| Since its first publication in 1987, Self-Esteem has become the first choice of therapists and savvy readers looking for a comprehensive, self-care approach to improving self-image, increasing personal power, and defining core values. More than 600,000 copies of this book have helped literally millions of readers feel better about themselves, achieve greater success, and enjoy their lives to the fullest. You can do it, too! By using these books - Self-Esteem Companion, Self-esteem Guided Journal and Self _esteem, 3rd edition - as a set, you’ll be able to customize your self-esteem work with exercises and writing projects that reinforce and support the ideas in the original book. |
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 Read Self-Esteem- It's Worth It |
| Review Date: November 19, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Tonya, |
Who's the book for? Anyone who wants to improve their self-esteem.
What's the goal of the book? To improve your self-esteem.
How does it do this? By showing you how to disarm your "inner critic", you know, that negative inner voice that attacks and judges you. Everyone has one, and people with low self-esteem tend to have a more vicious inner critic.
Is it easy to read? Yes, the book is laid out well and written in a very friendly tone. The first three chapters cover the most important and universally applicable information. After finishing them, there is a chart for you to look at. It will direct you to the appropriate chapter(s) that deal with your specific problems. Neat!
You don't have to read the book cover-to-cover unless you just need general info- but that's what's good about it; you can use the book to fit your individual needs. With over 600,000 copies sold, it must have helped a few people! Other self-help books I liked include "Finding Happiness in a Frustrating World". Good luck!
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Very good book!
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| Review Date: August 9, 2002 |
| Reviewer: Andreas Fellner, München |
This is a very comprehensive self-help book about the nature, cause und treatment of low self-esteem. It is ideal for everyone with low self-esteem and contains many exercises. The authors deal with the following aspects:
- The nature of self-esteem: here the basic concept of the whole book is being introduced: your thoughts determine your self-esteem
- The pathological critic: you explore your inner critic, explore the origin of this critic and get information how to catch your critic
- Disarming the critic: in order to combat your inner critic, you first have to understand its function, then talk back so to make him useless
- Accurate self-assessment: this is one of the highlights of this book. You'll learn the art of accurate self-assessment without using pejorative terms like useless, bad, or inferior
- Cognitive distortions: this chapter deals with the important concept of wrongly perceiving reality and how to combat this tendency
- Compassion: this is one of the most powerful techniques for dealing with low self-esteem. You'll learn ways to better understand, accept, and forgive yourself and others
- Handling mistakes and responding to criticisms: I greatly like the attitude of the authors towards mistakes. There are no mistakes in the world, because all the decisions you chose to make were based on your needs and assessment of the situation. A decision can only be labeled as a mistake with hindsight
- Asking for what you want: this chapter shows how to assert your right without being aggressive
- Visualization and hypnosis
- Building self-esteem in children: the last chapter shows ways how to raise children with high self-esteem by listening to them and validating their feelings. At the same time, it is important to set clear limits and be consistent.Altogether, this book is full of useful information and exercises. It can be used both as a self-help book and a supplement to therapy. |
One of the Best Books I've Ever Read on Personal Development
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| Review Date: February 9, 2004 |
| Reviewer: , |
| Self Esteem is a practical book. It's about taking control of your thoughts to take control of your feelings. That's all there is to it. With inspiring simplicity and logic, McKay and Fanning educate the reader about the causes and effects of strong self-esteem. It also introduces the Critic - the voice in your head that brings you down no matter what you do. Most importantly, it helps you to expose what psychological needs the Critic meets. Once this is figured, one can resolve to meet needs in a healthier manner. Next, with the reader aware of the needs his or her critic meets, a chart is offered, guiding the reader towards the specific resources mentioned in the book. Some of the written exercises are designed to enhance your awareness. Others are day-to-day activities in which you keep track of your exact thoughts in order to replace them with more realistic ones. In addition, visualization is offered as well, a powerful and simple tool for creating a healthier self-image. Yet, the authors wisely understand that rebutting old beliefs sometimes isn't enough. As a solution, they offer the technique of hypnosis. The logic behind this is that often the memories that rob us of our worth are not remembered consciously. As a result, many of the exercises in the book will not work, since no memory is there for one to work with. Hypnosis allows one to directly access the subconscious, allowing one to implant healthier ideas of who we are. Self-Esteem's ultimate goal seems to be to get the reader to measure up against a new standard of worth. An inspiring passage sums it up: "The truth is that your value is your consciousness, your ability to perceive and experience. The value of a human life is that it exists. You are a complex miracle of creation. You are a person who is trying to live, and that makes you as worthwhile as every other person who is doing the same thing. Achievement has nothing to do with it. Whatever you do, whatever you contribute should come not from the need to prove your value, but from the natural flow of your aliveness. What you do should come from the drive to fully live, rather than the fight to justify yourself." Reading Self-Esteem, and implementing the solutions, will allow you to feel better about yourself no matter what life throws at you. |
Highly Recommended
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| Review Date: February 7, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Leenie, Sydney, Australia |
I cannot speak highly enough of this book. I found it to be absolutely invaluable in developing better self esteem. You do need to actually sit down with a pen and paper and do the exercises it suggests, but I found this process really helped me to understand myself and my thinking patterns better.
For me, what really opened my eyes was the way the authors explained how the inner critic is reinforced. I feel that this is crucial information which is missing from many other books on self esteem. The authors explain a number of different ways in which we reinforce our inner critic and more importantly, they explain why we continue to use these self-limiting behaviours and provide alternatives. A simple example of this is that your inner critic drives you to achieve goals. You may tell yourself that you will be stupid or worthless if you don't achieve a high exam mark, or a good performance review at work. The critic is reinforced because this fear and criticism motivates you to achieve - yet it also sacrifices your self esteem. A healthier alternative is to rebut the inner critic and practice visualization techniques to motive you to achieve success.
The chapters on Compassion and Handling Mistakes also really helped to alter my way of thinking. I, like many other people, had a tendency to continually beat myself up over past mistakes. The book helped me to reframe the way I think about mistakes. More importantly, it helped me to understand the limits of my awareness, at the time of the mistake we are usually attempting to get our needs met in what we deem to be the most effective way. The chapter on Compassion also provided a really simple and powerful exercise which helped me to move past mistakes made by myself and other people.
Another reason I highly recommend this book is the chapter on Core Beliefs. We are usually completely unaware of our negative core beliefs and therefore they continue to have a very profound negative effect on our self-esteem at a deep level. Identifying and testing my core beliefs has been an eye-opening and empowering experience. It does take time as there are no quick-fixes, but the process of building more positive core beliefs has fundamentally changed the way I view myself and the world around me.
Other parts of this book which I found to be helpful were the sections on responding to criticism, healthy and unhealthy values, asking for what you want and the accurate self assessments.
In summary, this book has been instrumental in building my self-esteem. It is written in an easy to understand and relatively entertaining manner. There are plenty of practical exercises to help you apply the information that is given. I strongly recommend it. |
First and Last Self-help Book You'll Need
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| Review Date: July 11, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Amazin Jello, Los Angeles, CA USA |
| I feel sorry for all the people who are not aware of this book, because it covers just about everything you will ever need to improve your self-esteem. I'm sure if you are anything like me you have read just about every self-help book that is out there and then along comes this book that blows them all out of the water. well here it is, this is the book, I know because i have read and applied the lessons in this book to myself and have been preaching about it to whomever will listen. And listening they have, so i haven't seen my book in some time, in fact i haven't seen a couple of these books for some time, because they keep getting circulated, amongst my friends and their friends. |
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I haven”t read the book yet, but based on the reviews I will certainly purchase it. Self esteem is so vitally important. We need to learn as much as we can. Thanks for posting this.
~~Being incapacitated by fear is no longer my struggle. I let my feelings emerge and dissolve without discrimination. I feel them unreservedly, no matter how briefly uncomfortable. When I arrive on the other side of fear, doors open. I feel invincible strength, and I’m infused with nourishing energy. A tremendous, never-ending rush of vitality circulates through me.~~ C.J. Good