24/09/2005
Can you have both high self esteem AND low self esteem?
In the theme of breaking down the 'fluff' about
self esteem, I was wondering today about 'high self esteem' and 'low self
esteem' and whether I could have both simultaneously!
Of course this started the internal debate 'yes you
can', versus 'no you can't', which was quite obviously the low and high self
esteem parts of me having a nice little argument ...
Anyway, we can settle this fairly easily with the
notion of 'contextual behavior'.
Like me, I am sure you could easily draw a box
around the various 'parts' of your life. Work, family, friends, hobbies,
interests, skill sets, professional background, academic background, ethic
background, socio-demographic background, age ... you name it. And the truth is,
one's self esteem or self confidence can be quite different in each of these
'boxes' - or more accurately 'contexts'.
The neat thing is, it is possible in each area to
start to explore, diagnose and re-pattern exactly how this context is played
out. Need to feel more confident around friends, but are already very confident
in your professional life? Easy. It is perfectly possible to start to re-map
your self esteem from a high self esteem context into another. The good news is
that there are many techniques to do this! (by the way, some of them can be
found in my free self esteem workbook and 21-day e-course at http://www.selfesteemplus.com/).
Sometimes the difficult part is admitting that the
low self esteem context does exist - especially if one does feel quite confident
in many other aspects of one's life!
See you next
time!
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