Tuesday, 11 August 2009
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Tips to Build Your SELF in Self-Esteem
This post is sort of in addition to my open letter to my body post. I was having lunch with my friend the other day (who also happens to read this blog), and we talked about body issues. It’s rather unfortunate that people of all sizes have image issues, even if one is already very petite. I’m a pretty small girl compared to the average, but I didn’t always think that way. Sharing my body issues is a very personal thing for me, as sometimes I feel like as a nutrition student, I should be “perfect” in my health regime. But I’m normal; the media’s ideals impact me just like anybody else. And sometimes I feel that the Asian ideals of beauty are even harsher and more unhealthy.
When I was 18 (a 1st year student), I pushed my body to the point where I lost my period. Fortunately, I wasn’t in this state for very long. But even when I was that “skinny”, I was still really unhappy with myself. What may seem strange is that I’m way heavier now, but I’m so much happier overall and with my body. I’ve made peace with it and I’m learning to love it. Sure, I still have my bad days when I feel like a whale, but I want to treat my body with love and respect by nourishing it and keeping it active.
I’m going to discuss the things that have helped me to reach this state of loving myself for who I am. It is by no means a state of nirvana or enlightenment! It’s difficult to ignore society’s ideal for thin-ness. But there is so much more to an individual than just appearance. These are tips from my personal experience growing up.
Build your MIND
The human mind is the most powerful thing you own. I would much rather somebody say that I am intelligent and thoughtful than hot or beautiful. (There are plenty of hot/sexy women out there, but if you are stupid, people will disrespect or objectify you.) As I come closer to graduation, I am worrying about my resume and the competitive dietetic internship that I want to apply for. When I was skinny, I was obsessed. All I could think about was how many calories I was taking in and burning off. If you spend that much time obsessing, you will not be able to use your time effectively to study or work. Getting involved in extracurricular activities and volunteer work has added a new sense of value to the person that I am. I work under my professor now doing research, and I feel like she values my mind and critical thinking capabilities, otherwise she wouldn’t have hired me right. This is all helping me to build my resume. In the end, when I apply for internships, it doesn’t matter if I am skinny or not. If there is nothing on my resume and my marks suck, the employer won’t want me. And I NEED that employer to think I’m the best candidate out there.Build your PERSONALITY
When I was skinny, I was also grumpy, impatient, and not as nice to people. Food is FUEL. It helps you LIVE. The “jolly fat person” is a stereotype, but a too restrictive diet will not give you the energy to let you be who you are and shine. Plus, looks are not everything when it comes to attraction. There are plenty of guys out there that I can be physically attracted to, but if they are too quiet or do not have a good personality, then I am not interested at all. I’ve had plenty of guys tell me that they didn’t think I was anything special when they first met me. But after getting to know me and talking to me, they started thinking I was getting prettier by day. Personality affects how attractive a person is. There is a bias. Ever notice how you find your dear friends really attractive, but with your enemies, you pick out all their flaws? I think that “Ugly Betty” is absolutely beautiful and I would love to get to know her.Build your SUPPORT NETWORK
I think what brought me down the most when I was in 1st year was that I didn’t have much of a support/friends network. I found it difficult to make friends in 1st year because the classes were so large. I wasn’t involved in school activities, and I had also moved across the country to attend university, so I didn’t have as much family support as other students. People who obsessively diet often disconnect themselves socially because a lot of social events surround food and drink.
My friends are everything to me now. I still live on my own, but my friends are the ones that listen to me and make me feel normal when I feel insane. Knowing that you have somebody that you can rely on will help you have more confidence in yourself by knowing that you’re not alone.When it comes to weight, I think the most important aspect is:
ARE YOU HAPPY?
There are so many more aspects other than weight that will determine your happiness. A common thinking is “If only I was 10-20 pounds lighter, then I’d be happy.” When I was 20 pounds lighter, I was depressed, lonely, and not confident at all. It took me 4 years to realize this. Now, I’m 22 and my focus is on my career, not my weight. I feel like my resume, personality, and mind are better representations of WHO I am.But this is my question:
Do you think self-esteem comes greater with age & experience?
Or is low self-esteem something that follows you throughout your entire life?
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Comments (19)
...................bravo.... one of the best blogs I've ever read.
I don't think age has anything to do with self-esteem. It all depends on who the person is and how they see themselves.
I don't think it really has to do with age. It's more of...how much you learn and realize as you grow. It's about surroundings and the things you see.
Oh, I'm sure it could follow you your entire life, if you let it, if you keep your eyes closed (well, not technically).“Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.
Watch your words, for they become your actions.
Watch your actions, for they become your habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny!”
- Frank Outlaw
it's not age. some people grow older and never learn from their mistakes, while others have the capacity for great wisdom when they are still very young.
i think that each person has a healthy weight, and being below it can be just as unhealthy (or emotionally taxing) as being above. you may be heavier now, but do you really think your wisdom would be enough to sustain you if you were significantly overweight? if clothes in regular stores didn't fit you? if you had a sugar addiction and chafing thighs? it's all relative. for some, getting smaller can be life changing. it depends why you're doing it. a lot of college freshmen get freaked out about their maturing bodies and develop eating disorders to try and keep their childlike frames... not the best road to happiness.
i just wanna say thank you! I started obsessing again about calories and the whole intake/ outtake crazyness and this blog is truly inspirational! im about to be a 1st year dietitian student and i have always struggled with my weight and self- esteem and this blog beats the rest! what you write is true and gives support to us who struggle and are trying to find the happy middle! keep on inspiring us!
xoxoD
Regardless of how good I do at studies or how confident I am, I'm still concerned about my body. I wouldn't say I'm obsessing, because quite frankly, I don't do anything about my obesity, but I'm definitely concerned about it. :S Strange, i say.
Great post. I love how you broke it down into separate parts - mind, personality, friends. To me, the most important one is the social network since esteem has a lot to do with how others think of you. And, if you don't have many close friends, then you probably don't think much of yourself. I think the personality part is connected to the support network as if
your personality is "better", you'll likely have more people interested
in you and maybe become your friends. Building the mind is quite difficult since different people have different values, and perhaps they don't value intelligence over beauty?
And just to be the devil's advocate, I'll say yes, self-esteem has to do with age. The more you age, the more people you'll know, the more you think, "hey, that person isn't so perfect either". To me, self-esteem has a lot to do with the people you're around. Say if you're around a negative environment, you'll be trained to think like so, and vice versa. Hence a change of environment sometimes equating to change in attitude. Self-esteem is something that can change constantly; people change constantly. So no, I don't think a low-esteem follows you throughout your life. There's always hope!
By the way, do you study at UBC? Possibly Land and Food system? I read in your posts about Vancouver and I thought it was cool you're from the same place as I am :)
Excellent post -- I totally agree with you. Congratulations to you for realizing your true worth and self-esteem.
I definitely think that self-esteem and confidence develops with age and experience, as with each decision and action that you make, you learn and gain knowledge from them. And with knowledge and experience, you are able to make more accurate choices for yourself -- what's right for you -- and thus, building your self-esteem and confidence.
If you hadn't gone through those obstacles in your past, you probably wouldn't have gained the knowledge, experience, and confidence you have today.
I personally don't think age and self-esteem are directly correlated. If they are, it would probably be very minor (I'm sure I could find a psyc study on this but it's 6:36am in the morning and I don't feel like it haha).
great post!!:)
I find this interesting. Age doesn't play so much a part of self as one might think. From age 4 till about age 12 I thought I could do anything, then around age 12 or 13 puberty hit, and I started going through all those changes. some where in between 13 and 16 I was molested, that killed my self image. I took me a full 3 years to come out of my "shell" again. When I was 19 I moved 2,200 miles away from all that hurt. I started college and "peanutt~Jones" was born. He was who I always wanted to be but did not have the freedoms or self image to pull off in a small podunk town in Ga. I became free, I became me, or at least I started my jorney to becoming me. Now at 36 years old, I am going through a very real life change. Keep your head up. Don't let anybody hold you down..
oh my gosh. i had no idea how closely i was going to relate to this post. i was in my senior year and as a way to live "healthier" i restricted my diet when i really didn't need to. i lost my period and freaked out my mother. i also freaked out myself. my social life has been hurt. even with my family. i isolated myself a lot this year when i needed my friends and family the most.
i'm still dealing with body image and moving across the country to a university like you will make me feel a little lonely at first. i'm going to take the advice and experience you've shared and try to do something with it. there was once a time i wanted to be really intelligent and reliable to someone in a career i loved. for the work i'd done. it scares me i haven't given it much thought lately. why have i become obsessive about the superficial? it definitely has not made me happier. although i'm pretty thin now, what's the use when i'm not happy and don't even see it usually? but you've given me some hope that you can change that about yourself and recognize what matters.and be HAPPY.it's kind of hard resetting the values you've built for yourself over a long period of time. but i'll try. thanks for the insight. i needed it.Thank you, this is a fantastic blog I just want to say first, and the points you make are helpful and true for a lot of people.
The point I want to bring up however, is about the section where you discuss building up your mind and how that in the long run will help you in so many other areas, your social life, your career, your education, etc. Which is true, for most people. But an interesting counterpoint would be people who depend on their looks as part of their career.
I'm a musical theatre major, and I attend a conservatory where the classes we have are singing, acting, and dancing. I struggled with anorexia, bullimia, and BED over a period of three years, the latter mostly during my first year of school, leading to weight gain for me. The things I have learned from this were actually similar to what you said. Obviously I was eating TOO MUCH, but as opposed to when I was eating nothing, I was a funnier person, I was more energetic around friends, and people grew to enjoy me or love me despite my weight (which wasn't like, disgustingly obese, it just felt like it to me sometimes, of course).
So making these discoveries was actually really great for me. But, discovering them or not, I couldn't be completely satisfied with this and accept myself and move on, because my teachers are telling me I must lose weight before next year when I start auditioning. No matter how much the people in my life love me no matter my size, I can't allow that to move me to acceptance because then I have a much smaller chance of succeeding in a theatrical career, where your look is about 75% of the battle.
*Meg*
in my experience of knowing people, self-esteem can affect anyone from 3 year-old to 25. Personally, I think if you have issues with yourself after 25, you've wasted your past life chasing the wrong things.
do you think it's easier for guys to fend off the perfect body look that media tries to implant in our minds? why?
I don't know. I think self-perception is a biggie but you did touch on aspects that help mold our self-perceptions. In the end we control our own happiness, regardless if weight is an issue. But I totally understand the support system having a big part in that. We are who we hang out with!
@jai_ko - There is a lot of talk about women, anorexia, and media's impact, but for sure there is a lot of negative impact on men too. I wanted to write about that in a future post. I saw somewhere that the size of the Ken doll from Barbie has changed over the past few decades to become larger and more muscular. Muscle dysmorphia is becoming more prominent in men, but it is not very well known out there. a lot of people have no idea what it is!
@MeggyMeg55 - The friend that i mentioned at the very beginning of this post has a similar story to you. She was in ballet at 15 and had so much pressure from her teacher to fit a very unhealthy body shape that just wasn't meant for her. Now she's in vet college, which is so difficult to get into at my school. I'm so proud of her, especially since I know she's so active and does yoga with me.
She always loved animals. And I'm sure that you really love theatre. But you can't change your dreams... that's for sure. But we can try to shape different, more healthy ideals of beauty through awareness :)
@zinda - I'm glad to hear that you can relate. Even if you feel alone, I think a lot of girls have similar issues, but we don't share it. I never shared my weight issues with other people for a long time. I wouldn't even dare say my true weight/number. Get involved in university. Make lots of friends. You'll do well :)
@x_simplysweet_x3 - I don't go to UBC, but I was born and raised in Delta/Surrey. I went to high school there. After I went east for university, but my parents moved close to downtown Vancouver. You know.... all those renovations for the 2010 olympics... I found it so hard to get around downtown and find buses! and I was there during that heat wave, so it was frustrating haha. But yea I love Vancouver. I still keep in touch with lots of friends there. I go back about twice per year to visit. Hey I've been seeing all these "Great Ohio Xanga meet-up" stuff. And I was thinking of doing one in Vancouver! If i could find people that are interested. I don't want to plan one and then show up all by myself like a loser haha. I'll probably be back again in Christmas time :)
@Changing_life5 - Thanks for the feedback *blushes*. That's great that you're going to be a nutrition student too. My one warning is that you may find a lot of the 1st and 2nd year courses very general. It frustrated me a lot b/c I didn't see how the stuff I was learning in school would relate to being a dietitian. But the 3rd and 4th year courses are definitely more interesting and applicable! So stick around. Uni is like that... huge 1st and 2nd year classes!
@rarareplica - For sure if one was clinically overweight... they would have to think a lot more than just social pressure/anxiety.. but think about their health and wellbeing. In my situation, I'm a healthy weight, but a lot of girls who are a healthy weight or even underweight, don't realize it. I'm sure that it is all relative like you said. But I hope that what I wrote can help a bit :)
What if you can't get past the issue of "not liking who you are and not knowing how to change it"
....and
I'm happy when I eat =D.... but then I feel depressed afterwards D=.... hahaha,
Maybe I should start from step 'Building your mind"
Thanks yo!
i love that pic!!! good times =D