Key Concepts:
Vocabulary: mental/emotional health, resilient, self-esteem, competence, hierarchy of needs, self-actualization
Developing Your Self-Esteem
What Is Mental and Emotional Health?
Main Idea: Mental and emotional health helps you function effectively each day.
Do you see yourself in a positive way? Are you able to handle challenges and setbacks well? The ability to answer “yes” to these questions is one sign of mental and emotional health. Mental/emotional health is the ability to accept yourself and others, express and manage emotions, and deal with the demands and challenges you meet in your life. Having good mental/emotional health is an important part of your total health.
Most people have ups and downs throughout their lives. For example, you may have felt proud because you performed well during a school play, but were disappointed when you didn’t make the varsity team at school. Such ups and downs are normal, especially during the teen years when you are adapting to many changes in your life.
The Importance of Mental and Emotional Health
Mentally healthy people are, in general, happy and enjoy their lives. They feel confident and comfortable spending time alone or with others. They’re also flexible and can cope with a wide variety of feelings and situations.
Good mental and emotional health influences your physical and social health too. For example, if you’re worried, you might eat an unhealthful diet, not get enough sleep, or stop exercising regularly. If you’re worried and become irritable, your relationships with friends and others may suffer.
Characteristics of Good Mental and Emotional Health
How do you know if you have good mental and emotional health? Here are some general characteristics.
Sense of belonging. Feeling close to family members, friends, teachers, and others provides you with support.
Sense of purpose. Recognizing that you have value and importance as a person lets you set and reach goals.
Positive outlook. Seeing the bright side of life reduces stress and increases your chances of success.
Self-sufficiency. Having the confidence to make responsible decisions promotes your sense of independence and self assurance.
Healthy self-esteem. Having healthy self-esteem helps you accept and recover from difficulties and failures.
Everyone has to manage difficult and stressful situations. Mentally and emotionally healthy people handle stresses in positive ways. These people are resilient. They have the ability to adapt effectively and recover from disappointment, difficulty, or crisis.
Self-Esteem
Main Idea: Healthy self-esteem is necessary for good mental/emotional health.
Developing self-esteem, or how much you value, respect, and feel confident about yourself influences the other characteristics of good mental health. If you feel valued, loved, and accepted by others, and you value, love, and accept yourself your overall attitude and outlook will be good. Having good self-esteem will also affect your overall attitude and the health choices you make. Taking healthful risks can raise your self-esteem. Trying new challenges can also raise your sense of competence, or having enough skills to do something.
How You Develop Self-Esteem
You probably remember a time when your family praised you for doing something well, or reassured you and gave you advice on tasks you hadn’t yet mastered. When you are praised for mastering a task or reassured when you do not, your self-esteem increases. Self-esteem also increases when you believe that you can succeed, or when you master new challenges.
No one succeeds at new tasks and activities all the time.
If you don’t succeed at a new task or activity, think about the reasons why you may not have succeeded. How did you prepare? Was it realistic to expect to succeed on your first try? Also, everyone has unique abilities. You may have to work harder at a new task or activity if you do not have the unique abilities to master that task or activity easily.
How you react emotionally to situations also affects your self-esteem. Self-talk, the encouragement or criticism that you give yourself, can affect your self-esteem. Using positive self-talk will strengthen your self-esteem. Try to replace negative thoughts by using positive self-talk.
Benefits of Healthy Self-Esteem
Healthy self-esteem helps you feel proud of yourself and your abilities, skills, and accomplishments. You believe that setbacks are temporary. You have the confidence to confront challenges and overcome them.
Healthy self-esteem also gives you the confidence to try new things. You’re not afraid to try a new sport, or join a club at school, or even get a job and learn new tasks. People with healthy self-esteem know that they may not be as good at some tasks as they are with others. They don’t see themselves as a failure if they don’t succeed at something.
Improving Your Self-Esteem
You can improve your self-esteem and your overall mental and emotional health.
You can control many things that affect your self-esteem. Avoid criticizing yourself, or spending time with people who criticize you. Set realistic expectations, and don’t expect everything to be “perfect.” Expecting perfection can prevent you from enjoying your successes. You may judge a success as a failure if it doesn’t meet your criteria for perfection. These additional suggestions can help you improve your self-esteem.
Developing Self-Awareness
Main Idea:
Understanding your needs and meeting them in healthy ways will help you reach your highest potential.
As infants, we rely on others to meet our basic needs. Those needs include food, clothing, and physical safety and comfort As we grow, our needs become more complex. The psychologist Abraham Maslow created a theory that explains human development and motivation . The hierarchy of needs is a ranked list of those needs essential to human growth and development, presented in ascending order, starting with basic needs and building toward the need to reach your highest potential.
Maslow’s hierarchy shows that our earliest motivations are to satisfy our physical needs. Once these basic needs are met, we become interested in meeting the need to belong and be loved, the need to be valued and recognized, and the need to reach our potential or to achieve self-actualization or to strive to be the best you can.
As well as understanding needs, you need to learn how to meet them in healthy ways. Meeting a need in a high-risk way will not lead to healthful development. For example, some teens may join gangs in order to belong to a group. Joining a gang is a high-risk behavior that affects all sides of the health triangle.
Try using Maslow’s model to evaluate your personal development. What needs are you focused on right now? How are you meeting those needs? As your self-awareness grows, you can begin to take more control of your personal growth. Reaching out to others can help you develop deeper relationships and a stronger support group.
© 2020-2025. All Rights Reserved.