money on makes a difference. That simple act alone boosts your self-esteem. Don’t think of going to therapy as “I’m a broken pile of crap and need someone to fix me,” think of it as “I’m going to change myself for the better instead of crying, masturbating and blaming my parents for the rest of my life.

Some researchers, such as psychologist Jean Twenge, say this new world where compliments are better than sex and pizza, in which the self-enhancing bias has been unchained and allowed to gorge unfettered, has led to a new normal in which the positive illusions of several generations have now mutated into full-blown narcissism. In her book The Narcissism Epidemic, Twenge says her research shows that since the mid-1980s, clinically defined narcissism rates in the United States have increased in the population at the same rate as obesity. She used the same test used by psychiatrists to test for narcissism in patients and found that, in 2006, one in four U.S. college students tested positive. That’s real narcissism, the kind that leads to diagnoses of personality disorders. In her estimation, this is a dangerous trend, and it shows signs of acceleration. Narcissistic overconfidence crosses a line, says Twenge, and taints those things improved by a skosh of confidence. Over that line, you become less concerned with the well-being of others, more materialistic, and obsessed with status in addition to losing all the restraint normally preventing you from tragically overestimating your ability to manage or even survive risky situations. In her book, Twenge connects this trend to the housing market crash of the mid-2000s and the stark increase in reality programming during that same decade. According to Twenge, the drive to be famous for nothing went from being strange to predictable thanks to a generation or two of people raised by parents who artificially boosted self-esteem to ’roidtastic levels and then released them into a culture filled with new technologies that emerged right when those people needed them most to prop up their self-enhancement biases. By the time Twenge’s research was published, reality programming had spent twenty years perfecting itself, and the modern stars of those shows represent a tiny portion of the population who not only want to be on those shows, but who also know what they are getting into and still want to participate. Producers with the experience to know who will provide the best television entertainment to millions then cull that small group. The result is a new generation of celebrities with positive illusions so robust and potent that the narcissistic overconfidence of the modern American teenager by comparison is now much easier to see as normal.

This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.

If we look at romantic intimate relationships, we will see that society and culture promotes a skewed understanding of what love relationships are. When we hear certain love songs, they may tell us we need another person to complete us, this makes people interpret enmeshment as 'romance' or 'love', but nothing could be further from the truth. These types of romantic relationships are in fact a form of dependency. Sometimes one of half of the couple may give up everything they like doing and instead spend all of their free time with their partner doing whatever they want to do and even taking on their points of view and opinions on certain things. There is no clear distinction between the needs of one partner versus the other. This breeds an unhealthy relationship and if it comes to an end, one partner may be left feeling completely worthless since their sense of self-worth was entirely intertwined with their ex-partner. With the loss of their partner they also lose any sense of who they are. People

RESISTANCE TRAINING SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVENTED FOR WOMEN. The fitness industry has been plagued with more myths than ancient Greece. One of the most glaring is that women who weight train will look like Mr. Universe. There are still many women who are sidetracked by this common misperception, thereby avoiding weights altogether and bypassing the opportunity to achieve a beautiful, shapely body. One of the biggest differences between men and women is their hormone levels and how these hormones behave—most specifically, testosterone. Testosterone bulks up muscle mass in most men. Men have significantly higher testosterone levels than women, and therefore increasing muscle mass for men is much easier. The vast majority of women cannot build huge, bulging muscles because they have a tiny fraction of the testosterone found in men. There are so many benefits to resistance training for both men and women, but the some of the benefits are very specific to women’s health. For women, the truth is that resistance training increases your metabolism so that you burn fat more easily (and women tend to carry more body fat than men), you build bone mass and prevent osteoporosis (which affects more women than men), and you balance your hormones (which tend to fluctuate wildly in women as they age). Also, women who do resistance training feel a boost in self-esteem and gain renewed physical and mental strength because of their new sexy shape. Resistance training is a woman’s best friend. I rest my case.

Weaknesses in claims about self-esteem have been evident for a long time. In California in the late 1980s, the state governor set up a special taskforce to examine politician John Vasconcellos’s claim that boosting young people’s self-esteem would prevent a range of societal problems (see chapter 1). One of its briefs was to review the relevant literature and assess whether there was support for this new approach. An author of the resulting report wrote in the introduction that ‘one of the disappointing aspects of every chapter in this volume … is how low the associations between self-esteem and its [presumed] consequences are in research to date.’1 Unfortunately, this early expression of concern was largely ignored. Carol Craig reviews more recent warnings about the self-esteem movement in an online article ‘A short history of self-esteem’, citing the research of five professors of psychology. Craig’s article and related documents are worth reading if you are interested in exploring this issue in depth.2 The following is my summary of her key conclusions about self-esteem:        •   There is no evidence that self-image enhancing techniques, aimed at boosting self-esteem directly, foster improvements in objectively measured ‘performance’.        •   Many people who consider themselves to have high self-esteem tend to grossly overestimate their own abilities, as assessed by objective tests of their performance, and may be insulted and threatened whenever anyone asserts otherwise.        •   Low self-esteem is not a risk factor for educational problems, or problems such as violence, bullying, delinquency, racism, drug-taking or alcohol abuse.        •   Obsession with self-esteem has contributed to an ‘epidemic of depression’ and is undermining the life skills and resilience of young people.        •   Attempts to boost self-esteem are encouraging narcissism and a sense of entitlement.        •   The pursuit of self-esteem has considerable costs and may undermine the wellbeing of both individuals and societies. Some of these findings were brought to wider public attention in an article entitled ‘The trouble with self-esteem’, written by psychologist Lauren Slater, which appeared in The New York Times in 2002.3 Related articles, far too many to mention individually in this book, have emerged, alongside many books in which authors express their concerns about various aspects of the myth of self-esteem.4 There is particular concern about what we are doing to our children.

Sharon passed around a handout: "Triangle of Self-Actualization" by Abraham Maslow. The levels of human motivation. It resembled the nutrition triangle put out by the FDA, with five horizontal levels of multiple colors. I vaguely remembered it from my one college psychology course in the 1970's. "Very applicable with refugees," Sharon said. "Maslow theorized that one could not move to a higher level until the prior level was satisfied. The first level, the triangle base, is physiological needs. Like food and water. Until a person has enough to eat and drink, that's all one would be concerned with." I'd never experienced not being able to satisfy my thirst or hunger, but it sounded logical that that would be my only concern in such a situation. For the Lost Boys, just getting enough food and water had been a daily struggle. I wondered what kind of impact being stuck at the bottom level for the last fourteen years would have on a person, especially a child and teen. "The second level is safety and security. Home. A sanctuary. A safe place." Like not being shot at or having lions attack you. They hadn't had much of level two, either. Even Kakuma hadn't been safe. A refugee camp couldn't feel like home. "The third level is social. A sense of belonging." Since they'd been together, they must have felt like they belonged, but perhaps not on a larger scale, having been displaced from home and living in someone else's country. "Once a person has food, shelter, family and friends, they can advance to the fourth level, which is ego. Self-esteem." I'd never thought of those things occurring sequentially, but rather simultaneously, as they did in my life. If I understood correctly, working on their self-esteem had not been a large concern to them, if one at all. That was bound to affect them eventually. In what way remained to be seen. They'd been so preoccupied with survival that issues of self-worth might overwhelm them at first. A sure risk for insecurity and depression. The information was fascinating and insightful, although worrisome in terms of Benson, Lino, and Alepho. It also made me wonder about us middle-and upper-class Americans. We seldom worried about food, except for eating too much, and that was not what Maslow had been referring to. Most of us had homes and safety and friends and family. That could mean we were entirely focused on that fourth level: ego. Our efforts to make ourselves seem strong, smart, rich, and beautiful, or young were our own kind of survival skill. Perhaps advancing directly to the fourth level, when the mind was originally engineered for the challenges of basic survival, was why Prozac and Zoloft, both antidepressants, were two of the biggest-selling drugs in America. "The pinnacle of the triangle," Sharon said, "is the fifth level. Self-actualization. A strong and deeply felt belief that as a person one has value in the world. Contentment with who one is rather than what one has. Secure in ones beliefs. Not needing ego boosts from external factors. Having that sense of well-being that does not depend on the approval of others is commonly called happiness." Happiness, hard to define, yet obvious when present. Most of us struggled our entire lives to achieve it, perhaps what had brought some of us to a mentoring class that night.

Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations. - Earl Nightingale

Spinach   Spinach is a great source of iron as well as other nutrients.  Spinach can help to enhance your memory as it is jammed packed with many vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.  It is a rich source of folate, a B-vitamin that has the ability to boost your overall brain function.  It will help regulate the blood flow to your brain helping clean up the buildup of plaque.  Folate is also a key factor in the formation of new neurotransmitters that deal with almost everything that is related to thinking and memory. 

body

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.” —Michelangelo

THE PRAISED GENERATION HITS THE WORKFORCE Are we going to have a problem finding leaders in the future? You can’t pick up a magazine or turn on the radio without hearing about the problem of praise in the workplace. We could have seen it coming. We’ve talked about all the well-meaning parents who’ve tried to boost their children’s self-esteem by telling them how smart and talented they are. And we’ve talked about all the negative effects of this kind of praise. Well, these children of praise have now entered the workforce, and sure enough, many can’t function without getting a sticker for their every move. Instead of yearly bonuses, some companies are giving quarterly or even monthly bonuses. Instead of employee of the month, it’s the employee of the day. Companies are calling in consultants to teach them how best to lavish rewards on this overpraised generation. We now have a workforce full of people who need constant reassurance and can’t take criticism. Not a recipe for success in business, where taking on challenges, showing persistence, and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential. Why are businesses perpetuating the problem? Why are they continuing the same misguided practices of the overpraising parents, and paying money to consultants to show them how to do it? Maybe we need to step back from this problem and take another perspective. If the wrong kinds of praise lead kids down the path of entitlement, dependence, and fragility, maybe the right kinds of praise can lead them down the path of hard work and greater hardiness. We have shown in our research that with the right kinds of feedback even adults can be motivated to choose challenging tasks and confront their mistakes. What would this feedback look or sound like in the workplace? Instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance, they would get praise for taking initiative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism. Maybe it could be praise for not needing constant praise! Through a skewed sense of how to love their children, many parents in the ’90s (and, unfortunately, many parents of the ’00s) abdicated their responsibility. Although corporations are not usually in the business of picking up where parents left off, they may need to this time. If businesses don’t play a role in developing a more mature and growth-minded workforce, where will the leaders of the future come from?

I am the greatest, I said that even before I was. - Muhammad Ali

Mistakes are part of our growth and learning and should be seen as something positive.

Accepting your weaknesses can help you boost your self-confidence, while dwelling on them can cause you to lack self-confidence and self-esteem. What does this mean? It means you have to embrace the fact that you are not perfect, accept it and concentrate on what you are good at.

Dress in something that boosts your confidence, believe in yourself. Focus on being positive about every outcome that day and act it out to the best of your ability, acting will lead to believing and believing leads to a positive outcome. Concentrate on what

Dress in something that boosts your confidence, believe in yourself. Focus on being positive about every outcome that day and act it out to the best of your ability, acting will lead to believing and believing leads to a positive outcome. Concentrate on what you do want rather than what you don’t. This is so important when acting positively. Crush any negative thoughts in their tracks with positive ones and whatever you do, don’t over analyze the situation. Work on your positive acting one step at a time. Take the time to smile as someone passes your desk, rather than your normal scorn. Don’t let yourself get flustered when things go wrong, but rather take a deep breath and find the positive in the situation. By acting positive, your self-confidence will begin to improve. With every improvement in your confidence the acting will fall away until you start believing in yourself again.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. - Eleanor Roosevet