Reflection
Look at the list below. Congratulate yourself for all of the things that you have done in the last week. For the ones you haven’t tried yet think about how they may help you and how you can include them in your day to day life.
- Do activities that you enjoy.
- Spend time with positive, supportive people.
- Set yourself an achieveable challenge.
- Be helpful and considerate to others.
- Try not to compare yourself to other people.
- Try to do regular exercise, eat healthily and get enough sleep.
- Be assertive – don’t let people treat you with a lack of respect.
- Use self-help books and websites to develop helpful skills, like assertiveness or mindfulness.
- Learn to challenge your negative beliefs.
- Acknowledge your positive qualities and things you are good at.
- Get into the habit of thinking and saying positive things about yourself.
Self-praise is an important part of improving your self-esteem, while it may feel uncomfortable at first, it gets easier and really helps to build towards a better more positive future. Don’t forget to give yourself praise every time you achieve one of the above.
It can be difficult for people to express their feelings assertively. It is important to state how you feel using ‘I’ statements, as no one can disagree with how you feel and it doesn’t sound like you are blaming the other person. For example if you said to someone ‘you make me feel lonely’ versus ‘I feel lonely’. It can be helpful to have a structure to how you share difficult feelings.
Here is an example:
DESCRIBE THE SITUATION – “when we don’t spend time together”
EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS – “I feel lonely”
SPECIFY WHAT YOU WANT TO HAPPEN – “I would like us to have at least one evening a week together”
STATE THE OUTCOME – “that way we can have quality time together”
