Building Confidence and Self Esteem – The Initial Assessment

By Margi Matters

You can start immediately building confidence and self esteem by doing an initial assessment of the current state of your confidence and self esteem (literally this means the esteem or regard you have for yourself).

You need to be clear about how it is and what you don’t want before you can change it to what you do want.

Do you generally have low self esteem or high self esteem? Rate both your self esteem and then your confidence on a scale from “0” (none at all) to “10” (bulletproof, high ).

Are there situations where you feel more confident or less confident? Can you list these situations from those where you feel least confident to those where you feel most confident.

Are there people with whom you feel more or less confident? Are these specific individuals (such as a parent, sibling, friend or colleague) or “types” or categories – for example what is it like to be around very confident people, or very successful people, or people in some position of authority?

With whom and in what situations do you feel better about yourself or worse about yourself?

There are six core areas to assess when you are building confidence and self esteem.

1. Beliefs. Self esteem is based in beliefs so a major task in building self confidence and self esteem is recognising and replacing old beliefs that no longer serve you, beliefs that limit you in some way. Beliefs that feed low self esteem or rob you of confidence
2. Emotional life. What are the feelings or emotional states that you experience most frequently and most intensely. In what ways do these impact your confidence and how you feel about yourself. With the emotions you do not enjoy, how would you like to feel instead?
3. Behaviours. What habits, patterns and reactions can you recognise that either contribute to low confidence and self esteem (for example withdrawing, being defensive) or support high confidence and self esteem (for example letting things go, encouraging and rewarding yourself).
4. Your relationship with yourself.  Do you allow yourself to enjoy life, to have adventures, to go for the best for yourself and your life? Do you believe in yourself? Trust yourself?  Do you put yourself down, criticise yourself, and give yourself a hard time? How often? Do you deny yourself or allow other people to abuse you or treat you badly? If you do 9 things well and 1 badly, do you focus on the one you did badly or the 9 you did well? What is it like for you when someone compliments you? Do you ever say “I hate myself” or “hate” something about yourself? Maybe you punish yourself in various ways, directly or indirectly?
5. Your relationships with other people. Do you let yourself get close, to love and receive love? Or do you have such fear of rejection that you keep a safe distance emotionally? Do you worry about what other people think and have that as your benchmark, trying hard to please or keep others happy. Or are you true to yourself, confident in being yourself, trusting your own truth and stepping out of the firing line if others are aggressive or unreasonable.
6. Fears. See if you can list all the fears that have negative power over you, the fears that make you feel less confident or that contribute to low self esteem. Notice what beliefs you are carrying around that feed these fears.

For more detailed information you can visit my blog at www.howtobuildselfconfidencefast.com

The initial assessment may take some time so don’t expect to do it all in one sitting! Observe yourself through the day, noticing and thinking about some of the points I’ve made. Building confidence and self esteem is perhaps the best investment you can make in yourself so it is definitely worth the effort so start now!

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Related posts:

1. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – The Foundations of Personal Power
2. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – How Fast Can Change Happen?
3. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – What Gets in the Way?
4. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – Blocks and Barriers
5. Building Confidence and Self Esteem – Having a “Right Relationship” With Yourself