Poor Self-Esteem vs. Healthy Self-Esteem

People with poor self-esteem often rely on how they are doing in the present to determine how they feel about themselves. They need positive external experiences to counteract the negative feelings and thoughts that constantly plague them. Even then, the good feeling (from a good grade, etc.) can be temporary.

Healthy self-esteem is based on our ability to assess ourselves accurately (know ourselves) and still be able to accept and to value ourselves unconditionally. This means being able to realistically acknowledge our strengths and limitations (which is part of being human) and at the same time accepting ourselves as worthy and worthwhile without conditions or reservations.

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One of the problems that I have sometimes it's having low self-esteem. Sometimes I look at the accomplishments of other people around me and get depressed and lower the value of the task on hand or even sometimes completely disqualify it, and in doing so I feeling even more depressed about myself. This is certainly a symptom of low self-esteem.

The first step was to identify it, the next step is to manage it. I think bit by bit I can counter this problem.

Done exams

Schools with UTC has came to an end with the controls exam yesterday. It went fairly well except the length.

Now it is just about focusing on the finish my work term, and then Italy for a week, then Canada!

Need to learn how to make right decisions...

One of the most important things I need to improve on...

Back from Spain

Wow. That was one of the most memorable trips since coming to Europe. Spain's mix of Latin and Arabic cultural makes it standing out from the rest of the countires I have visited. Pictures and stories will follow, but just one quick post about an incident on our last night in Spain.

On the last night of our stay in Spain, me and Vince made an awesome dinner and were ready to enjoy our last meal in Spain. During the dinner, we overheard couple people chatting besides us about international issues and one guy who appeared to be an American made the comments that he feels all the Canadians hate Americans, and he also thinks that by putting a Canadian flag on our backpacks is an away of saying “I don’t want to be an American”. I was a bit disturbed since he probably made that comment up based on the encounters with a few Canadians if not based on pure feeling and imagination.

Couple personal comments,

We would like to distinguish ourselves from the Americans because we are fundamentally different people. We may share the same continent and the same language but our historical background is totally different, and therefore our cultures are different. Are Chinese people and Korean people are the same just because we share the same skin color? Are Indian and Pakistani people the same just because they are neighboring each other? The answer is of course not.

Putting a flag on our backpacks is not directly directed to the Americans, it’s just a way of saying I am proud to be a Canadian. It’s like putting a name tag on your shirt the first day at your work, a way to open yourself up. Putting our flag on our backpacks also forces us to be good ambassadors of our country in behaving ourselves, since any negative actions will be immediately attributed to our country.

We have a good international reputation, and it needs to be up kept. We just know how to do it right.

This is not good

As Rohit had rightfully pointed out in the previous entry, it seems that my English skills have been decreasing ever since my landing here in Europe. This is certainly not a good sign.

It is inevitable, however, as the usage of the language decreases you are less good at it. I think learning a third language had given me the incentives to go back and relearn my first two, being Chinese and English respectively. Back to the 5 paragraph essays...