Breaking a sweat also cues the body to release endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Instead, try to focus your energy on identifying the things that are within your control and seeing what you can do about them. Try to schedule in a little you-time every day. You got up on time this morning. You poached your eggs to perfection. Celebrating the small victories is a great way to build confidence and start feeling better about yourself. Find people who make you feel good about yourself and avoid those who tend to trigger your negative thinking. You do you Comparing yourself to other people is a sure-fire way to start feeling crummy.
But eventually as they grow older, as we grow older, we start to categorize ourselves by including some more internal psychological traits. So we start to compare ourselves. We start to make evaluations with other people. We start to categorize ourselves maybe by our careers or by the type of person that we want to be.
So these are more developed categories. Now, you probably remember talking about Carl Rogers. And I'll just refresh your memory, but he's important in the humanistic branch of psychology. So Carl Rogers believed that the self-concept had three different components. And the first of these is self-image. So we've all heard of this word before. Self-image is the view we have of ourselves. So there we are. It's what we believe we are. The second part of his components is self-esteem.
So we can use this word along with self-worth. How much value do we place on ourselves, and I'm going to put a little heart here to kind of represent that, so how much love do we give ourselves, how much do we love ourselves? How much value do we place on ourselves? And the third is the ideal self.
So it's what we wish to be. What we aspire to be. I'm gonna give it a little star to represent our ideal self. Okay, so developing this idea of self-concept a little further, we can use a theory called the Social Identity theory. So the Social Identity theory has two parts. It is, it defines it, it defines a theory in terms of two parts. And those two parts is the personal identity, which is pretty self-explanatory, so this is the things that are unique to each person, like personality traits.
And the other is our social identity, so these include the groups you belong to in our community. So in order to understand the social, Social Identity theory, and how we categorize ourselves personally and socially, there's a mental process involved in this. So this process involves three steps, and these are the steps we use when we're evaluating ourselves and others in the relationship between person personal and social identities.
So first, all humans categorize themselves. We all categorize our, ourselves without even knowing it. We actually do this entire amount of mental process I'm gonna talk about without really knowing we do it, just, I guess, part of human nature. So we categorize ourselves in order to understand objects and identify them. So we categorized people into groups.
- What To Do About Negative Self-Talk.
- 10 tips for improving your self-esteem?
- Self esteem - Better Health Channel;
Through rejection , judgment, ridicule, and criticism , other people often influence how you feel about yourself, the labels you give yourself, and fundamentally what you believe about yourself, about your own abilities, and the world around you. In many ways, your self-worth is tied to the people in your life. The bad news is that all of these internal and external sources have a profound impact on your self-concept.
The good news is that starting today, you can begin taking affirmative and proactive action to improve your self-concept and optimize how you live your life. An unhealthy self-concept is something that often drags us down in life. An unhealthy self-concept implies that you have a low value of yourself. And when we have a low value of ourselves we typically lack the confidence needed to move boldly in the direction of our goals.
You struggle with your emotions and make poor decisions. Everything essentially becomes a struggle. Your unhealthy self-concept is getting in the way of living your life to your best potential. For instance, you likely have a weak self-concept when you…. Only in this way will you transform your self-concept and optimize how you live your life. Your body and mind are doing their best to cope with life, events, and circumstances. You might for instance:. All of these semi-coping strategies might provide you with some semblance of control.
They may even provide you with some relief and temporary satisfaction. However, in the long-run, they will only hurt you. You will hurt because you struggle to face the reality of your situation. In fact, it will take a great deal of patience , time, and effort. If the choices you make are not stretching your comfort zone and pushing you toward your goals then change is something that needs to be on the horizon. Even though this journey and the inevitable transformation will not be easy, it will, however, be worth your while. No longer will you be at the mercy of your rose-colored view of reality.
Instead, you will have taken control. And with control comes confidence. And with confidence comes personal power — the power to transform your life with purpose. What this means is that when your emotions are healthy and serving your greater good, then the quality of your life will likewise improve. Your life improves because life always comes down to the emotional experiences we choose to indulge in. When our emotional experiences are of a healthy and positive nature, this improves the quality of our thoughts.
And as our thoughts improve so do our choices, decisions, and actions. When you make better choices, you get better results. And with improved outcomes, you feel immeasurably better about yourself. And when you feel better about yourself, your self-concept grows stronger. That is, in essence, the key that will help transform a poor self-concept into something that can help optimize how you live the rest of your life.
Write up a contract that gives you the green light to initiate the process of change. Secondly, you need to take responsibility for making these changes. Nobody is responsible for your life but YOU. You must, therefore, take the responsibility on your shoulders that you, and you alone, are responsible for making these changes. Thirdly, you must be committed to making the necessary changes to improve your life. Without commitment, there is no motivation. You, therefore, need to acknowledge that things must change, you need to take responsibility for this change, and you need to commit yourself to follow through with the change.
Now, on the surface, this might seem kind of silly. You already know who you are, right? However, below the surface, you are in reality so much more than that. To strengthen your self-concept, you must figure out how to bridge this gap successfully. In fact, there will always be some kind of discrepancy.
And this is important to understand because without a discrepancy there is no motivation to grow and develop yourself over time. However, if this discrepancy is too significant between the YOU of today and the YOU you desire to become in the future, then your self-concept will never bloom into its full potential. There must, therefore, be congruence, or otherwise, self-actualization is impossible. The purpose of these questions is to identify how you see yourself in the present moment and then compare that against the final set of questions laid out below.
As you go through each question, you will gain various insights and perspectives into who you are. Embrace these differences, because this is in essence how you see yourself each day. Things are the way they are. Your ideal self must be congruent with your perceived self in the present moment. If there is a significant difference between the two, then you must work on bridging that gap — thereby strengthening your self-concept. Your objective for the remainder of this journey is to begin bridging that gap between your ideal self and the self you are experiencing at this very moment.
Your self-ideal must be realistic and achievable. Otherwise, you will struggle to meet your highest standards of performance. Subsequently, your self-concept will continue to suffer. The key then is to ensure that your self-ideal is not entirely out of this world — at least not at the beginning. Given this, be sure to lower your standards and expectations to make them more achievable.
Only when you reach these set standards and expectations should you incrementally raise the bar higher. Remember though that your self-image is often not based on reality. Therefore, if your self-image is based on false assumptions or distorted perspectives, then you will first need to work through these issues before moving through the process outlined here. Our discussion here is more about using this process to help build your self-confidence so that you can then take the necessary action steps to achieve your desired goals and objectives. Below you will find numerous suggestions and guidelines to help you transform your self-concept.
What Exactly is a Self-Concept and How Does it Impact Your Life?
Some of these suggestions are easy and quick to implement, while others might take a little time. This essentially comes down to three fundamental things:. No matter how you proceed, every particular change you desire to make comes down to just these three fundamental things.
Therefore, no matter what ideas you decide to implement, be sure to always keep in mind how these changes can be made in relation to your thoughts, self-talk, and the belief systems that govern your subconscious behavior.
Self esteem
All this will hopefully start making more sense as you work your way through the following ideas. Your first objective is to look within and become very consciously aware of your daily thoughts, self-talk, belief systems, psychological rules , and the questions you tend to ask. Your objective is to reach congruence in these areas. Your self-image will never directly align with your self-ideal. However, you can certainly make the necessary adjustments to your mindset to move in the right direction. Meditation will help clear the clutter in your brain.
It will encourage you to think and act more mindfully throughout the day. This will subsequently improve your ability to make effective decisions. Visualization, on the other hand, can provide you with the necessary vision you need to better understand your future direction.
This will likewise help you lay down a much clearer path toward your desired outcomes. Remember, that how you think about things has a lot to do with your perceptions and interpretations of reality. For instance, interpreting things one way will give you access to a particular set of resources and opportunities. However, interpreting things another way will provide you with access to a different set of resources and opportunities.
Ironically, it might even deny you access altogether.
Health.vic
What this essentially means is that how you think and how you emotionalize your experience influences how you use your physiology. Likewise, how you use your physiology influences how you think and emotionalize your experiences. They are both interconnected, and therefore what you do to one directly influences the other.