Purposeful Growth

Research studies show that high self esteem is good for your health and happiness. These brief daily activities can be helpful in raising self esteem and contributing to a balanced life. If life seems boring and depressing, perhaps a big dose of daily self esteem help is just the spark you need for a happier life. The self esteem activities suggested here take just a few minutes each day and research studies indicate high self esteem is beneficial to your health.

Research Studies

Self esteem correlates with happiness and life satisfaction according to psychological researcher Christopher Peterson, author of A Primer in Positive Psychology. The higher your self esteem, the greater your reported happiness and satisfaction with life. The converse is also true, lower self esteem correlates with low life satisfaction and happiness. It behooves us to be aware of our own feeling of self esteem, taking steps to improve it when we’re feeling down.

Improving Relationships

Researcher David Schmitt, PhD, associate professor of Bradley University’s Psychology Department, reports that high self esteem also correlates with relationships. When we have strong relationships we feel better about ourselves than when our relationships are troublesome. Strong relationships, strong self esteem.

Start with Compassion

A good building block for improving self esteem is to first work to grant self-compassion. Research studies suggest “it should be easier to teach people with low self-esteem to be self-compassionate than to teach them to have higher self-esteem,” reports WebMD Medical News reviewer Brunilda Nazario, MD, August 22, 2005.

Try These Daily Self Esteem Building Activities

• Reinforce your close relationships with high quality contact each day. Give something of yourself to people you care about. A few sincere words of appreciation, a few minutes of compassionate listening, or an earnest offer of help to an elderly or shut-in friend or relative will pay big dividends to both parties.
• Give yourself a break. We’re often much harder on ourselves than we are on others. Don’t expect perfection of yourself. Be forgiving of your human errors and treat them with humor rather than disdain or anger. Refrain from demeaning self talk. Instead, remind yourself that you normally make very few mistakes.
• Savor your good memories. Keep a mental or literal file of good memories and visit them often. Naturally nostalgic people have high self-esteem and are less prone to depression. Thinking of good memories for just 20 minutes a day can make people more cheerful than they were the week before, and happier than if they think of their current lives, report researchers from Loyola University (WebMD Feature from “Psychology Today” Magazine, Marina Krakovsky: WebMD’s depression help center).
• Snap back from negative events. Bad things will happen; that’s part of life. Foster an attitude of resilience and positive thinking to help you snap back from negative thinking just as quickly as you can. Positive thinking yields positive life events, and vice-versa.

In just a few minutes each day you can build your self esteem and reap the rewards of greater happiness and life satisfaction. Be your own best friend not your worst enemy as you build a balanced, fulfilling life. More on a balanced life.

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This article first appeared in the Personal Development Topic at Suite101.com.

Is Your Work/Life Balance Way Out of Kilter?

Maintaining a balance between job and family is getting more and more difficult these days. If you’re struggling to keep up at work and at home, feeling guilty that you’re shortchanging both, and resentful that you can’t even think of spending time on you, the Balanced Life self-study E-course can help.

The Issues of Work/Life Balance

How did we get here? The combination of widespread corporate downsizing and a culture of acquiring/consuming has left millions of people struggling to keep up. Trying to do it all, have it all, and be it all.

Marketing messages show smiling, happy people with big homes, big cars, active families, and busy jobs somehow doing it all. When we try to copy this lifestyle we find out it’s no fun, nearly impossible to pull off, highly frustrating, and deeply depressing. Looking for help, we buy the newest technology - smart phone, web browser, text messenger - only to find that seems to compound the problem.

But the problem of life imbalance can be solved. The Balanced Life E-course shows you how to identify the unique building blocks of your balanced life. Ten weekly self study classes include personalized exercises to help you integrate the basic concepts of life balance into your unique life circumstances.

What is the Balanced Life E-course?

After writing several articles about life balance, including a free self-assessment tool which is very popular, I developed a prototype self study course to help people get their lives back in balance. More than a dozen people from all walks of life joined in as volunteer testers as we went through an intensive beta test of the course.

Feedback on the course from the test group was excellent and their helpful, insightful comments, questions, and suggestions have been incorporated in the final product.

The Balanced Life E-course is a ten week, self study course delivered weekly by email. Recognizing that fundamental problems must be solved with fundamentals, the course helps you first understand the basic structure for a balanced life, then teaches you how to integrate strong fundamentals and five important life skills into your own life.

Filled with exercises, examples, and even home-work assignments, The Life Balance E-course can help you find the fulfilling life you seek.

The target price for the course is $49, but I’ve reduced that by 50% to $25 during this brief introductory phase. As a gift to readers of Purposeful Growth, I’m offering the exact same course to you with a further 20% discount. For now, during this introductory phase, The Balanced Life E-course is just $20 when you sign up through this special promotional web page. If you can’t see or click on the link, or prefer not to click through on embedded links, copy and paste this link into your browser: http://www.balanced-life.biz/Referral.htm.

Remember, to get The Balanced Life E-course for $20 you must register through this special page.

As someone focused on purposeful personal growth, I know life balance is important to you. No one enjoys being overwhelmed, over-worked, and under-appreciated. You can take back control of your life and enjoy life’s wonders and satisfactions with The Life Balance E-course.