Is it Self-Esteem or Self-Confidence or what lies in between?

Is it Self-Esteem or Self-Confidence or what lies in between? – By Joseph Ghabi
I was driven towards looking to the self-confidence and self-esteem in ourselves on a deeper level. How do we evaluate the two?
On a human level and perhaps whilst growing up, our religion, the influence of the 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 the effect of them?
Self-Confidence is the 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 the 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 the fact that we are scared to make a leap to an unknown environment.
Self-Esteem is the level where we are lost within our own identity. It is a common trait for most of us that we tend to sit in the ‘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 the 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 the expense of your own body, health or spirit being damaged in the process. Some people might take it to the 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 the process. However, it is not always the case where the problem lies in the attempt to imitate a star; the most common influence is the effect of the environment of where we grew up and the 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 the latter of keeping the truth hidden away from the 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 the main source of this problem?
I am, by no means, trying to pin point the 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 the factor of which I believe the responsibility lies in the first place.
We cannot place the blame on the child in the 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 the relationship in itself, irrespective of handling the responsibility that raising a child carries. The couple should take the time when learning to better understand each other before dealing with the over whelming excitement in the event of a new born baby arriving into their lives. This factor will take effect, resulting in the couple neglecting the importance of nurturing their own personal relationship with each other. In many instances the gap between the couple will become increasingly larger and wider. In the instance of a divorce for the parents, the way view these cases in the general opinion of society, the majority of these divorces will not result in a happy ending.
All the frustration, anger that has accumulated as a result of the void in the parent’s relationship, of which they created on their own behalf, is placed on the child. That child is sensitive to all of which happened between his parents. He or she is very aware of the fact that it is through faults of their own that the problems occurred in the first place.
When a child is between ages of 5 to 10, it is these years that are the most crucial years when he will require the security and support from his parents to maintain a healthy development and growth in terms of his self- confidence and self-esteem. In a situation where the family is dealing with the upheaval of a divorce, each parent will try to push that child towards taking their side. This plays a huge part of all of these issues. It is the intervention of our Human EGO.
Where is our personal responsibility?
When we talk to the parents as individuals from both ends, in many instances the immediate response is to excuse themselves by placing the blame upon the effect of the circumstances in which they grew up. Is it the time to heal that part of your life before evolving a new soul in the process? Well think about it!
We all had in one way or another good and the bad experiences when growing up. This is unfortunate for any soul to have to go through a bad time when they were growing up. But by being responsible for ourselves, there is a requirement where we must allow for healing the scars from the past and moving on in a healthy and productive way. You might make the excuse that this is easier said than done, but what effort have you really applied into fulfilling this task.
We cannot change any of the events that happened in the past, this is why we call it our ‘past’. However, we can accept the experiences for what they were and make allowance for ourselves to heal. We acquired those experiences or lessons in the first instance before coming to this life. It is not fair for a new born to suffer as a result of our mistakes that we refused to handle in the first place because we do not want to let go of that past. So is there any excuse for us blaming our actions in correlation to the events of our past? I don’t believe this is so!
Be open and to experience life and learn to take our responsibility for ourselves and for those people who are close to us more seriously. We are not only passing the time and the years when we are here on this plane to achieve nothing. Let’s start upbringing a new and healthy generation, without disregarding your own growth. Learn to grow up and move forward in your life!
I chose to tackle a range of different subjects here in this article because there is a great deal to be said on these different subjects. Hopefully we will tackle each one of them in this healing section.
When it comes to Anorexia and Bulimia hopefully other people who have passed through those experiences in their life will have the ability to help our younger generation. Reading these articles will provide an opportunity to learn how to deal with those situations by sharing their experience with us, and, in the process allow the healing process to take effect in their life too.
Copyright © Joseph Ghabi
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