Conclusion: Continuing your journey to self-esteem
We have now covered the five areas in the VALUE acronym for helping you on a journey towards a reasonable level of self-esteem:
Value yourself
Accept yourself
Look after yourself
Understand yourself
Empower yourself
Each chapter has contained exercises and tips to try out. Now that you have finished reading, you may find it helpful to reflect on what has been most useful for you in the ideas I have set out, so that you can put them to use in the most practical and helpful way.
If you are keen to raise your self-esteem further, why not create a project plan to help you towards your destination, focusing on the ideas that you think are most likely to help you personally? You can create your project plan by doing the following:
Step 1: Assess your current level of self-esteem
Complete a questionnaire relating to self-esteem such as the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (page_201)
Make a list of a few outcomes that you would like to move towards: these might include items directly relating to the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale such as ‘Learning to take a more positive attitude towards myself’ or ‘Recognizing my good qualities’ or they might include other important issues relating to self-esteem for you that you want to address.
Step 2: Set yourself some specific actions to try out or exercises to complete
Look through the parts of the book which you think are most likely to be helpful for you in moving towards your outcomes and select from there a small number of specific actions, exercises or ideas to try out over the next one to two weeks
Work out when you are going to try out the actions, exercises or ideas. Make sure that you set yourself goals in relation to doing them which are ‘SMART’, i.e.:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic and relevant (to what you are trying to achieve overall)
Time framed (say when you are going to do an action or exercise and how many times or for how long).
Step 3: Record your actions in writing on a project plan
• Write down your commitment and plan it with clear goals – this has been shown by research to be helpful to people in moving towards their objectives
• Give your project plan a name that means something to you – ideally the name will encapsulate a change in your behaviour or way of thinking that you think will help you to move towards your outcomes (so you might for example call it Value Yourself! or Balance or Assertive Lisa or Dave the Brave or Sparkle! – the more personal the name is to you the better; the main aim is to find a name that is useful and will help to motivate you)
• Keep the project and the project name in your consciousness – e.g. by reading the project plan daily or by putting your project name somewhere where you will see it frequently. You can also remind yourself of your project in creative ways if you want, such as by drawing an image of you doing an action on the project plan, or keeping a photo of someone or something that you think may inspire you to pursue the project!
Step 4: Act on your plan
• Try to implement the actions on your project plan and record your progress
• Update your project plan at regular intervals (say, weekly or fortnightly initially), adding new actions or committing to continue existing actions if appropriate
• Try to adopt a pragmatic, experimental attitude. If something in your plan works then, unless there is good reason not to, continue with it until you no longer need to; if something in your project plan doesn’t seem to work then don’t be overly self-critical, just ask yourself why that might be, how you might refine it so that it is achievable or whether to replace it with another action.
Step 5: Review Your Progress
• After a reasonable period (say three months) assess how far you have come by redoing your initial self-esteem questionnaire to see if any of your answers have changed
• Reflect on any actions you have taken and whether they have helped you to move towards your desired outcomes
• Once you have done that, update your project plan and the outcomes in it if required.
If the actions you set yourself in your plan seem tedious or difficult to you, then you may find it helps to motivate you if you give yourself a small, simple reward (e.g. a few hours out doing something you like) each time you achieve a certain number of actions or carry out a particularly tedious or difficult task.
Here is a sample format you can use for your project plan. If you want to adjust the format to make it more interesting for you then please do! Feel free to be creative:
Good luck on your journey – and if you can, approach it with a spirit of adventure!
