Self-esteem

Self-esteem is usually worse effected by my procrastination. You clearly have the time and even the skills to do something but because your will-power is not enough, you do not get something done. So to break this cycle I would have to regain my sense of self-esteem.

From my personal experience, when you feel down and depressed, your world-view becomes distorted, narrowed and you start losing perspective on things. In that circumstance, it is very hard to be self-aware of your strengths. Even when things are going well, it is far easier to see your weakness rather than our strengths. I guess that’s human nature.

For me, I have always been taught by my parents to be modest about my achievements. Modesty is apparently even one of the seven Virtues for Catholics but for me, sometimes I have lost an appreciation for the things that I have achieved. For example, when someone congratulates me on an achievement of mine, my instinctive response is to play it down and make it easier than what it really was. I guess that’s a rather neat social mechanism as many people have a tall poppy syndrome as people in general do not like people boasting about things. I guess there is truth in that, some people have an exaggerated sense of self worth and sometimes that self worth is not actually based on anything concrete. But for me, I think I under appreciate my achievements. I see them as something that is natural right for me rather than remember all the hard work and effort I put in.

Thinking this way on “blue days”, I feel inferior, inadequate, stupid and useless (that is why I get annoyed when my friends call me “clueless”). My mind instantly focuses on my weakness and forgets my strengths because they are a “right” for me, they were easy to get. By thinking this way, my strengths have no value to me. Value to a person is entirely subjective it is merely a measure of the work you put into something. Something that you put a lot of work into will have a corresponding amount of value to you.

I can recall one day in high school I told my friends that I wanted to get into medical school. In that conversation, I told them my self-doubts. They were on my people skills. I was very scared that I did not have the people skills to get past through the dreaded “Interview.” I had heard stories about very smart students doing very well in university but not getting pass the interview. I also heard stories about Chinese students in particular who were apparently discriminated against. As I relayed my doubts, my friends listened intently and they gave me their opinions. All of them thought I could make it. They even encouraged me and gave me examples about some of the people skills that I do possess. Looking back, they clearly believed in me, who I am and what I can achieve rather than looking realistically at who I am then. Because at that particular time, if you were to assess me realistically in terms of my people skills, I was nearly autistic! Perhaps that is an exaggeration, but I had severe difficulties in expressing myself, even to my familiar teachers (I stuttered). But my friends looked past that and saw my potential. I think they believed in my power to create, to strive and to reach. They saw and believed in me even when I did not believe in myself. That gave me great confidence in myself.

It also taught me that sometimes the most objective people are not yourself but the people who truly know you best. You forget about your strengths but your true friends acknowledge and remind you of them.

From these experiences, I now realize that I have to work actually hard to focus on my strengths, to remember how much I have achieved rather than focusing on the negatives like how much I need to work on about the unchangeable like why I am so dumb compared to X.