Self-esteem isn’t just about how you view yourself. It’s also about how you’re seen and supported by those around you.
Do you understand just how much your sense of self-worth is intertwined with the relationships you build?
Maintaining self-esteen within your fanily communication group
5 Tips to Improve Your Self-Esteem
- Treat yourself with kindness
- Build a positive network around you
- Learn to set and achieve goals
- Develop a growth mindset
- Set aside time for something you enjoy doing on a regular basis
Darlene Lancer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and expert on relationships, narcissism, and codependency. This is the definition she uses in a post on Psychcentral.com on May 10, 2019 :
‘Self-esteem is what we think of ourselves.
With positive self-esteem, we have confidence and self-respect.
We’re OK with our abilities, who we are, and our competence.
Healthy self-esteem makes us resilient and hopeful about life. ‘
(Keep in mind that a healthy esteem can fluctuate some, but overall, it will be stable.)
Family Ties Are Important
Maintaining connections, with family, can play a strong role in how we feel about our own self-worth.
So, do your family bonds affect your self-esteem?
Think about this, if you have a strong support system, it can be a mirror reflecting your best qualities.
It’s not just a feel-good theory.
Scientific studies continue to show a direct effect between the quality of our relationships and our level of self-esteem.
High-quality relationships equip us with the ability to last when we are challenged by life’s hardships, which in turn, improves how we see ourselves.
People with higher self-esteem tend to cultivate stronger, more positive relationships.
This supports the claims that our self-worth feelings shape our relationships, and our relationships, in turn, shape our feelings of self-worth.
This means that our connections with others are not just fun add-ons to our lives. They are important to our mental and emotional well-being.
Yes, you can live a happy and successful life when you have no family. It is harder, and a life I can’t imagine having lived with a full family from birth.
So for you with less family, maybe you can just read the word family to mean friends. The same thing works for friends’ communication groups too.
Families Aren’t Perfect
When you are trying to build a family communications group, you may be trying to contact some of your family members that you have not been on such good terms with.
Often family members feel free to remind you of mistakes in your life and grind in the weak points they have stored in their memory of your life. These remarks may have been heard by the younger members of the family, and hurtfully used in conversations you were part of.
None of us is perfect. No one remains mistake-free. You have the right to put those times behind you and move on.
While wanting to have a better relationship with your family is a great goal, maybe that is a bit ambitious for where you and your family are right now.
Maybe having a communication group with your family isn’t a good idea right now. You can practice with friends. Invite a couple of school friends, or co-workers from your old job, from your church who moved away, or from your exercise group.
Learning to stay n touch is a great skill to have. It can be used in many situations. Strengthening your network is important.
Not everyone has the urge to build ties through staying n touch. There is nothing wrong with you if you have trouble seeing yourself enjoying a family group. Some families just aren’t good for exposing yourself to. Sometimes it is better to limit your family group to the ones who do get along or are more pleasant to correspond with.
Get your group going, and enjoy the benefits of getting to know the ones you can, and building your family or friend bonds. They are important for your self-esteem and who knows, as the less-than-civil friends or family see the bonds that are growing for you and the members, maybe they will want to be included.
At that point, your communication charter with its suggestions may be all that is needed to keep everyone supportive and responsive to being a positive member of the group.
Don’t allow those members to make you feel bad because of their remarks. Even written remarks can be hurtful, and this is not what you want in your life. Just remove them from the group email and move on with the rest.
How to Cultivate Your Self-Esteem
Let’s talk about the business of improving your self-esteem.
I have spent years working on my self-esteem and I have tried some things that worked and some that didn’t.
As we think about some of the more obvious things that go into building self-esteem, we will see they are not something new and exotic. They are proven to work, most of the time. You have to be ready to build this part of your personality to make it better.
Self-esteem is not just a sense of self-worth. it’s the bedrock of your mental health and overall well-being.
Let’s start with treating yourself with kindness.
Self-compassion is a key player in self-esteem. This means being understanding and forgiving towards yourself instead of harshly self-critical. Think about how you’d treat a friend in your situation, and show yourself the same empathy.
Next, you will benefit from finding out about the value of setting achievable goals.
These goals are the stepping stones that can lead you to larger successes.
Each time you achieve one, take a moment to celebrate it. This reinforces your belief in your competence and skill.
The Simple Act of Developing a Growth Mindset
I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of setbacks.
Instead of viewing them as failures, see them as opportunities to learn and grow.
Changing to this perspective can radically change the way you approach challenges. As a result, maintaining healthy self-esteem in a positive world is an easier way to improve your feelings of self-worth.
Don’t underestimate the power of being surrounded by positives.
Build a support network that encourages you and makes you feel better. Fill your life with positive affirmations. I like to remind myself from time to time that I am God’s child.
Listen to music that makes you feel happy.
Read books that inspire you.
Self-care is an often overlooked aspect of self-esteem.
Block out time for activities that nurture your body, mind, and spirit, like exercise, meditation, or a hobby that you love.
As you take care of yourself, your self-esteem is going to flourish.
Improving Family Ties While Building a Communications Circle
If you want to build an effective communication group in your family clan, strong family connections will make their way into the group. Not everyone will communicate as openly, or as often as others.
This is alright. The different personalities within your family will reflect themselves in communication. I am always surprised by how much one of the grandkids can say in how few words.
Let’s face it, without a solid foundation of trust and intimacy, efforts to encourage open dialogue will likely fall flat. When learning to communicate in a group, most of us are shy, and hesitant to do more than a surface hello.
In my opinion, one of the best strategies for building this foundation is to introduce what I like to call a ‘communication charter’.
This is essentially a set of guidelines or principles that all family members agree on for healthier communication habits. Simple guidelines that have people being polite to each other, and respectful are usually enough to keep a group in line.
Technology, for all its flaws, can be a blessing when it comes to keeping a family knit together. Setting up a family email weekly or monthly call can bridge those physical distances.
Often when everyone else is busy, I will check and there is an email from someone and we chat back and forth easily, and it is great company for me.
Would you like to see some of your family members having shared communications like this?
If I get a bit too nosy, they can just ignore the question, and I know I have been heard, but this is not a subject to discuss for now.
It’s also important to break down barriers and encourage everyone in the family to express their thoughts and feelings openly. With the assurance that their voices will be heard and respected, family members are more likely to share and listen actively.
If you want to see real change, don’t overlook the power of family traditions and shared activities. These not only strengthen bonds but also give everyone a sense of belonging and identity that’s hard to replicate in any other way.
Sami’s take on “Maintaining Self-Esteem Within Your Family Communication Group”
Your efforts to improve connections within your family do more than just create a bond. You are planting the seeds for lasting resilience and strong self-esteem among all family members.
Getting to know each other can make for feelings of understanding and appreciation of each other.
When you regularly communicate together with family and you are aware of what is going on for each other you connect.
Most of the time the connection is built because our lives are so similar. Yes, most of us are into regular routines, and building a life that we want to live.
The life I want for myself is downright boring to the younger members of my family. We want different things at the end of the day, but we all want to be able to make good choices for our day and to have success along the way.
Remember, maintaining connections with your family while building a communications group is an ongoing journey. One that evolves as your family grows and changes.
There is no one I would rather exchange a few thoughts and ideas with than my kids or grandkids. From trading recipes to sharing a sad thought to asking for help with a tech problem. They care, and want to help, just like I care for them and want to help.
You can always adjust your approach down the road, but the key is to maintain those communication lines, keeping them open, honest, and full of love and respect.
I really hope that you’ve found these suggestions helpful and that they inspire you to strengthen your own family ties.
A lot is happening very quickly in our lives, but the constants that remain are the love and connection we share with those closest to us.
I’d love to hear your feedback or stories about how you maintain your family connections—do share!
Thank you,
Sami
https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-self-esteem?utm_source=ReadNext#1
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