Is it Self-Esteem or Self-Confidence or what lies in between?I was driven towards looking to
self-confidence and self-esteem in ourselves on a deeper level. How do we evaluate two?
On a human level and perhaps whilst growing up, our religion, influence of culture of where we grew up in and our parents, are all factors that influence and contribute to our level of self-confidence and self-esteem.
How do we define those fancy words we consistently hear, and where do we begin to determine effect of them?
Self-Confidence is level of where we are aware of ourselves, in concern of our abilities, gifts and knowledge. The opposition is lack of self-confidence. This is where we have awareness of our capabilities; however, we do not have enough drive toward making changes in any conviction we hold, in respect of what we believe in. We grow to feel safe and comfortable with what we are used to in our surroundings. The idea of embracing new opportunities that offer change become somewhat fearful thus is reflecting fact that we are scared to make a leap to an unknown environment.
Self-Esteem is level where we are lost within our own identity. It is a common trait for most of us that we tend to sit in ‘back seat’ allowing other people to take control of what, in reality, should be our own decisions, allowing ourselves to become dependant on others to handle our affairs. This will most likely lead us into becoming a doormat for other people to toss us around in order to meet their own selfish ends.
Does this make any sense to you?
When looking around us, we can see that for many of us our confidence in recognizing our own true identity begun during childhood. This is not a natural characteristic of which we are born with. We can see an increasing amount of younger generation of our society attempting to imitate a star, of whom, they idolize. This is not a mere phase through which they may be passing. In many ways this is an attempt to disguise their lack of confidence in themselves by trying to portray a new look or face to other people, from whom they are striving to gain approval or recognition by pretending to be someone they are not.
Imitating a star is nice but not at expense of your own body, health or spirit being damaged in process. Some people might take it to extreme where they develop an eating disorder, for example, Anorexia, Bulimia or both combined in an attempt to alter their physical appearance to resemble someone of whom they admire. The result of this is most likely to cause damage to their body, self-confidence, self-esteem, and spirit in process. However, it is not always case where problem lies in attempt to imitate a star; most common influence is effect of environment of where we grew up and conditions of our family in respect of this. Hopefully one day, people confront these issues by means of talking or writing an account of their experience in an honest and completely open fashion rather than latter of keeping truth hidden away from fear of confronting of other peoples response, opinion or judgment. These issues are serious and it is high time we learnt how to understand and deal with them accordingly.
Now where do we find main source of this problem?
I am, by no means, trying to pin point blame on one specific element. There are many different factors, all of which contribute to and hold equal significance in influencing these matters. To cover all possible influences would be too long at this point, however, I would like to specify factor of which I believe responsibility lies in first place.
We cannot place blame on child in first instance. The parents may benefit from looking into this problem more seriously and carefully than what might they think?
We are sometimes hasty when bringing a child into this world. When two people unite they may not be ready for relationship in itself, irrespective of handling responsibility that raising a child carries. The couple should take time when learning to better understand each other before dealing with over whelming excitement in event of a new born baby arriving into their lives. This factor will take effect, resulting in couple neglecting importance of nurturing their own personal relationship with each other. In many instances gap between couple will become increasingly larger and wider. In instance of a divorce for parents, way view these cases in general opinion of society, majority of these divorces will not result in a happy ending. All frustration, anger that has accumulated as a result of void in parent’s relationship, of which they created on their own behalf, is placed on child. That child is sensitive to all of which happened between his parents. He or she is very aware of fact that it is through faults of their own that problems occurred in first place.
