Lesson #5: Are we snobs?

These past few weeks have been a battle. Mourning the short-lived, good-old days that I have to convince myself were not so good after all.

In an article I read titled "Overcoming 'Self-Esteem' ", I learned that self-esteem is not something I should be striving for. Apparently the idea of self esteem is criticized by psychologists because it works on two-end scale based on a self-rating system. People tend to attribute being a good person with the good things they accomplish. But after you achieve something, the glory is usually short lived. That's why celebrities might try to commit suicide or not be happy with their lifestyles..because after a while it's just the same old thing to them. And so people that want to pump themselves up to feel better about themselves constantly need to be achieving things in order to make themselves feel like they are a good person. This is me. A goal-oriented, hard-on-myself kind of person.

But not everyone can always accomplish everything and be good at everything so the same works on the opposite scale of self-esteem whereby if you do something poorly, you also look down on yourself. And that's where I find myself a lot of the time, mostly about my weight.

Generally speaking, high "self-esteem" is usually the same thing as arrogance because people with high "self esteem" are constantly looking for something to maintain that esteem (accomplish more than others) and so they tend to think they are better than others. They focus on their achievements and try to ignore things they might not be so good at.

So, instead of "self-esteem", I should concentrate on self-acceptance. This means, I have to acknowledge what I'm good at and what i'm not so good at. And when I do something well, I have to acknoledge it as just a task well done and that doesn't make me a better person, just the same as if I don't do something well (like not have a perfect body), it doesn't make me less of a valuable person.

Here are some things I would consider myself to be good at, average at and poor at:

Good: (oh man, i even have trouble starting my list with the 'good')
- Art
- Sense of humour
- Writing
- Ambition
- Psychology
- Biology

Average:
- Looks
- Music talent
- Athletics
- Cooking
- Math
- Public speaking

Bad:
- Spacial intelligence (following a map etc...)
- Chemisty
- Physics
- Fixing things (electronics etc...)
- baking
- Doing manicures
- Acting

Now, I am self-aware and I can accept that. I can be good at some things, not good at others and that won't make me better or worse than anyone else. So the next time I'm hard on myself for the way I look or anything I may be trying to perfect, I'll have to think that I'm average and I'll just have to accept that.