Everyday you do things to increase your self-esteem and things to decrease your self-esteem, most of it is unconscious. And not one or two things….thousands….daily. These include what you think, what you say or don’t say, what you do or don’t do, where you keep your agreements or not, where you take a stand or not and your habits and behavior. This will happen even if you don’t leave your house or have contact with another human being.
Your self-esteem is similar to a bank account. On day one, your account balance is zero. Let’s pretend that during the day you do 500 things to increase your self-esteem, and you do 250 things to decrease or chip away at your self-esteem. At the end of the day, you have a net positive balance of 250. Even though the majority of these 750 things are unconscious, everything you think, do, or say counts. On day two, maybe you’ve netted another positive 250. That means you’re up to 500—overall—when combining both days. Unfortunately, when day three comes along, you have a bad day. You end the day netting a negative 250. Now, your overall balance is back to a net of 250. Over time, those days turn into weeks, which average into future months and, eventually, years. After 10 years, you’ve got 3,650 days of balances that have accumulated. So, your self-esteem today is simply the result of the accumulation of the last 3,650 days. And 10 years from now, your self-esteem will be the result of the accumulation of the next 3,650 days. Over 3,650 days, you will have the mega-highs (10%) and mega-lows (10%). Like the stock market, those are huge plummets and major gains. Sure, they make a difference in the overall picture and in the moment, but the stock market settles back to the average of the many other days in between, where minor gains and losses occur (80%). Which means that the majority of your self-esteem came from your average day, what some call the “daily grind”, where we spend the majority of our lives.
“How you did things today is not your problem. It was the last 3,650 days that came before today.”
-Renee Cermak
There is nothing magical about ten years, I am simply using it as a unit of time to make a point. What you did yesterday contributes. What you did 50 years ago contributes.
The great news is that the next 10 years are much more important than the last 10 years. You can start today. There are things you do to increase your self-esteem; there are things you do to decrease your self-esteem. They are easy to identify once you are aware. If you do more of the things you do to increase your self-esteem, proactively, and you do less of the things you do that decrease your self-esteem, proactively, your self-esteem will go up. This is not rocket science. Plan your success. Plan your self-esteem.
