How to improve self esteem for you or a loved one is often incorrectly seen as improving the person to make them more valuable, such as higher schooling, more social skills, better employment, higher income, learning how to dress more stylishly, and so on. While changing things on the outside of a person may help temporarily, it does not fix the cause, only the symptoms. Airplanes cannot taxi on the ground everywhere they need to go, neither do birds walk everywhere they need to go as well. In both cases they must exercise their highest definition of what they are, and that is to fly using their wings. That is what in their heart they want to do, and to be their fullest selves, they must fly and be free. Airplanes, birds, and people too.
Airplanes do not have any problems, because they do what the pilot tells them to do. Birds likewise do not have a problem because they follow their instinct, and the instinct of flying comes automatically. So, what is different about humans that we can oftentimes develop inabilities to be our fullest selves? Airplanes do not, birds do not, but humans do. What makes us that different?
Humans possess a powerful spiritual characteristic that we not only have capabilities, but we must also learn that we have them, and become conscious of them for us to best utilize them. Our self esteem is our awareness of ourselves, in how we think we are. Our actual capabilities and beauty of ourselves may be far different. Birds do not need to know they are birds; they just automatically do bird things. Human development is different because we must learn of all our beauty and majesty in our uniqueness to best develop, use and enjoy our uniqueness. When we are lacking in beauty in our own eyes, we try to adjust our bad image of ourselves by adding accomplishments to us to make us see ourselves as more relevant and important. That never works. If we see ourselves as poor, and we work hard and accumulate wealth, we do not see ourselves as rich, we still just see ourselves as poor people with money. The flawed image of us in us still remains. We have excelled in the general characteristics of being a human being, but that will always fail.
The reason for the failure is that self esteem is never about being a general human being, it is always about being a specific human being. Self esteem is about seeing and being the specific individual that you are, not one of a group of billions of general persons. What you are alike and have in common with billions of other living individuals here on earth, does not matter. What matters is what you see in yourself that which is different, unique, beautiful, special, and what is precisely you. This difference is what makes you outstanding, and your difference is the foundation of your self esteem.
Nobody ever feels special and loved for being average. They feel special, loved, and accepted for being different. Having a feeling of fitting in is important, but it is not the foundation of a strong self esteem. Being different is, and on that foundation, you will find a setting of those different like you where you will fit in, because you are all different the same way. Birds of a feather need to flock together with their own kind. To find your own kind, you have to find you first.
Life’s experiences are designed to bring out our difference, but they can do it in ways that are initially painful to us. Our painful experiences have valuable messages in them. These personal messages from God may only be clear to us many years later. For example, if we have experienced a childhood where there was bad fathering or no father, God’s or Life’s possible intentions could have been to teach us many things. Our life path could teach us the importance of a father in a child’s life, how to be a good father, the importance of relationships, the importance of nurturing, and many others. Improperly interpreted bad experiences will destroy our self esteem. Correctly interpreted bad experiences will reveal the soul lessons that our God-designed life path intended for us to learn. The worse we do at general social things, the better we do specific things. Those who do not fit in at all in general social things are masters of understanding of something very specific, which Humankind needs somewhere, that is you.
Ask yourself, ‘What were the bad experiences that showed me that I was not good enough?’ I promise you that upon deeper inspection you will find some evidence of your difference, your uniqueness coming to the surface by the needs not met. Your apparent lack of value as a person had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Your uniqueness, your sensitivity, your depth of character, your gift to Humankind emerging had everything to do with it. People with introvert, quiet, personalities are often the ones outcast, left out, not fitting in, and easily making social mistakes. They are the ones possessing the most potential inside, which takes many years later to uncover. That person that failed at something or did not get their need met then is not even close to being the same person you are now.
Finding your uniqueness is the road we should follow. Ask yourself. ‘What am I good at doing?’ or ‘What am I interested in?’ For girls it might be, ‘What setting would I enjoy living in so I can be myself?’ The point here is to build our self esteem, we need to find our difference from other people. Where our difference is, therein lies our personal value as an individual, also therein lies our life’s purpose and life path. When you look internally at what impassions you, then will come ideas to lead you to your place in life where you will find others like yourself with the same passions as you possess.
Our low self esteem always happens when we compare, or circumstances cause us to compare ourselves to others and a general standard. To improve our self esteem, we must always compare ourselves to us, the individual. Having to meet general standards may be required in school, or in the military, and in certain social groups, but beyond that general standards are useless in you finding yourself. Low self esteem is on your roadmap in your life path God has for you to follow. If you carefully retrace your steps, and ask other’s help in doing so, you can again place higher value on how you see things that impassion you, and less value on getting other’s general approval. This change in priority of viewpoint will lead you to the place in the sun God wants you to find. When you get there, it will have many others like you who will love you for who you are, because you will have learned to love yourself.
Just for the record, this is an emotional and spiritual encouragement ministry. We are selling nothing here and are not at the present time even set up to take donations, and probably never will. Your healed life are our reward enough, and we are very pleased with that. If you want to, please share your strength with others in your future so our nurturing can live on.