 The great contradiction is that self-esteem literally means how you feel about yourself. But when we think about how to measure our self-esteem, we measure it by how we think others value us. So fundamentally, there's an issue there. The word means how I feel about myself, but how I translate the word is how I feel others feel about me. So then, despite all of this, how can we still feel value in ourselves and our daily lives? That's the big question. Hi guys, this is Linda from Brain Education TV. If this is your first time, welcome! Please consider subscribing to our channel, like this video, and click the bell for notifications of each new episode. In this video, I want to talk about self-esteem. Self-esteem is something that everyone to some degree might struggle with in their lifetime, especially with the rise of social media. We are constantly shown images of perfect bodies and perfect lifestyles and extravagant wealth and delicious looking food and luxurious vacations. All these images, they don't necessarily tell you negative things per se, and they seem very harmless and actually pretty entertaining. But the subliminal implications of constantly seeing that kind of perfectly polished image is that the viewer, when they compare their life to this person's life, it seems like because I am not living this kind of lifestyle, I am not worthy, I am not good enough, I am not pretty enough, nobody will love me, I am not rich enough. These are all the things that could happen inside of your mind as you just scroll through these images and that can be a real detriment to your mental health and also self-esteem. And the younger you are exposed to these types of images, the more effect it has on your own self-worth and self-value. So now young people more than ever are experiencing things like anxiety and depression, and I think that what I'm talking about today has a lot to do with it. I'm also somebody who struggled with self-worth, self-esteem issues. And when I think about it, I ask myself, where did this come from? Because definitely I'm not the only person who's feeling this. A lot of my friends and the people around me I could see had some similar issues of self-worth and self-esteem. So I thought about it, where does it come from? And if you really look back on your life, it starts from when you enter school. Because think about it, the minute you enter school, your self-worth and self-value, the way that you get praised and acknowledged by other people is how well you perform on a test or how well you behave. So it's not that it doesn't matter if I feel good about myself. It's what the teachers grade me for. It's what the teacher says my behavior is an A, my behavior is a B, or my academic skill is an A, or my academic skill is a B. It's up to the teacher to score me regardless of how I think about myself. So I might think that I'm doing great. I might think that I'm a great person. I might feel confident in me, but if the teacher doesn't think that way, then we live in a system where people place more emphasis on what the teacher thinks about you rather than what you think about yourself. And then if you bleed that out a little bit further from school, even at home, it's not so much what I think about myself. It's what my parents think about me. So a lot of the times young people, they think more about what will my parents say if I do this rather than how will I feel about myself if I do this? Even in the workplace, it doesn't matter how you think about your job performance. It's what your boss says your job performance is. So we're constantly conditioned to be aware and be conscious of what other people think about us. And even in social media, people post those pictures of perfectly polished bodies and perfectly polished places because I want people to think my life is great, even though I don't think my life is great. And if other people think my life is great, even though I don't feel good about myself, then that's better. That's what people mostly think. And that is why we live in this kind of conditioning where we're constantly creating attention from outside sources, acknowledgement from other people. And if we don't feel that recognition and acknowledgement from the people around us, then we suffer from things like anxiety, depression and most self-esteem. And if you think about it, this kind of system has been so ingrained in us that we don't really question it or we don't really think about it. We don't really see that this kind of conditioning is the issue of why I feel so bad about myself. The great contradiction is that self-esteem literally means how you feel about yourself. But when we think about how to measure our self-esteem, we measure it by how we think others value us. So fundamentally, there's an issue there. The word means how I feel about myself, but how I translate the word is how I feel others feel about me. So all of this is to say that the core issue of self-esteem nowadays is that we're so focused on valuing ourselves or grading ourselves based on what others think about us. So then, despite all of this, how can we still feel value in ourselves in our daily lives? That's the big question because it's not reasonable to try to fix this entire system of humanity that has been in place for many years. What's more wise for me to do is, okay, this system exists. How can I work around the system? How can I, despite this kind of structure, feel value in myself in my day to day? So I think the place to start to kind of reclaim your sense of self-worth and value is just like there's a grading scale in school and in the workplace. Have a grading scale for yourself in which you kind of use as reference to measure your worth and your value. So think about five core values that mean a lot to you. So it could be like service, it could be compassion, it could be positivity, just some core values that mean a lot to you and some kind of qualities that you wish to imbue as a human being on earth. So you don't have to answer this now, but after you watch this video, maybe take some time. Sit and really think about what five qualities do I really want to embody as a human being? So once you have that, you can grade your own life. Are my actions, are my thoughts, are my behaviors in line with those five core values? If so, how much? And depending on maybe you can see 90% of the time I'm living in that way, then you can give yourself an A. Or if you say, oops, 80% of the time I'm living those values, or 70% of the time, 60% of the time, half the time, be really honest with yourself and see in your own life. How do I live up to these values that I've set? And based on your own self grading, if you are satisfied with your performance, then keep going the way you are. However, but if you feel you're not satisfied with your performance, no matter what anybody is saying around you, if you're not satisfied with how you act, think, behave against your goals, then you need to think about how can I improve so that I can become satisfied with my own self? Because ultimately, I think that's the most important thing. No matter what anyone says to you about you, if I'm not satisfied with myself at the end of the day, you can have all the A's in the world and you still will be living in a mental health. So the key is honest self reflection and then adjusting yourself so that when you see how you live your life, you can become satisfied with your own self. Once you reach a place where you truly are satisfied with how you are living your life, there's no choice but your self-esteem to go up naturally. How could it not? Because when you observe the life that you are living, you think you're a pretty awesome person. You see somebody in you where they're embodying all the things that you really want in a person. So after you watch this video, take some time and really see it. Am I first of all living in a way where I value myself based on what others think? If you are, that's okay because most of us are. Then you have to ask yourself, is this how I want to continue to live my life? If it is, then great. You can continue living your life that way because you're happy. But if you're not happy and you want to live your life some other way where you can truly feel deep sense of worth and value, then think, what are the five qualities that I really want to see in myself? What are the five qualities that I really value in a human being? And then once you have that, see how do my actions, my thoughts, my daily behaviors measure up against those values? If they measure up over 90% of the time, give yourself an A. If they measure up 80% of the time, give yourself a B. If they measure 70% of the time, give yourself a C. If they measure 60%, D, 50%, F needs to work a little bit harder and be truly honest with myself. It's okay if you're living 50% of the time against your goals because the purpose is not to be perfect from the beginning. The purpose is to see yourself honestly and see how you can develop more from there. I'm really curious what those five qualities are for you and how you measure up and what you think about the topic discussed in this video. So let me know in the comments about your ideas, your thoughts, anything that's on your mind related to what I've shared here. Thanks for listening to this video. I'll see you again soon. Bye.