Hi there! My name is James Johnson, and I have made a page all about self-esteem, and how you can improve your own. Anyways, before I start, I'll introduce myself. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, I am age 13, and attend Vernon Barford Junior High school, Grade 9. Here's a picture of me. Some of my interests include; surfing the web, playing sports like baseball, and doing HTML. Well, enough about me.

Self-esteem has become a trendy term often referred to in many health and self-improvement magazines and books with good reason. Self-esteem is the most important principle which determines a person's mental health. As important as it is, self-esteem is not well understood outside the mental health field.

Self-esteem is feeling competent and capable to deal with life's challenges and being worthy of happiness.

There are two components to self-esteem: self-efficacy and self-respect.

Self-efficacy means that there is a trust in your mental processes and abilities. It does not mean that you believe you will never make an error, but rather that when you do make mistakes you can learn from them. It is deeper than confidence in a specific knowledge or skill. If we are lacking in self-efficacy then we would expect to fail at everything we try, and feel unable to make decisions.

Self-efficacy is nurtured in a rational, predictable home environment where we grow to understand what is around us.

Self-respect is a belief that you have an inherent value and that you will have friendship, love and happiness. It is our realization that we deserve the respect of others, that our well-being is worth acting to support, protect and nuture.

We can only have self-respect as adults if we were treated with respect by parents and family members as children.

Self-efficacy and self-respect are both necessary to healthy self-esteem. No matter what achievements a person has accomplished, if they feel unworthy of the love and respect of others, they do not have self-esteem.

Self-esteem cannot be considered in isolation, however. It is dependent on social, psychological, physical, and economic factors. Therefore, a wholistic approach to improving self-esteem, addressing family, school/work and community, will be much more effective in the long-run than an individual approach.

You find yourself feeling overwhelmed by feelings of anger or despair and you cannot enjoy life anymore.

You used to be healthy, but now you are always feeling sick and find you are missing more and more time from work/school.

You cannot "get over" the death or loss of someone you loved very much.

There is too much conflict in your home life.

You are drinking too much or using another type of drug which is interfering with your life.

The four types of self-esteem are; I'm OK and you're OK, I'm OK and you're not OK, I'm not OK and you're OK and I'm not OK and you're not OK.

I'm OK and you're OK- This is the best self-esteem you can have.You think really good about yourself, and don't look down on others.

I'm OK and you're not OK- This is the attitude which makes you conceited. Conceit means you brag about your own abilities to make yourself feel important, but you really don't end up feeling good, just making them feel worse than you.

I'm not OK and you're OK- This form of self-esteem creates bullies. They do not feel good about themselves, so they bug other people to make themselves feel better. In the end, none of them feels good about themselves.

I'm not OK and you're not OK- This is the belief that there is nothing good in the world, and it's all stacking together against you. This leads to usually suicides, drugs, or worse.

Belonging is the need to be liked, to be valued and to be cared for. All of us want to belong. We need to feel loved and needed. We constantly seek affirmation of our existence from others, and need to discover our basic unity as well as our individual uniqueness. Since we can only do this with others, one of the first goals in developing positive self-esteem is the promotion of positive group rapport.

Links:

Personality Profile - Find out what your personality is like.

Webchat Broadcasting System - The place to go to chat with other people, to make new friends or to improve self-esteem.

ICQ Chat Lists - If you have ICQ, this is the place to go to find people to talk to.

Activity 3: Applause - Make someone feel better about themselves.

Feeling competent means that we feel good about something that we do well. All of us need to feel competent, that we can do well, and that we successfully meet our needs in the world. Many of us are competent in many areas that we take for granted. We have been taught to focus on our weaknesses instead of our strengths. Learning to feel competent is to focus on what we already can do well, have done well, and are doing well right now. Once that is done, the person can take risks in new areas.

Links:

IQ Test - Test your intelligence.

Activity 1: Self Analysis Through Art - An activity you can do at home to make yourself feel more competent.

Feeling worthwhile means "I'm okay, I am good, not bad." This is derived from five areas; mental, emotional, physical, imaginal, and intuitive. To feel worthwhile, you need to believe that your mind works, that your thoughts are valid, creative and helpful, and valued by others.

Emotional: In the emotional aspect of feeling worthwhile, you must learn to believe that feelings are okay. In this day and age, people are taught to repress their emotions. Feelings must be expressed and accepted, not talked away. If the person is allowed to discharge their emotions, they can re-evaluate beliefs and explore alternate behaviours. If not, it will only repress emotions and invalidate the perception of reality.

Physical: To make people feel worthwhile about themselves physically, they must feel good about their body. To do this, a person must feel good about how they look. To do this, you must become aware of your senses. This can be done through dance and movement exercises.

Links:

Dance Directory - A collection of links to different types of dance.

Expression Board - If you need to express your emotions, this is the place to do so.

Activity 2: Acrostic Writing - Write an acrostic about your positive qualities.