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 1

I am giving this blog challenge a try because my self-esteem really needs improvement. I also need some blogging prompts and I thought this was a good idea for a blog about mental health (mostly). I am combining two versions of the challenge, so two questions per day. The 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 1:
A facial feature you like.
List 10 things that you love about yourself. (Physical or personality)

A facial feature I like? This is hard already! I don’t have many complaints about my face, but something I actually like? It is a rather unremarkable face. If I went missing and the cops wanted some feature they could identify me by, giving them a facial feature would not help. I got complimented on my cheeks recently, two independent times by make-up artists. Yes, it takes two professionals for me to start thinking there might be some truth behind it. I guess, I have good contours? I wonder how many people would say they like their cheeks…. When someone says facial features, I immediately think eyes, nose or mouth. I guess cheeks count though.

10 things that I love about myself is even harder to write. Can I go with like instead? Or maybe just things I don’t complain about would be easiest. This is going to take me a while to come up with. Good thing I’m writing this post ahead of time…I can cheat a bit and get some help. Saying good things about myself feels like bragging. I don’t want to come across as full of myself. There are people that are better than me in all these categories. Maybe that doesn’t matter though. You don’t have to be the best to like something about yourself.

I felt the need to justify everything, so it got a bit long. I’ll highlight just the answers so you don’t have to read my babble if you don’t want to. Here it goes…

1. My hair. I’d say my hair is my defining feature. It’s long and thick and a unique colour. It’s a dark blondish colour with red in it. Of course, I wish it was redder and that it would curl when I wanted it to, but I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to write about things I like without complaining about their shortcomings.
2. My nails. They are really healthy. I don’t know why, I don’t do anything special. The have good colour and curve just the right amount, so they look really nice when I leave them alone. The only problem is I don’t leave them alone. I have this bad habit of peeling them off. I call it “picking” my nails. It’s a stress habit, so I basically do it constantly. The only thing that seems to stop me is a manicure. That’s probably because I paid for it.
3. My feet. Usually people don’t like feet. I wouldn’t say I love them, more like I am grateful for them. Foot problems run in my family. My grandmother had horrible feet. She had to have several surgeries, I don’t remember why. My Dad has had foot surgery as well. I think it had to do with a sports injury. Bunions and wide feet are problems on my mom’s side. This makes finding shoes that fit and don’t hurt very difficult. I am grateful that I don’t have any of these problems (so far…*knocks on wood*). I have slender feet, straight toes and relatively smooth heels.
4. My intelligence. I have dumb moments, but I think over all, I’d lean more towards intelligent. Intelligence is a rather broad term. I’m going to go with this psychology definition “A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—”catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.” I am academically smart, I’ve made it through my Ph.D. candidacy exams, but I think I am intelligent in other ways too. I can problem-solve and read other people and my surroundings.
5. I’m artistic. There was always someone who was a better drawer, painter or crafter. I didn’t consider myself artistic until I went into the sciences. In the science world, things are formal and rigid. My posters and presentations always had a little more pizzazz than the average. Not so much that my work wasn’t taken seriously, just more than usual. Over the years my hobbies have also been towards the arts side of things; jewelry making, scrapbooking, doodling, etc.
6. I’m kind. Most of the time I put other people first. This might be part of my depression, but I like that overall people don’t see me as selfish and find me easy to get along with. I often consider how other people might feel in a situation and try to be as understanding as possible. I think it’s a good thing to be generally pleasant and not snap at people just because I’m not feeling great.
7. I have a good sense of humor. I can laugh at myself and the situations I find myself in. I have a lot of Murphy’s Law moments. You know, whatever can go wrong, will go wrong type thing. I can either get angry and pity myself or I can laugh at how my actions and random events have all come together and created the current stupid situation.
8. I’m generous. I like to give gifts and I work in rehab. I don’t know if this counts as generous, but that’s what I’m calling it…it’s not all about me. I ask people about themselves and listen to what people have to say. I think that’s important. I’ve had friends who I’d get together with and they’d talk about themselves, never ask me anything and when I did update them about me, they were looking around the room or fiddling something, so obviously not interested. That made me feel really lousy, so I make sure never to do it to anyone else.
9. I value my health. It makes it easier to do things like eat vegetables and exercise. I’m grateful that I don’t have any major physical illnesses and I want to try to keep it that way. It also makes me seek help for handling my depression, keeping me functional in life.
10. I’m determined. I wish I had more determination, but I guess I have more than a lot of people. This Ph.D. business is really hard and I haven’t given up yet. When I was young and something was hard or I wasn’t the best, I’d give up. I’ve come a long way from being that little girl.