Self-esteem is the evaluation a person has of themselves: the way they perceive their own value, abilities and identity.
It is closely connected to awareness, and it is a central concept both in psychology and in coaching because self-esteem deeply influences emotional wellbeing, interpersonal relationships and the ability to face life’s challenges in an appropriate way.
Why Is Self-Esteem So Crucial?
Here are three clear examples of situations where self-esteem can truly influence the direction of your life — in both desired and undesired ways.
Job interviews: during an interview, a person with strong self-esteem presents themselves with confidence, communicates their abilities clearly and is not afraid to negotiate better conditions. Someone with low self-esteem, on the other hand, may minimize their skills or accept unfavorable offers for fear of not being good enough.
Relationships: in a couple, a person with healthy self-esteem knows how to express needs and boundaries without fear of rejection. Someone with low self-esteem may tolerate toxic behaviors or give up parts of themselves out of fear of losing the other person.
Important decisions: when facing a crucial choice, such as changing career, a person with strong self-esteem trusts their judgment and approaches change with greater confidence. Someone with low self-esteem may remain paralyzed by doubt, dangerously hesitating out of fear of making the wrong choice.
Health and wellbeing: neuroscience and psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunology increasingly highlight how emotional states can influence our biology. Self-esteem plays an important role in the emotional patterns we repeatedly experience.
Self-Esteem vs. Narcissism: What Is the Difference?
It is essential to distinguish between healthy self-esteem and narcissism.
Self-esteem is based on a realistic and positive evaluation of oneself, while narcissism is characterized by an exaggerated sense of superiority and a constant search for external admiration.
According to psychologist Craig Malkin, narcissism can be understood as a broad spectrum:
Malignant narcissism: controlling and manipulative.
Functional narcissism: people with healthy self-esteem, capable of respecting themselves and others.
Echoism: people who see themselves as lacking value and constantly put other people’s needs before their own, without legitimizing their own values and fundamental needs.
What Is Self-Esteem Built On?
As a coach, I want to invite you to reflect on what structures self-esteem, because this can help you better understand how you have built yours — both in its strengths and in its weak points.
From my perspective as a coach, the main components of self-esteem are:
Self-evaluation: the ability to recognize your strengths and weaknesses in a realistic way.
Self-efficacy: the belief that you are capable of reaching goals and overcoming obstacles.
Self-respect: respect and acceptance of yourself, regardless of success or failure.
Self-love: the ability to care for yourself and treat yourself with kindness and compassion.
Now you can understand why, at the beginning, I said that self-esteem has to do with awareness.
What Influences Self-Esteem?
Several factors can influence self-esteem.
Past experiences: successes, failures, relationships and feedback received during childhood, adolescence and adulthood can shape self-esteem.
Social environment: the presence or absence of support from family, friends and colleagues can have a significant impact.
Social comparison: comparing yourself, or being compared to others, especially in environments such as social media, can negatively affect self-esteem.
Personal beliefs: the beliefs a person holds about themselves, often influenced by experiences and internalized messages, can be either empowering or disempowering.
This is one of the most important things I learned from my teacher, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., and it has deeply shaped both my professional and personal path.
Please always remember this: what you believe about yourself and about the external world contributes to generating your reality.
For better or for worse, I will never stop saying this.
Why Is Self-Esteem Important?
At this point, it becomes necessary to ask: why is self-esteem so important?
Mental state: healthy self-esteem is associated with lower levels of anxiety, depression and stress.
Healthy relationships: people with healthy self-esteem tend to build more balanced and respectful relationships.
Resilience: self-esteem helps us face challenges and failures with greater determination and optimism.
Personal fulfillment: it supports motivation and the ability to pursue personal and professional goals with effectiveness and commitment.
Health and wellbeing: self-esteem contributes to emotional states that may influence the way we experience our body and our overall wellbeing.
From here, it becomes easy to see how the quality of your self-esteem can influence the direction of your life.
If you think about it: how much has your past, which has brought you to where you are today, been influenced or shaped by your level of self-esteem?
Self-Esteem and Neuro Emotional Facilitation™
This is one of the reasons why Neuro Emotional Facilitation™ — NEF™ focuses on emotional regulation and the transformation of negative emotional patterns, which are often connected to low self-esteem.
NEF™ is based on the idea that emotions are often linked to repetitive patterns that are activated in response to specific stimuli.
It uses different techniques to help people develop new emotional responses to situations they experience in the here and now, especially when those situations are somehow connected to past experiences.
NEF™ also takes inspiration from the concept of neuroplasticity: the brain’s capacity to create new neural connections.
Through repeated positive affirmations, conscious behaviors and reflective practices, the aim is to support the three centers of thought — the cranial brain, the heart brain and the enteric brain — in developing a healthier relationship with self-esteem.
This can help reduce the emotional weight that often influences how we perceive ourselves.
NEF™ uses different techniques to support:
Alignment of the intelligence centers: the cranial brain, heart brain and enteric brain are invited to work more coherently in their different behavioral and emotional functions.
Access to inner resources: those same resources that may have been weakened or obscured by unbalanced self-esteem.
Greater awareness of body and mind energy: through practices that involve attention to body points associated with emotional states, helping the person reconnect with their own internal resources.
As a coach and facilitator, in my work I have seen how teaching clients to work directly on their own self-esteem can be even more important and effective than simply delegating this essential task to an external practitioner.
The person learns to facilitate themselves and to become an active creator of their own change.
In my view, this has immense value.
Practical Suggestions to Support Self-Esteem
I want to offer you a few suggestions.
They do not replace NEF™ or a coaching path, but they can help.
Practice self-compassion: treat yourself with kindness, especially during difficult moments. The more harshly you treat yourself, the more you will continue to suffer. Observe yourself: how do you really treat yourself? Look at your life: what does it say about the way you treat yourself?
Celebrate your successes: recognize and appreciate your achievements, even the small ones — even the microscopic ones.
Avoid excessive comparison: focus on your path instead of comparing yourself to others. Others are others. They have their own journey — and their own masks too.
Challenge negative thoughts: identify and reframe limiting beliefs about yourself. I know, this can be particularly difficult. Let’s be honest: doing it alone can be a heavy task.
Surround yourself with positive people: build relationships that support and encourage your personal growth, as well as the growth of those around you. In simple words: spend time with good people and stay away from toxic ones. They can be like the bubonic plague — and this is not a joke, it is something life tends to prove quite clearly.
Set realistic goals: establish achievable objectives in order to build a real and concrete sense of competence and accomplishment.
Take care of yourself: dedicate time to activities that nourish your body, your mind and your soul, such as physical exercise, meditation or hobbies. Personally, I enjoy photography, cycling trips and spending time with new people.
In Summary
Self-esteem is a fundamental pillar of a balanced and satisfying life.
Do not underestimate it.
Working on it requires time and commitment, but the benefits can be deep and long-lasting because they shape both your present and your future life.
I hope these lines are helpful to you.
I wish you good reflections, and I wish you the best.