How the Quality of your Thinking Affects your Self-Esteem

and Well-Being

Do you sometimes find yourself over-thinking, analysing, going over events in your head over and over and over again and winding yourself up in the process?

As adults, we tend to ruminate, mull things over, again and again and again. Some people more than others. Something may happen to us that is upsetting, annoying or causes us pain in some way.

For example:

Your controlling boss moaned to you about the quality of your work and called a team meeting at 5.55pm, just when you were about to leave to go home to your family or go on a date (annoying!). A colleague made a sarcastic remark about what you were wearing that day.  A ‘friend’ trolled you on social media. A woman at a business networking event gave you (or what you may perceive as being) a dirty look after you delivered a short presentation promoting your services. Your partner was being mean and really annoyed and upset you.

You get the idea.

Or whatever it is that has caused you to fill your mind with unhelpful narrative.

If we allow other peoples’ perceived criticisms or negativity to take root, then we find that our self-esteem is constantly changed by external factors, by events and by how other people respond to us.

As adults we are programmed to think. Often, we overthink, mull things over that happened yesterday, a week ago, 6 months ago or more.

Younger children think far less than we do. I see it with my own two little girls. They may get upset about something or hurt themselves slightly. I give them cuddles. They get distracted, forget about what it was they were crying about and carrying on with what they were doing and that event is gone and forgotten and the impact is slight and momentary.

Of course, it depends on the severity of the event. If children are exposed to frequent and extreme negative experiences, such as growing up in an a dysfunctional or abusive household or outside the house, then those experiences will bury themselves deep in the child’s unconscious mind, usually starting to rear their ugly head in teenage years and in adulthood, manifesting in a variety of sabotaging, destructive behaviours and emotions. That is a huge topic in its own right which we won’t go into depth on in this article.

As I mentioned in the previous article (Do You Suffer from Self Doubts?), our childhood experiences will have a huge bearing on the quality of our adult thinking and our self-esteem.

Fast forward to adulthood.

The quality of our thinking and our level of self-esteem stems from these five main areas:

• Our childhood and teenage experiences – which have a huge bearing on our self-esteem, quality of thinking and emotional resilience, mental health and general well-being
• Our adult experiences – how we perceive our circumstances and how we learn to do that
• How we respond to situations and events
• How well and how quickly we bounce back from life’s challenges
• How we create, perceive, manage and how we are impacted by our own internal thinking

How we respond to situations makes a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves and our self-esteem. And vice versa. Our levels of self-esteem and how we feel about ourselves (our self-perception) will also determine how we respond to life’s situations.

Begin to become aware of the quality of your thinking on a daily basis.

Have a think and write down your thoughts around the 5 points I’ve made above. Think of your own personal examples.

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed, with your to-do lists seemingly growing by the hour?

Is your mind busy, with lots of cluttered thoughts?

What kind of thoughts fill your mind?

Keep a thought journal with you. Write down the type of thoughts you have on a daily basis.

This is the beginning of thought awareness.

The quality of your thinking will affect your mindset – your state of mind. Subsequently, your emotional state will affect your body language, your voice tone and how you carry yourself. This in turn, also has an impact on how others – wrongly or rightly – may perceive you.

Low quality of thinking can give rise to what we call limiting beliefs – unhelpful thoughts that are not good for us.

For example:

“I’m not good enough…”

“I’ll never be truly successful…”

“I think I’m destined to struggle financially…”

“I don’t know if they like me…”

You can see how these types of thoughts are limiting. Even the most seemingly confident of people may have limiting thoughts. They may not even realise that they have them and may also be very good at hiding them from others’.

Let’s do a little exercise. Grab a pen and paper or type your answers on a word document.

Have a think about what you think are your top 5 limiting beliefs are and write them down. It helps to get them down onto paper (or onto a screen!).

Secondly, how well do you think you set boundaries with other people? How easily (or not) can you say NO to a request that you know that you simply can’t do or don’t have time to do?

Lastly, if your mind is busy, how often (or not) do you take a little bit of time out for yourself? What do you do to recharge your batteries?

Burnout – from not recharging your batteries and taking time out is the last thing you want. Especially if you don’t have the time to take out. Feeling overwhelmed can swamp your mind, draining you of concentration, focus, energy and emotional well-being. This can affect your self-esteem and how you feel about yourself.

That level of unshakeable self-esteem and emotional resilience is already within you. Your power. It’s there. It always was. It just may have become buried and distorted under layers of conditioning, situations, beliefs and thoughts.

It’s time to shine and step into your power, whenever you’re ready – to truly experience a deep level of contentment and fulfilment (which isn’t created by your external circumstances).

And, if there’s something holding you back, then it’s time to let go of it and embrace the real you.

If feeling empowered and letting go of self-doubts resonates with you, then please join me on a free webinar on Women’s Empowerment: 7 Ways to Build your Confidence by clicking on the link below.

When: Dec 5, 2019 13:00 London

Topic: Empowerment Webinar for Working Women

Register in advance for this webinar: CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO REGISTER:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IQCg0_c4QZO7ALhRP7Zt3g

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

I hope you can join us!

Desi x