Self esteem , what we lack , the older generations say.:
Today, when we pick up a daily newspaper, we invariably find an increasing incidence of vandalism , fraud, rape, child abuse, battered spouses, murders,hate cres, ethnic cleansing, along with a multitude of other senseless violent acts that have become disturbingly common.
These are not the actions of people who like themselves. The solutions to greet many people and their problems , whether personal or national or global has a unperturbed way.
When the significance of good morale is well understood and it achieves the protuberance it deserves , a transformation will begin, for as the people will learn they’re deserving of self respect , their respect for others will willy-nilly increase. Most of our behavior has been shaped by our parents, caregivers and authority figures who play an integral part in our early upbringing and were responsible for crystallizing our ideas about ourselves and the world. While everyone has self esteem , only a small percentage of us have high self esteem.
High self esteem denotes that we accept ourselves unconditionally exactly as we are , we appreciate our value as a human being. When on the other hand , if we have low self esteem , we believe that we have little intrinsic worth.
For the living examples, as a student everyone has faced or has friends who have been , and are panic-stricken of maths , but they were stupendous in maths till the middle School stage , gradually their self esteem became detestable when the fact that flagged in their head “ I won’t be able to pass “ , that’s when the psychological aspect strikes ! Giving an exam of mathematics felt like pushing oneself from a Cliff. Nevertheless , life is full of choices when it comes to education and career choices.
Going back to the real aspect of self esteem in every hypothetical day to day examples of life , everyone is victimized for certain facts of intrinsic interest . We believe our personal values are in direct proportions to the values of our accomplishments.
If we cannot accomplish certain results ,we tend to feel low about ourselves. Some of us try to try too hard to prove ourselves to other people , who doesn’t even matter , we lose our interest , we lose ourselves….!
With few genuine feelings of self worth , we try to create some and prove that we are somebody by our success and achievements. Because our desires for perfection is never ending , maybe too much influenced by fictions and Western world , but that’s how it works now ! Failing, rather than encouraging us to have more realistic aspirations, only leads to a mere punishing round of self blame and a resolve to drive ourselves harder next time.
If we do finally achieve our goals we are disappointed, despite everything we have done , we still feel empty inside. Vulnerable to influence the opinions of others, we desperately try to gain their countenance-endorsement and approval sometimes through venturesome and dangerous behavior. Thus we are at the mercy of our emotions, instead of controlling them ,we permit them to control us.
Since we allow possessiveness. Fear makes us greedy , and acquisitive, and feelings of self hate alternate with those of futility, unhappiness and depression. Sound self esteem is the basis for all self improvement.
As human beings , our potential is limitless, our abilities inexhaustible, and the possibilities for creative and constructive changes are endless. But, we don’t experience satisfactory progress towards our goals or make any lasting improvements unless we believe we deserve the good we want. Conditions in our lives will improve permanently only when we believe we are entitled to something better . So improving our self esteem inwardly is the vital ingredient for improving our lives !
In words of Aarti Thakur , one of India’s acid attack survivor :
“I could barely breathe. Everything turned silver black. I could feel the liquid seeping into my skin, causing it to melt off. I ran to a police officer and screamed that I had been attacked again,” recalls Aarti in a calm, measured voice. The damage to her face was minimised because she was wearing a scarf wrapped around it. But the acid did burn through her forearms, neck, and parts of her cheeks and eyebrows.
Three years on, Aarti, who is now 25, is fighting a legal battle against the people behind the assault, while trying to raise funds for the surgery she requires. After a year-and-a-half of seclusion in her house, she started working again and is beginning to regain confidence in her skills as well as her appearance. But she remains understandably furious about how the acid attack on her could have been prevented.
Her ordeal began in 2011, when the son of her landlady professed his love for her.job at an IT company. But she didn’t recognise the attacker and the police wrote it off as a simple case of attempted robbery.
Terrified that she had been intentionally targeted, Aarti decided to move to another suburb of Mumbai with her single mother and younger sister, who were dependent upon her. A second attempted attack took place a little over a month later. This time there was no officer at the station to take her complaint.
Aarti grew suspicious; only a few people knew where she had moved to and her former landlady was one of them. On January 30, 2012, she was shocked to spot her son standing outside her office building. The very next day, a man carrying acid worth Rs 5 (8 cents) in a bottle changed her life forever.
This time the police finally swung into action, arresting the son, his mother, and two accomplices. Offended by the perceived slight to his dignity, and jealous of her impending marriage, the son allegedly hired two men to procure and splash acid on her as a final act of revenge.
Subscribing to a patriarchal mindset where women are expected to smile demurely and quietly acquiesce to declarations of love, some men become enraged over such “unrequited love”. Nishita Jha, a writer researching gender violence in India, says: “It comes from an innate belief that you can possess the other person. The idea that the woman has agency or autonomy is inconceivable to them. Such as in a rape case, the question of seeking consent doesn’t even cross the mind.”