There is so much in the media at the moment about men not respecting women, women not feeling confident and parents and society being at a loss of how to remedy these important issues.

One of the ways we can tackle this is to ensure our kids, and ourselves, have great self-esteem. How does this help?

The most important thing any of us possess, is a good self-esteem. Having a healthy view of ourselves allows us to be our authentic selves and to pursue the things we want in life. We get to be ‘who’ we were designed to be.

Good self-esteem enables us to:

• Have confidence
• date comfortably
• have healthy relationships
• pursue careers we would like to
• stand up for ourselves in negative situations
• remove ourselves from toxic relationships
• have healthy conflict
• voice our opinions
• have solid friendships
• feel safe being our authentic selves
• feel comfortable saying “No”
• ask for help when we need it
• accept differences in others more easily
• be less judgemental
• not need to use others to make ourselves feel better
• parent effectively
• have trust in our relationships
• not be dependant on others to make us feel whole.

That is quite a list of benefits of having healthy self-esteem! I’m sure there are plenty more too. Now that’s not to say that people with low self-esteem can’t have these things. We often have a mix of things we are comfortable or even confident with from this list.

Some we have because we need to prove ourselves too. As an example, quite often in fact, we see people with poor self-esteem achieve amazing careers simply because they need to prove themselves. You only need to look to famous people you have heard of to see this.

Overall however, I see self-esteem have an impact on these areas. I work with both adults and teenagers every day to help them understand why they have low self-esteem and to help them learn how to have healthy self-esteem and accept themselves as being good enough.

I work with people who have unhealthy relationships and through that we see that one person has poor self-esteem. We fix that part and then we can focus on getting both partners what they really want in their relationship.

I meet plenty of young women who accept any guy to date, whether he is a good fit or treats her well is irrelevant. Dating someone gives them a shot of self-worth (it doesn’t last).

I also work with older teen girls who are quite promiscuous and have the mistaken belief that men will like them, they will be popular, they will fit in, if they just give them sex. This naturally doesn’t work. It sets them up to be viewed in a way they didn’t want to be and many of their peers will not respect them. Sometimes this leads them to try harder and make more poor choices for themselves.

I work with men who have anger issues and are controlling over their partners. Sometimes there is a different reason behind this and sometimes it comes back to low self-esteem.

Women and men both who won’t play sports, try a new job, go to a party, date, communicate their needs, all because their self-worth is lacking and they are not getting to live the life they want to.

If we are not living the life we want to in enough fundamental ways, that can lead to depression. The damage that low self-esteem can do is endless and huge.

Self-esteem is perhaps the most important gift you can give your kids and yourself.

If this is you, then let’s start working together today to change that and you can create the life you want to live. It’s not an instant fix, but together we can fix it.

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Interested in learning more about self-esteem? Read another of my popular articles here.