How do you stay calm and composed and maintain self-esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.
Imagine yourself as a dart board. Everything and everyone else around you may become dart pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self- esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. You can stop these downers from getting the best of you by isolating all the dart pins you need to avoid.
Dart Pin #1: Negative Work Environment
Beware of the 'dog eat dog' theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner and stay up late. Most of the time when you work too much without getting help from the people concerned, it is not appreciated. Try to avoid over-extending yourself, it will ruin your self-esteem. Competition is at stake everywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but only in a healthy competitive environment.
Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown-nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders and patronizers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self-esteem, as well as to your self-improvement plan.
Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment.
Change challenges us on a daily basis. It tests our flexibility and adaptability and alters the way we think. Change will make life difficult for awhile and it may cause stress, but it will help us find ways to improve ourselves. Change will be there forever, we must be open to it.
Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say 'ouch!' when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.
Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self-esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.
Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. But you still have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure, too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to make the same mistakes.
Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive and staying positive is a choice. Building self-esteem and drawing lines for self-improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent.
In life, it’s hard to stay tough, especially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battlefield, we should choose the right supplies to bring and armor to use, and pick those that are bulletproof. Life’s options give us arrays options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. Wearing bulletproof armor ideally means self-change. These changes come from within. Think of these 3 things: attitude, behavior and way of thinking.
Building self-esteem will eventually lead to self-improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. It’s like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self-esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self-esteem brings about self-improvement, true assessment and determination. How do you start putting up the building blocks of self-esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self-esteem, your starter guide to self-improvement.
Remember:
"It's your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude!"
Zig Zigler
