Table of Contents

Preface………………………………………………………………………………...……3
Training Objective…………………………………….………………………...………….3

Chapter One……………………………………………………………………..….....…...4

Self Esteem……………………………………………………………………………… ....4

Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4

1.1. How Low Self-Esteem Develops ..................................................................................... 5

1.1.1. Core Beliefs............................................................................................................... 6

1.2. How Low Self-Esteem is maintained ............................................................................. 8

1.2.1. Cycle of Low self-Esteem......................................................................................... 8

1.3. How to break the cycle of low self-esteem ................................................................... 9

1.3.1. Changing Thinking Patterns ................................................................................... 9

1.3.2. Challenging Your Thoughts ................................................................................ 11
1.3.3. Positive Notebook.................................................................................................. 12
2. Emotional Intelligence ..................................................................................................... 14

2.1. Dimensions of Emotional Intelligence ........................................................................ 14

 Preface

We use the phrase self-esteem to talk about the beliefs you have about yourself – what you

think about the type of person you are, your abilities, the positive and negative things about

you and what you expect for your future.

If you have healthy self-esteem, your beliefs about yourself will generally be positive. You

may experience difficult times in your life, but you will generally be able to deal with these

without them having too much of a long-term negative impact on you. If you have low self-

esteem, your beliefs about yourself will often be negative. You will tend to focus on your

weaknesses or mistakes that you have made, and may find it hard to recognize the positive

parts of your personality. You may also blame yourself for any difficulties or failures that you

have.

If you have low self- esteem and feel as if your life is a failure this manual will help you to

challenge these negative feelings and beliefs you hold about yourself. It explains where these

beliefs come from, how they become fixed and gives suggestions to help you change them. It

also covers what emotional intelligence is and how you can discover what your emotional

intelligence actually is.

Training Objective

At the end of this training, participants will be able to

• To understand core believe they hold about themselves and where these beliefs

come from

• To understand how people develop and maintain low self-esteem

• To cultivate your positive qualities and boast their self esteem

 Chapter One
Self Esteem
Introduction

Self-esteem describes how people feel about themselves. How people feel about themselves

influences their actions towards others and

what they can accomplish in life. People with

high self-esteem may have a high regard for

themselves. Having self-esteem does not mean

that you never get upset or angry with

yourself. Everyone gets frustrated at times. But

someone with high self-esteem can accept his or her mistakes and move on. If another person

tries to convince or persuade him or her to do something they really do not want to do, people

who feel good about themselves will be less likely to fall under another person’s pressure.

They will feel more confident that their own decision is the right one and will make their

own choices based on their own desires, and not the desires and values of others.

The idea of self-esteem is related with self-image and self-concept self-efficacy and self-

confidence. Sometimes people use these terms interchangeably though there exist substantial

difference between them.

• Self-esteem: Self-esteem refers to general feelings of self-worth or self-value.

• Self-efficacy: Self-efficacy is belief in one's capacity to succeed at tasks. General self-

efficacy is belief in one's general capacity to handle tasks.

• Self-confidence: Self-confidence refers to belief in one's personal worth and likelihood

of succeeding.
 • Self-concept: Self-concept is the nature and organization of beliefs about one's self.

Self-concept is theorized to be multi-dimensional. For example, people have separate

beliefs about physical, emotional, social, etc. aspects of themselves.

• Self-image. Self-image is how an individual sees him- or herself, it is one of the

components that make up self-concept

1.1. How Low Self-Esteem Develops

The opinions and beliefs we have about ourselves are influenced and shaped by the

experiences that we have had during our lives. This often (but not always) dates back to our

early childhood/adolescence, but we continue to be shaped by our day-to-day experiences

throughout our lives.

Learning about life and ourselves is gained through different ways. We learn by observing

what other people do or say and the way that we are treated by others, for example the

interaction with our families, the society that we live in, the school we went to and the peers

that we were/are influenced by. Other factors can also influence our self-esteem including

stereotypes and the media.

• Meeting high standards or being expected to be perfect. Not meeting someone else’s

expectations or standards. Constantly being criticized can also have a negative effect

• Being bullied or made fun of. This can result in believing thoughts such as “I’m ugly”

or “I’m stupid”

• Punishment, neglect, or abuse. How we are treated in life affects the way we see

ourselves. For example, if a child is unfairly punished, neglected or abused they may

come to believe very negative things about themselves. The same may be true for an

adult in an abusive relationship

 • Stress or financial worries. These can also cause low self-esteem, for example by

leading to thoughts that you can’t cope or that you are a failure

• Rejection. Feeling rejected by parents, friends, work colleagues etc. can have a

significant impact on the way we feel about ourselves

• Difficulties in fitting in or feeling different to those around you. Feeling as though

you don’t fit in, especially during late childhood and adolescence can influence how

you learn to view ourselves.

• A lack of positives. This could be growing up or living in an environment with a lack

of praise, encouragement, warmth and affection.

These factors can lead people to hold certain beliefs about themselves which are called core

beliefs.

1.1.1. Core Beliefs

These beliefs are strongly held beliefs about ourselves that influence what we think and how

we feel. They usually influence us subconsciously and we rarely ever challenge if these beliefs

are true.

Common negative core beliefs are:

• I am not worthy

• I am unlovable

• I am not good enough

• I am not important

• I never get things right

We all hold these beliefs and they are central to our being. Quite often just awareness that

these core beliefs may be shaping your thoughts and feelings can be helpful in challenging
 your view of the situation or yourself. Our thoughts about an event or situation are

often closely linked to our core beliefs and will affect a person’s self-esteem and self-

confidence in managing the event or situation.

Past
Past experience
experience

Negative core belief

Thoughts

Behavior Emotion

Physical reaction
 1.2. How Low Self-Esteem is maintained

1.2.1. Cycle of Low self-Esteem

Events from our past may be the starting point for the development of negative core-beliefs

and low self-esteem, but certain situations activate these beliefs and trigger a vicious cycle of

symptoms, which strengthen our negative core-beliefs. Our feelings, thoughts, and actions

are closely related, and a negative change in one area can have a negative effect on another
1.3. How to break the cycle of low self-esteem

The good news is that whilst we cannot change past experiences, we can start to change the

things we do in the present which are keeping the unhelpful beliefs going. We can start to

challenge the negative views that we have developed about ourselves, and break the cycle of

low self-esteem and self-confidence.

The first step is to try to break the cycle which can be done in a number of ways:

• Change negative thinking patterns

• Challenging unhelpful thoughts and the unhelpful beliefs you hold about yourself

• Uncover your strengths and positives

1.3.1. Changing Thinking Patterns

When things happen in the world around us, we usually have a number of thoughts about

the situation and how it relates to us. We are not usually aware of these thoughts, as they

often happen really quickly and unconsciously, and are often colored by our past

experiences. However, if they are quite negative and critical, it can affect how we feel about

ourselves and our ability to deal with the situation.

If you have negative beliefs about yourself, you can also start to ignore any positive

information like strengths, achievements and compliments and may only focus on things

such as mistakes, criticism and weaknesses. This acts to strengthen the negative beliefs that

you may hold about yourself.

 Common Unhelpful Thinking Styles

1. Jumping to conclusions

This is where we make a negative interpretation of an event, even though we do not know

all the facts.

“My manager has asked to see me in her office. I think I am going to be in trouble”.

2. Catastrophizing

An extreme form of jumping to a negative conclusion, where the importance of an event is

Exaggerated to become a catastrophe.

“I was late for work again today. My boss will be angry and as I am only bank staff,

I may be laid off. I won’t be able to pay my bills, so my house may

be repossessed and my children and I will be homeless”.

3. All or nothing

Thinking in black and white terms and not allowing for any ‘grey’ areas.

“If I don’t get this right the first time, then there is no point in doing it at all”.

4. Personalizing/labeling

Seeing ourselves as the cause of some negative external event or taking the view that we are

to blame

“Katy ignored me when I said hello today. Maybe she doesn’t like me anymore as I didn’t

make her a coffee”.

 5. Discounting positives

Focusing on negatives and not giving praise for the positive things we do.

“Ok, so I got my report approved today, so what? That’s only what’s expected of me”.

6. “Should” statements

Trying to motivate yourself with ‘should’, ‘must’ and ‘ought’ statements places unnecessary

Pressure and expectations on you. These pressures are unhelpful and can lead to feelings of

failure.

1.3.2. Challenging Your Thoughts

In order to start changing the way we think about ourselves and improve our self-esteem

there are a couple of strategies that you can use:

• Challenging unhelpful thoughts - Identify and question the critical thoughts you have

about your self

• Positive notebook - Helps you to look out for and identify your positive qualities

Both of these strategies aim to increase self-esteem by helping you to recognize and believe a

more positive view of yourself - replacing the critical overly negative view you might

currently hold.

Keeping a thought record

1. Situation: What were you doing? When was it? Where were you? Who were you

with?

2. Unhelpful thoughts: What was going through your mind just before you started to

feel this way? What images or memories do you have of the situation? In which

unhelpful thought style did you engage (ie. all or nothing thinking, catastrophizing)

3. Helpful thoughts: What might be an alternative more helpful thought?

 When trying to come up with a helpful thought, here are some tips to help you…

• What is the evidence to support the unhelpful thought? What tells you that this

thought is correct?

• What is the evidence that does not support the unhelpful thought? This is the hard

part because it is often overlooked, but ask yourself these questions: How would

someone else view the situation? How would I have viewed the situation in the past?

What might I say to a friend who was in a similar situation?

• What is the effect of thinking the way I do? Does it help me or make me feel worse?

• Now, is there an alternative, more helpful thought that could also be true to that

situation

1.3.3. Positive Notebook

Everybody has strengths and weaknesses, but when your self-esteem is low, you can start to

focus on the negatives and discount or ignore some of the positives about yourself.

This keeps the cycle of low self-esteem going, as you pay more attention to the negative

information which confirms your negative beliefs about yourself.

A way to start to try and get a more balanced picture of yourself, which will help improve

your self-esteem, is to keep a positive notebook.

Identify and list your positive qualities

When you have low self-esteem, it can often be easier to list all of your negative qualities,

and difficult to see the strengths you have, but here are some questions you can ask yourself

to identify your positive qualities:

• Is there anything that you like about yourself?

• What are the positive achievements of your life so far, however modest?
 • What obstacles have you overcome in your life?

• What would someone who cares about you say your qualities and strengths are?

Might there be a grain of truth in there?

• What strengths and qualities do you appreciate in others? Do you have any of these

yourself?

• What negative qualities do you not have?

It is important to list your answers however modest they seem to you. It is easy to dismiss

things as insignificant when your self-esteem is low, but they are all important evidence to

build a picture of all your strengths and positive qualities. Once you have come up with a list

of positive qualities, write them in your notebook, leaving room to add new ones in the future.

Daily recordings of positive qualities

Here is an example of what a daily record of positive thoughts may look like.

Day Evidence of positive quality Positive quality

Let another driver into the queue of
traffic
Considerate
Colleagues asked me to join them at
Thursday Likeable
lunch
Caring
Cooked dinner for partner despite
feeling tired

Sorted out problem for colleague at

work Helpful, skilled
Friday Spoke in meeting even though felt Determined
nervous Thoughtful
Sent friend a ‘get well soon’ card

Once you have created a list of your strengths, spend time every day trying to write down

one positive quality that you have shown on that day. It is important not only to record the

positive quality, but also some evidence of the quality. What did you do that tells you that

you have this quality?

 2. Emotional Intelligence

The ability to express and control our emotions is essential, but so

is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the

emotions of others. Imagine a world in which you could not

understand when a friend was feeling sad or when a co-worker

was angry. Psychologists refer to this ability as emotional intelligence, and some experts even

suggest that it can be more important than IQ in your overall success in life.

2.1. Dimensions of Emotional Intelligence

The publication of Goleman’s book in 1995 signified the beginning of a new trend in the

study of emotional intelligence. As a result, this concept became much more widely

recognized. In his prototype Goleman described Emotional Intelligence in terms of five realms

that are split among four sections. Two of these realms are related to personal competencies

while others are related to social competencies

Daniel Goleman’s model of emotional intelligence includes five realms.

1. Know your emotions.

2. Manage your emotions.

3. Motivate yourself.

4. Recognize and understand other people’s emotions.

5. Manage relationships (others’ emotions)

These five realms are broken down into four quadrants:

1. Self-Awareness.

2. Social Awareness.

3. Self-Management.

4. Relationship management
The idea of emotional intelligence is widely recognized as a positive trend, because it is

something that can be improved and developed. Personal competence is comprised of self-

awareness and self-management while Social competence is comprised of social awareness

and relationship management. In terms of emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-

management have to do with our ability to relate to ourselves. Social awareness and

relationship management have to do with our ability to relate to others.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness involves being able to read your own emotions and recognize their impact. It

also involves knowing your strengths and limits and having a sense of self-confidence. It’s

about having the ability to both recognize and better understand moods and emotions and

about understanding what drives those moods and emotions and how that affects others. In

order to practice this skill, you must develop an awareness of your own emotional states.

Self-Management

Self-management competencies involve having a sense of achievement, displaying honesty,

integrity and, trustworthiness and being able to keep disruptive emotions under control. It

also involves having a sense of optimism, being adaptable and flexible and recognizing and

seizing opportunities as they arrive. Those who practice this competency accept responsibility

and learn to choose their own emotional response.

Social Awareness

Social awareness competencies involve being able to sense other people’s emotions,

understanding their unique perspectives and learning to take an active interest in things
 they are concerned about. It also involves having a sense of organizational awareness

and a sense of service.

Relationship Management

Relationship management involves having a sense of teamwork and collaboration, being an

inspirational leader and learning how to resolve disagreements. Those who are well versed

in this competency know how to guide and motivate others, and use a wide range of tactics

for persuasion. Relationship management also involves being able to initiate and lead people

in a new direction and learning how to bolster other’s abilities through feedback and

guidance.