The PsycholEdgy Podcast with Dr Paul
The PsycholEdgy Podcast with Dr Paul
Improving your Self-esteem and Self-Confidence in Academic/Educational Performance
Building your self-esteem and self-confidence when things are not going your way can be tough. In this episode of the podcast learn what self-esteem and self-confidence have in common with achievement in education and in life. If you can engage in different thinking and strive to build positivity in your life, you will prosper and be more successful. Learn how to develop your positive self-talk to your advantage.
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Music "Into the Step" by Hidden
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Welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Dr. Paul. Edgy by name and by nature. The Psychology Podcast will provide you with a competitive edge from education through to registration. Dr. Paul supports your transformation into becoming a psychologist, counsellor or allied mental health practitioner. Now here's Dr. Paul.
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, we're around the world today. My name is Dr. Paul and welcome to the Psychology Podcast, another episode for you to learn something about yourself that you can apply on your mental health psychology, counselling, or allied health professional journey. In this particular episode, we'll be talking about what healthy self-esteem and self-confidence can do in bringing more meaning into your life and support you on your academic journey. So sit back, relax, take time out for yourself and get comfortable as we talk about self-esteem and self-confidence. Many people experience low self-esteem or low confidence in their lives and this can affect particular situations but it's also very restricting and very debilitating for certain people.
Do you have a low self-esteem or low self-confidence it may be that you're an individual who has negative or disproportionate or disappointed experiences that have affected the way that you feel about yourself. This can also cause self-perpetuating cycle of negative thinking where negative expectations for your future discourage you from trying or lead to disappointing outcomes when in fact you may be doing quite well. For example, if you're lacking in self-confidence and you receive a low mark on an assignment, you may think, "What else could I expect? I'm not very intelligent. This just proves the way that I have been thinking about myself and I might as well leave this program or this course." And so here you can see that low self-confidence and getting a poor mark can actually self-perpetuate outcomes that might not necessarily leave you in a great place mentally, but also may not lead you in a great place to actually have another go at taking in the feedback and assimilating that for a future attempt.
If you have a healthy self-esteem and you receive a low mark, you might say "I wonder where I went wrong, I'll find out that so that next time I can do better." Although you may be disappointed about the low mark, you might also not feel so diminished as an individual, as we saw in the first self-perpetuating cycle of negative thinking. So low self-confidence can result in shyness, communication issues, social anxiety or a lack of assertiveness in your life, and low self-esteem may cause you to develop some strong, critical, internal voice, like an internal critic that tends to express itself very very loudly when you're feeling distressed, overwhelmed or judged by others. And indeed it might not be that you're being judged by others, it may be that you feel that you're being judged by others. And this inner critic then causes significant personal distress by contributing to the feelings of sadness, anxiety and anger that you might have on your academic journey.
So believing in your inner critic can cause you to think negatively about yourself, believe you to think about negative thoughts that they are always true when in fact they are not. Ignore your strengths and capabilities allows you to focus on the things that you have that are mistakes and failings as opposed to concentrating on the things that are positive such as your strengths and your capabilities. You would expect the worst to happen. You would avoid challenges or situations where you feel like you could be judged by others and what they think rather than what you think is appropriate for you. And so this can have a significant effect in your life and it can reduce your university or other academic setting performance due to fear and negativity. It can also interfere with your personal relationships, making communication with others extremely difficult. So what is self esteem and what is self confidence?
Your self-esteem refers to the way that you appreciate and value yourself. Your self-esteem develops as you change as a result of your life experiences and interactions with other people. This is a core concept to your identity. Self-confidence on the other hand is your belief in yourself and your abilities and this can help change a situation from being a negative scenario to a positive scenario based on you feeling confident in the circumstances that you would not necessarily be okay with at times when things are down. The chips are down. You get a poor mark. You get a mark you don't want. So getting self-confidence to overcome that challenge is an extremely important part of being confident in yourself. A healthy amount of self-esteem is what you require to ensure that you meet the challenges and have an enjoyable way of working. So how do we practice to ensure self-esteem and self-confidence are part of our makeup and we don't let this negative internal critic consistently tear us down in our achievements?
Well, improving self-esteem can be done through a thing called self-acceptance. So the practice of self-acceptance is about becoming more accepting of yourself and helping you feel okay about you, regardless of what other people or regardless of the situation you might find yourself in. Everybody makes mistakes. In fact, the way that we learn is to make mistakes. So it makes sense to make sure that we practice a couple of things in the self acceptance to ensure that we overcome some of these challenges. The first one is acknowledging that mistakes are part of learning, which is what I've just said. Always identifying the way that you may be able to solve a problem differently or change to get a different outcome. If you try strategy A for study and you don't do so well in your exam, try a different strategy and see how that goes. Yes, it's easier in the early years, first and second year or the start of your course, but that's the whole point. Ramp your knowledge about how you're going to perform up as you go on in your course and be critical of your behavior and trying to challenge it without being critical of yourself.
Who you are and what you do are two different things. You need to make sure you get a really good handle on what you need to change in terms of your behavior and what is actually a makeup and part of you. Another really important concept is to get to know yourself. So taking notice of your experiences or thoughts that increase or decrease your self-confidence or self-esteem and try and identify the strengths, abilities and achievements that will provide you with an honest appraisal that you can be proud of. No matter how small that win is, you can take that and be the champion or be the king. So thinking about the way things work for you, having those small successes are as important as celebrating a birthday. They are milestones to be celebrated and lauded. So think about what you'd like to change and improve about yourself and how you can go about doing that. Reprogramming your thinking is another great strategy. So paying attention to language you use, doing self-talk, making sure that you describe yourself to others or people around you in your social group and you're being more kind and more generous to yourself so that you can actually have this capacity for growth in mindset. Every change in behavior starts with a change in thinking.
If you recognize the challenge of your inner critic, take that focus, focus on something that's positive and value yourself, turn down all the things that make you feel negative or invaluable or reduce your capabilities, reprogram your thinking with positive self-talk and positive affirmations, and you can start to change the way that things work in your life. Making changes in your life is another really important one. If you want to improve low self-esteem and self-confidence, think about the way that you can change things in your life. So you might want to make changes to your study, your jobs, your relationships or develop new skills. Specifically when it comes to jobs, it's probably more a difficult scenario to change. Your social groups also are very difficult, but some people who have made radical changes have done exactly that. And in fact, the age of the giant resignation that we're going through right now is probably a sentiment around making changes in your life. I don't advocate for going to that extreme, but if you can make small specific goals that you can change in your life, break down each goal into these really achievable chunks and then build your success with each step moving forward, that could make enough change in your life to improve self-esteem and self-confidence.
Surround yourself with positive influences. So listening to this podcast is a positive influence. Keep listening, make sure that you take these tips tricks on hand and you learn from what's being said. It's vitally important for you to understand that there are more than one way to get out of a slump. Reward yourself. As I said before, celebrate those little milestones and successes like it's a birthday and practice this and keep your self-esteem and self-confidence up and every time you experience something that's a positive activity or a result for you that has value, celebrate it and reward yourself. Take time out, go for a walk, whatever it is that you do to celebrate, but obviously don't go too wild. And then share with others' last recommendation. Getting feedback from others about things that have been a challenge for you can be invaluable support for not only you, but for those around you.
You can help others to see themselves as being more capable and more worthwhile. And that's improving their self esteem and their self confidence. And in turn, this sort of karmic way of coming back to you really is a sensibility of I've helped someone else. I feel good about myself. It's a very altruistic approach. So there are my top tips for trying to get self-esteem and self-confidence up to the level that you need in order for you to become more successful in your academic journey. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. Wherever you're in the world today, my name is Dr Paul, signing off for another episode of the Psychology Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe. (upbeat music)