Get the Self-Esteem Habit

By Christine Webber

Suffering from low self-esteem can negatively impact our lives in countless ways. Whether it's holding us back from seeing our own worth, stopping us from excelling at work or affecting our relationships, it's something that we can all experience. In Get the Self-Esteem Habit, psychotherapist Christine Webber explains the possible causes of our low self-esteem, and gives us practical and inspiring ways to overcome it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781448215034

Christine Webber

Christine Webber is a writer, broadcaster and psychotherapist with a practice in Harley Street. She has published a total of twelve books, which include Get the Self-Esteem Habit, How to Mend a Broken Heart and Too Young to Get Old. She has written for a wide range of newspapers including The Times, Daily Telegraph and Mail on Sunday, and has been a columnist for The Scotsman, BBC Parenting, Full House, Best, Woman and TV Times. Currently, she writes for Spectator Health and Netdoctor.

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Introduction

Get the Self-Esteem Habit is the third book that I have rewritten and updated for my series with Bloomsbury Reader. The other two titles are How to Mend a Broken Heart and Get the Happiness Habit.

I originally wrote Get the Self-Esteem Habit in 2002.

Since that time, I’ve become more and more convinced of the importance of healthy self-esteem.

Frankly, I’ve lost count of the number of my own patients whose lives were made much more difficult and miserable because of their lack of regard for themselves.

These people were decent, kind, hard-working – and often very successful. But they found life problematic because they didn’t value themselves sufficiently.

Most commonly, their lack of self-esteem stemmed from childhood – as yours may have done. Of course, you can’t change what happened in the past, but the very good news is that you can change how you think about it. And this book can help you to do that.

I am pleased to say that lots of my former patients have become more appropriately aware of their worth and goodness, and I have seen their lives and their relationships blossom as a result.

I also know that a lot of people have been helped by this book in the past, and I hope that many more readers will find this new edition useful.

Chapter One

What Is Poor Self-Esteem and How Does it Affect Us?

Who is your favourite person? Is it you?

Perhaps you think that it would be unacceptably boastful to love and like yourself more than anyone else in your life. But would it?

After all, you’re with yourself twenty-four hours a day. You know yourself better than you do any other human being – even if you don’t always understand your behaviour. And you’re in a unique position to mould yourself into the individual you want to be. In fact, you’re the only person in life you can guarantee to change. So, even if you’re not your own favourite person at the moment, you have the potential to become someone whom you really, really like. And I hope that by the end of this book you will do.

But in order to do that, you need to:

• Value yourself

• Respect yourself

• Care for yourself

• Take responsibility for your life

• Accept yourself

And I am afraid that none of this is easy if your self-esteem is poor.

So, what exactly is self-esteem?

People use the expression all the time but rarely stop to think what it means. Often, they assume it’s all about feeling confident and happy. And to some extent they are right. But it’s much more than that. It’s actually a measurement of how we regard ourselves.

The term derives from the Latin verb aestimare, which means to estimate, or rate, or value. And when people rate themselves poorly, they find life very difficult indeed.

Does this sound like you? Is that why you’re reading this book? If so, I hope I can help you.

Poor self-esteem is at the root of all sorts of problems. It holds us back career-wise. It can make our relationships difficult to sustain – and can very definitely prevent us forming good ones. Worse than that, it is often responsible for keeping us in liaisons which we would be better to leave.

Poor self-esteem can also contribute to depression, insomnia, stress, isolation and loneliness. And at its most extreme, it’s often a major factor in addictive behaviours, domestic violence and petty crime.

So, having low self-esteem makes life tough. But is it possible for anyone with poor self-esteem to turn into someone who appropriately likes and values him or herself?

Definitely! Without doubt, any adult – including you – can learn a whole new habit of good self-esteem so that you view yourself in a much more positive and confident way.

Of course, as you may well have discovered, establishing a good habit – such as going to the gym or eating healthily – Isn’t easy. It can feel good in theory but problematic in practice. In fact it can feel as hard as giving up a habit that you know is bad for you – like smoking.

One of the factors about changing our habits is that we often have to overcome our fear of failure. And it could be that as you read these words you’re thinking: well, it’s easy for her to write all this stuff, but I’m the one who’s going to have to develop this new habit, and maybe it’s going to be too difficult for me.

Well, it may feel hard. In fact it almost certainly will at times. But it’s not impossible. And I cannot emphasise strongly enough just how much easier your life will be in all sorts of ways if you improve your self-esteem. Once you regard yourself in a more positive way, you will be amazed at just how many aspects of your life will become easier and more pleasurable.

There’s a lot of change required when we make new habits – and change is rarely simple. Changing relationships, changing jobs, changing where we live … all these things can feel seriously stressful, but we generally get through them. And usually when we look back, we’re pleased that we persevered.

The truth is that achieving change for the better is almost always an effort. So be prepared for the fact that making alterations that will improve your self-esteem will not turn you into a different person overnight. Neither will it feel very comfortable, at least to start with.

Making new habits is difficult no matter what they are, as the following story illustrates.

Anna had been playing tennis with her sister since they were children. She’d never had any lessons, but had always enjoyed knocking a ball around and stumbling through a couple of sets and then going for tea and cake afterwards!

But one day, she was watching Andy Murray playing at Wimbledon on TV and she suddenly wondered what it would feel like – and what it would take – to play the game better. After some thought, she signed up for coaching at her local club.

She was nervous at her first lesson and somewhat disheartened to be told that she didn’t hold the racquet the right way and that she rarely kept her eye on the ball. And when she tried to do what the coach advised, everything felt awkward and she couldn’t even hit it over the net. Half way through the session, she seriously thought about giving up and walking away. After all, this was no fun – and now she wasn’t even as good at the game as she had been before coming to this session. But she stuck with it, and by the end of the hour, she began to feel that she was hitting the ball differently, and that it made a more satisfying sound on her racquet. Also, the coach showed her how to serve properly, and although she found it hard, she could see that once she had mastered the new technique she would be a better player.

So, Anna continued with her lessons. In fact, her sister came along for some coaching too. It took them both a while to really improve, and sometimes they tended to go back to their old way of doing things because it was easier. But, week by week, they grew more skilful. And last time I heard, they had become regulars at the tennis club and were really enjoying playing. They both felt fitter too. Also, their social lives had taken off in a new and very good way, because the tennis club was always holding dances, or quizzes or parties.

None of this happened overnight. It took persistence. But that persistence paid off.

Acquiring a better self-esteem habit is no different. It takes time and effort, but if you keep at it, you’ll be able to give yourself the gift of a more mentally healthy, happy and confident life.

In order to boost your self-esteem, I’m going to help you to alter:

• How you think

• How you feel

• How you behave

• How you speak about yourself

And we can get going right away by listing some goals. Achieving these will provide you with the backbone of your new self-esteem habit.

Goals

1. Learn to like yourself

2. Learn to value yourself

3. Learn to care for yourself

4. Learn to respect yourself

5. Learn to take responsibility for your own actions

6. Learn to accept yourself

Probably, the first four goals are easy to understand – and in time, I hope you will achieve them. But I’d be particularly pleased if you would focus on goal five, which is all about learning to take responsibility for your own actions.

Most of us are lucky enough to live longer than our parents and grandparents. And our lives are often more complex than theirs were. Also, we tend to have more changes of career and a more fluctuating circle of friends and relationships than people had in previous generations.

All these complexities need some organising. And the best way for you to do that is to be someone who is self-reliant and – as far as possible – in control of your own life.

In the main, people who see and accept that they are largely the architects of their own fate tend to be individuals who have high levels of their own worth. They work hard to achieve what they want. And when they make mistakes, they admit to them, and then try harder. What they don’t do is beat themselves up about any errors they make.

Such adults accept that life has its ups and downs, but they do their best to take responsibility for everything that they can.

For example, if they’re in a relationship that’s in trouble, they try to sort it, and if they can’t, then they extricate themselves from it. Furthermore, when they’re in a viable relationship, they don’t expect their partner to make them happy, or to solve all life’s problems for them. And when they’re single, they don’t live in a kind of limbo while they wait for life’s perfect partner to materialise and sort them out.

But it’s not just in relationships that we are able to take more control if we have reasonable self-esteem. It happens in every aspect of our lives.

Unfortunately, people with poor self-esteem are often worried about being in control of their lives and, as a result, they try to avoid this kind of responsibility. If this sounds like you, then I hope that by the end of the book, you will see things differently.

The sixth goal, ‘Learn to accept yourself’, is another tough one – and many people with poor self-esteem find the prospect of achieving it rather difficult. They mistakenly believe that if they fully accept themselves, they might become smug and complacent.

But the reason they worry