The Mental Emotional Health Blog

Accepting compliments is essential to healthy self-esteem. Believing compliments is also important, but that won’t happen anyway if you’re not even accepting them. Here are some simple things to remember:

1. Say “Thank you”, or “thanks”, or “I appreciate that”.
2. If you know your self-esteem is low, you don’t have to worry about an overabundance of pride, so don’t minimize or argue with the person giving the compliment. Avoid saying things like, “Not really”, “No big deal”, “I don’t see it that way”, or “You’re just saying that”.
3. Do not tell yourself things like, “They just don’t know me.” Compliments are often behavior-based or fact-based, such as “Nice job on the project”, or “I like your shoes”. So again, don’t argue with the compliment internally.

If you want to start believing compliments, after you say “thank you”, ask yourself, “What if you are right?” Honestly consider it being at least possible.

When you feel like you have to prove yourself to someone, or in general, do the opposite of what isn’t working.

• If you are more upset with the feeling itself but then you don’t actually work to prove yourself, go ahead and try to prove yourself. Give yourself credit for trying.
• If you spend most of your time actively trying to prove yourself, stop trying so hard. Tell yourself you don’t need to prove yourself to anyone.
• If you don’t know why you feel the need to prove yourself, apply some thought and identify some factors that lead to this feeling.

Although it is a cliche, living “one day at a time” is tremendously valuable when applied. So on rough days, take comfort that the day will end. When you have a good day, savor it.

The popular saying is that “curiosity killed the cat”. But in humans curiosity can serve us well. When a person feels paranoia that others are watching or out to get him/her, that feeling tends to build on it’s own fear/anxiety. In order to counteract paranoia, I suggest finding a way to be curious about other people.

A person who is curious is not trapped. Mentally, there is an emphasis is on observing and learning, and that takes the place of paranoia. In other words, it is difficult to feel genuinely curious and paranoid at the same time.

So if I feel paranoid at the grocery store that everyone is looking at me, I could observe other people and ask myself such questions as, “Does their clothing match?”, “How old are that person’s shoes?”, or whether or not I think that person owns a pet, and what kind of pet I could picture them owning.  If successful, my thought processes start to function with some logic based on observable reality.

If the curiosity angle isn’t working you can always try telling yourself, “They’re looking at me. So what? Some people are just nosy.”

Today’s entry is in the context of careers. In figuring out what you want to do for your career, it helps to look realistically at what you want to do and what you’re willing to put up with.

There are those people that find their dream job and work doesn’t even feel like work. But for most people that isn’t the case. Every job/career has built-in challenges, which are much easier to address and work through if you feel you have actively chosen them. That is why the title today is “Choose Your Headaches”. You won’t be able to control other people at your job, and you won’t be able to control most of what happens at your job. But if you consider your workplace realistically and brace yourself to deal with those undesirable things, you will be in a much better frame of mind to conquer the challenges presented to you.