As I sit back and reflect on my life, I am pleased because I can see the rocky road I have managed to conquer.  I started with so many bumps and wrong turns I never believed I would be in the final stages of accomplishing a bachelor’s degree. To get to this point I focused on self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence. Each one of these values was important in helping me work towards understanding myself. They helped me to see I was worthy of feeling good about myself.

Self-esteem is how we value ourselves  

If you think everything you do is wonderful and deserves praise, you have a positive self-esteem. However, if you feel like you are not worthy of good things, your self-esteem may be low. Self-esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of their own worth.  I have had issues with judging myself. Even though I have managed to do well for myself – I own my home and have excelled greatly in academia – I have still had issues in believing in myself.  I needed to remind myself that “I am competent” and “I am worthy”.  My self-concept brought about the negative emotions of despair, instead of the positive emotions of pride.  To help build my self-esteem I engaged in positive self-talk. Whenever I was feeling anxious about my abilities, I would say out loud “I am worthy” and “I’ve got this”, which helped me out a lot.  I began having confidence.   

Self-worth is how we regard our abilities

When a person possesses little self-regard for themselves they can become depressed and fall short of their potential.  Self-worth is a confidence and satisfaction in oneself and one’s abilities.   As I previously stated I fell short in self-esteem and because of that my self-worth was non-existent.    However, as I began working independently on how I felt about myself, I began to feel better about the person I was yet to be.   I began to develop a feeling of self-respect for myself and my abilities.  I found myself volunteering throughout my community, and as I took on more and more, I began to feel my self-worth increase.

Self-confidence is a positive feeling of trust in our own abilities

This is a trait that you can develop through having high self-worth and high self-esteem.  Self-confidence is built upon as we master the activities which make us who we are.   I have found the more pride I took in who I am, the more confidence I began to exude.   I began to realize my full potential and slowly become the person I strived to be.  

I have made a lot of mistakes in my lifetime; however, it is those errors which have helped in determining the person I am yet to be.  It is through consistent dedication to myself that I have built my self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence.  I want to be the kind of person that others respect and I will continue to work on it for as long as it takes.  The day I stop making mistakes, will be the day I stop learning.  As Abraham Maslow once said, “I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act.”  We cannot change the past, we can only learn from it.