Healthy Tips Video: Self-esteem

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm David Roark. I'm a mental health therapist with Owensboro Health's Employee Assistance Program that's located in the Healthpark. We all work in the helping field. And sometimes that brings with it a lot of stress and pressures. And with those stress and pressures, sometimes we begin to doubt ourselves and our self-esteem takes a hit. So today, I would like to go over five ways that we can help maintain our self-esteem.

One way to maintain self-esteem is to recognize your strengths. All too often, we notice our faults and the things that we did wrong and continue to criticize ourselves. A good way to recognize our strengths is to go through at the end of the day or in the middle of the day and identify three good choices that you made at that point that either helped yourself, helped somebody else, or helped the situation. And you can even record those and mark them down and go back through a tough time and look at all of them and identify in writing the things that you've done well.

Number two, accept compliments. I am as guilty of anybody on this one. All too often, somebody will give me a compliment, and I take energy and time to push it away or explain it away. Really, all you have to say is thank you. When you don't take a compliment, you actually are convincing yourself that you weren't worthy of it or that you didn't deserve it in some way. Just embrace it and say thank you.

A third way to maintain self-esteem is avoiding the phrases should and have to when it comes to things that you are expected to do. When we say should and when we say have to, it takes out our personal choice, and it lowers self-empowerment. Replace should or should have or should not have with next time, I will. And you can also replace have to with choose to. It really goes down to the point that you have the power of choice, and it increases that self-empowerment.

Speaking of self-talk, the fourth way is to catch all of the negative things we say throughout the day. I'm not good enough, if only I were smarter, and et cetera, with all the things we can use to put ourselves down. Instead of doing that, catch those and actually evaluate your performance for that day.

Sit down and think, did I do this the way I wanted to? And if not, what can I do better? Giving yourself credit but even empowering yourself on making improvements, instead of just giving yourself criticisms.

And a number five way to maintain self-esteem is the power of yet. Now what I mean by this is when you say "I can't do this, or I don't know how to do something," it's okay to put the word yet at the end of it. I don't know how to do this yet, or I'm unable to do this yet. What that implies is that you're always working towards improvement. And it implies that you are going to keep working towards it. And that message gets to yourself as well. And even more so, you can sit down and come up with a way that you can improve on said thing.

So these are just five of many ways to help maintain self-esteem. I hope these help. And I will see you guys next time. For more on this topic or additional resources, contact the Healthpark Employee Assistance Program at 270-688-1547.