Self Concept, Self Respect and Self Esteem

Your Self Concept, how you think about yourself, influences your self respect and self esteem. It is necessary to change your self concept in order to build Self Respect and build Self Esteem. Self Esteem is more than just liking or feeling good about your self. It's being confident in your abilities to cope with life's pitfalls and believing in your worthiness to: receive love, success and happiness; be valued in society.

Introverts often have problems with developing a positive self respect and self concept. It could be that there are so few role models, or maybe that the majority of people, being extroverts and not understanding introverts, critisize and deminish the introverts. But I think it's mostly that introverts don't learn to value their strengths. Check out my article on Help for Introverts

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Feeling worthless is a big indicator that you have a poor self concept, low self respect and low self esteem. Improving these can dramatically improve your life by more than just outward appearances. If you improve your self concept, you will look at life from a more positive perspective. You will believe in yourself and your ability to get through whatever difficulty you are presented with.

But how do you change such an intangible thing as Self Concept? It's not easy. As in most intangible things, it's an idea. A thought. Actually many many thoughts put together. And Thoughts can be changed but they are amazingly hard to change for the long term.

Thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to beliefs. Or is it beliefs lead to thoughts, which lead to feelings? Or feelings lead to thoughts, which lead to beliefs. Well, it really doesn't matter which comes first because changing one, changes the others. And Thoughts are the easiest to change.

Self Respect is feeling you are of value. Believing you have a right or worthiness to love, success, happiness. A feeling of deserving to have your needs and desires met. So you must change your thoughts so that you Feel of value. So that you Believe you have rights and are worthy to receive good things in life.

If you lack self-respect, you probably have difficulty asserting these rights. You may agree intellectually that you have the same rights as anybody else, but emotionally you feel inferior. You feel inferior because of negative thoughts about yourself. You must change those negative thought. It took me years to change some of my negative self concept. I hope I can help you change yours faster.

Self Concept is how you think of yourself. The thoughts you have about yourself. So you can see how self concept can influence your self respect. Thinking of yourself as stupid, clumsy, over emotional, among many other negative thoughts, reduces your self respect and self esteem.

A poor self concept also provides a built in excuse for not trying. "I am bad at math" gives you an excuse for doing poorly. You give up easily instead of really trying. After all, you are just "Bad at math"! "I am ugly" allows you to dress poorly because 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear'! "I am a strict parent" can be an excuse for physical abuse because that fits your definition of a strict parent. "I suffer from depression" gives you an excuse to feel sad when you can't find what you feel sad about.

Before you can change your thoughts, you must discover the negative thoughts you currently have.

Discovering Negative Self Concepts

You need to discover your "I ams" as put forth by Dr. Wayne Dyer. For each area of you life fill in as many I Ams as you can.

Physical I am Fat. I am Skinny. I am ugly. I have a big nose. I am short. I have big feet. I am clumsy. I am good looking.	Family I am a daughter. I am a lousy daughter. I am a dutiful wife. I am a good provider. I am a supportive husband. I am a strict parent. I am a loving parent.
Social I am funny. I am an introvert. I am shy. I am tongue tied. I am warm and open.	Financial I am middle class. I am poor. I am struggling. I am bad with money. I am unlucky.
Academic / Intellectual I am Smart. I am stupid. I am bad at math, spelling, writing. I am not mechanical.	Spiritual I am a Christian. I am Saved. I am confused. I am an atheist.

To improve your self concept, self respect and self esteem take each of the negative statements you came up with and change it into something, if not positive, at least neutral. Only you can decide which statements are negative. A good indication that a particular statement is negative for you is how you react to it. If you cringe, sigh or your muscles tense up, it is likely a negative statement.

So take the statement and re frame it. 'I am fat', becomes 'I am large', 'I am above the so called 'ideal weight'', 'I am good looking even though I have some extra weight'. Keep working to create an improved statement for an improved self concept.

You can change the simple statement by expanding on how you are changing it. 'I am shy' can be changed to 'I sometimes have difficulty speaking with strangers, but I hold up my end of conversations when among friends'. 'I am poor', or 'I am struggling' can become 'I am working to improve my financial situation'.

'I am a lousy daughter' can become 'I don't contact my parents as often as I think I should, but that doesn't make me a lousy daughter. It makes me normal.'

Also read my article on Changing Your Thoughts. Improving your self concept, the way you think about yourself, is the best way to improve your self respect and self esteem.

Let me know what you think about this article by submitting a Comment. I'll post appropriate comments. Maybe your comment will help someone else.