1. Self-Esteem
By Brooke Pasker

2. Overview What is it? Benefits
What contributes to high or low self-esteem
Ways to improve it

3. Self-esteem is…
Your overall opinion of yourself, your abilities and your limitations
Healthy self-esteem is feeling good about yourself and believing you deserve respect
Low self-esteem consists of worrying that you, your opinions or ideas aren’t good enough

4. Benefits of good self-esteem
Confident in decision-making abilities
Able to form healthy and secure relationships
Realistic in expectations and less overcritical of yourself and others
Increased resilience and can handle stress better
Less feelings of hopelessness, guilt and shame
Less likely to develop mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and addictions

5. Contributions to self-esteem
Relationships with family members and friends- how others react to you can impact how you feel about yourself. If you are given positive feedback and told positive things about yourself, you are more likely to feel worthwhile. If you are told negative things or are criticized more often, you will more likely have poor self-esteem.
Your own thoughts and perceptions- whatever you tell yourself over and over, you will start believing. Similar to what you hear from family and friends, if you tell yourself positive things, you’ll have higher self-esteem. If you criticize yourself, you may feel unworthy of being around other people or think that they don’t want to hear what you have to say.
An illness, injury or disability can make you feel more self-conscious
Culture, religion, role or status in society can all influence how you view yourself

6. Ways to improve your self-esteem
Allow yourself to make mistakes. It’s okay not to be perfect, it means we’re human. Learning from our mistakes help us grow as individuals.
Stop comparing yourself to others. Every person has different strengths and different struggles. Don’t compare your failures to other people’s successes. The only person you should compare yourself to is you.
Recognize when your thinking is negative and turn it into a positive thought. Instead of focusing on what is going wrong for yourself, focus on what is going well.
Start a new hobby, meet new people, or learn a new skill that you can be proud of.
Exercise increases endorphins in the brain, which create the feeling of happiness.

7. It’s important to have a healthy self-esteem so that you can be successful and accomplish your goals
If your self-esteem gets low enough and you feel like you can’t do anything right, and you make a small mistake and tell yourself that you were right, you can’t do anything, it turns into a cycle that can bring you further and further down. So it’s important to keep your self-esteem at a healthy level so that you can, you know, reach your goals of permanent housing, or a steady job, or whatever you want to accomplish.

8. Activity Everyone take a piece of paper
Write down 5-7 things that you like about yourself. It can be a word or a phrase or a sentence, anything that you like about yourself. For example, you can say you are kind, generous, a hard worker, a good mom/sister/daughter, creative, intelligent, determined, strong, good at cooking, good at helping others. Anything that makes you feel good about yourself.
You don’t have to share with anyone. Take it with you to your room and hang it somewhere that you can see it everyday and remember all the good things you like about yourself. And you can add to it as you think of things. That way when you’re having a rough day you can look at this list and say, ‘oh yeah, I am good at that,’ or ‘I am a good listener.’

9. Sources
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