Catch up: Self-esteem Challenge

Surprise surprise! I completely goofed. I was on vacation for a week in NYC. I knew I wouldn’t have internet access. The friend we were staying with doesn’t have wi-fi. So, I wrote out my last self-esteem challenge posts ahead of time and set them to post on the right days. This was the first time I set posts to publish instead of immediately publishing myself. I set the date and time on each post, making sure to save changes….but I didn’t realize you had to hit publish too. Woops! So nothing published while I was away…doh! Since I’m a little tired of the self-esteem challenge, I published them all at once. You can find the entries here if you missed them:

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

I’m not sure how I feel about the self-esteem challenge. I don’t think my self-esteem has improved, but it made me think about the good things about myself, which I appreciate and it did make me feel good at the time. Maybe I need to make a list of good things about myself (with no excuses) to refer to every once and a while to lift my spirits a bit. In the end, it was a good exercise and a good reminder that I’m not all bad.

NYC was fun. Maybe I’ll post more about it later. It was busy and awkward. We couldn’t have packed more in if we tried! It was go go go! By awkward, I mean four people crammed into a tiny apartment with a toilet that kept plugging for a week. For a depressed, anxious introvert, space and privacy are necessities! I survived though and have some fun memories!

I hope you all had a good week. I’m now off to catch up on your posts and tweets 🙂

Self-esteem Challenge: Day 30

This blog challenge was developed by betterthandarkchocolate.tumblr.com. If you missed the introduction or want to see a summary of all the questions, go here.

LAST DAY!!

Day 30:
Are you happy with yourself?
Rate your self esteem on a scale of 1-10? Has your self esteem improved?

I am not happy with myself. Way to state the obvious huh? There are a lot of things I need to work on but, things could always be worse. So I am thankful that they aren’t.

My self-esteem is really messed up. I don’t know how to rate it. I’m a bit of a contradiction, maybe that’s why I am so stressed all the time. I don’t think too highly of myself and I give others more respect than I give myself, but I set big goals and expect more from myself than I do from other people. Don’t you need to have good self-esteem to set goals and expect success from yourself? How do you rate that? If 5 were average, then I would be below average, but not 1 because I set goals and expect success…so 3 maybe?

30 days!! I did it!! 🙂

Self-esteem Challenge: Day 29

This blog challenge was developed by betterthandarkchocolate.tumblr.com. If you missed the introduction or want to see a summary of all the questions, go here.

Day 29:
When you don’t feel good about yourself, what do you do to change that, if anything?
What do you think of your teeth and your smile? Do you like them and if so why? If not how can you view them more positively?

When I don’t feel good about myself, I distract myself. This usually involves cake, a movie or sleeping. It doesn’t always work and I guess it’s not the best idea either. Distraction is only temporary, it doesn’t deal with the real problem. Now if I only know the source of the real problem, then I’d be getting somewhere.

I am neutral about my teeth and my smile. There is nothing remarkable for better or worse about my teeth and smile. I have always wished my teeth were pearly white like the girls in magazines. I felt better when I realized most of those girls are touched up. 🙂

 

Self-esteem Challenge: Day 28

This blog challenge was developed by betterthandarkchocolate.tumblr.com. If you missed the introduction or want to see a summary of all the questions, go here.

Day 28:
Do you feel good about yourself today? Why or why not?
What do you consider to be healthy self esteem? Does this match the dictionary definition of healthy self esteem?

I don’t know how I feel today. I’m trying to ignore myself. You can imagine how well that is going. Today, I am in New York City. Hubby and I are staying with his sister at her boyfriend’s place in Queens. It’s a very small basement apartment that the four of us are crammed into for a week. I’m a little anxious about it because I need down time in order to be social and be out and about all the time and I’m afraid I’m never going to get a break in such small quarters. It’s also my sister-in-law’s birthday today, so I’m trying to make sure she is having a good day and we’re doing the things she wants to do.

I think of self-esteem as the picture we hold of ourselves including our strengths and limitations. This picture and how we feel about it affects how we interact with others, the choices we make and what we think we can achieve in life. So healthy self-esteem would be a realistic picture of yourself which would allow you to interact respectfully with other people, make choices to better yourself and others and work towards goals that are difficult but not impossible. “Healthy self-esteem” isn’t really in the dictionary, so I think this is as good a definition as any. It’s tricky to define because it all depends on your perception of one word…”realistic”. What I interpret as realistic could be very different from what someone else in a different family, different culture or different part of the world interprets.

What do you think?

 

Self-esteem Challenge: Day 27

This blog challenge was developed by betterthandarkchocolate.tumblr.com. If you missed the introduction or want to see a summary of all the questions, go here.

Do you often accept compliments? If not, why?
What is the main barrier to you having positive self esteem? How can you break free from it?

I’d say I don’t believe compliments, but I keep that to myself. I have become better at gracefully accepting them. The polite thing to do is just say thank you. Compliments make me uncomfortable, so I say thank you and try to change the subject as quickly as possible. A friend once told me rejecting a compliment is like slapping the other person in the face. By not accepting it, you are saying they are wrong, have bad taste or their opinion isn’t valid. That made sense to me, so I’m trying to be more polite these days.

The main barrier to my having positive self-esteem is me and I can’t break free from that. I mean, I am kind of stuck with myself, so all I can do it try to adapt…which I am trying, but it’s going so slowly, if at all. I think another little barrier I have is being in school. I am in an environment where I am always surrounded by experts and am constantly learning. How do you learn? By trying and making mistakes. So if each day is just full of mistakes and the only people I have to compare myself to are the experts, well, you see where I am going. I am hoping that by finishing school I can move on to somewhere where I am the expert in my field and I am working with people who have different, but related expertise. I’m hoping I wont always be the student.

This drawing has absolutely nothing to do with the associated post