What is “self-esteem?” “Esteem” comes from the Latin aestimare, which means “to value, to appraise, to estimate.” So “esteem” means “to have great regard for; value highly; respect; consider; regard.” “Self-esteem” would then be “to have great regard for yourself, to value yourself highly, to respect yourself.”

How can we develop a healthy self-regard? For one thing, we must accept responsibility for our own self-esteem (Galatians 6:5). We are, without a doubt, influenced by our upbringing and how our parents reared us. But, how we view ourselves and how we impact our future, depends on our own thinking, our own decisions. If you find yourself thinking, “This is who I am, I’ll never change” – then you’ll never change. We have to accept responsibility for ourselves and our thinking.

Secondly, we need to work on how we think (Philippians 4:8). We often over-generalize, make things worse than they are, and view the 80% positive in our lives through the lines of the 20% negative. When someone criticizes one aspect of our behavior, personality, etc., we often think to ourselves “I am no good” or “They don’t like anything about me.” None of that is true and we need to remind ourselves of that.

In a book written by a teacher, The Excellent 11 by Ron Clark, Mr. Clark tells how, as a 5th-grade history teacher, he challenged all his class to memorize all the presidents (42 at the time). It was a pass or fail test, too. Most kids knew they could not do it in a month’s time. But, Mr. Clark made up a rap and did other things to help the kids do it. Guess how many kids passed the test. All of them. You can image how much that affected the self-esteem of those kids. They went from being challenged to do something they thought was impossible, to seeing that they could do it. If you can do that, what else can you do?

Sometimes, our own worst enemy is our own negative thinking and negative self-image.  Third, we need to set realistic goals for ourselves (Phil. 3:13-14). Sometimes we expect more out of ourselves than what we can realistically accomplish. We then fail and it affects our view of ourselves when, in reality, we should not have been trying something outside of our skill-set. In addition to that, we need to forgive ourselves.  Sometimes, forgiving others comes easier than forgiving ourselves. Take a look at Mark 1:4 and verse 18. The word “forgiveness” in Mark 1:4 and “left” in Mark 1:18 are in the same word family. In other words, to “forgive” means to “leave behind.” We need to forgive ourselves of sins we’ve made and then leave them in the past. We do not need to periodically bring them up and beat ourselves up over them.

We are not prisoners of our past nor victims of our circumstances. We can change what we can change. Build on your strengths; recognize that God has designed you in a unique way and expects you to use your unique capacities to honor Him. He’ll give you the strength to do it. You should feel good about that.

–Paul Holland