Questions
How did you learn how to gauge if your self-esteem is low, medium or high? Do you do anything special for yourself on a low self-esteem day?

Dr. Trina’s Response:
I believe every person has woken up and just wanted to pull the sheets back over their head—a pretty good indication of a low self-esteem day.

Otherwise, an excellent self-esteem gauge for me is my level of complaining and gossiping. The more I do either the worse I feel about myself—because when I can only see what is wrong in another human being or situation, it reflects how poorly I am see/ feel myself. As well, if it is a constant complaint or gossip, I am reminding myself over and over again how powerless I am to do something about the situation (because if I felt powerful, I would have dealt with it instead of yipping about it).

The first thing I do when I catch myself complaining and gossiping is to shut my mouth. Just that simple action helps immensely in stopping my self-esteem to go further down.

As well, when my self-esteem is not doing so great, I do my up most to give myself grace. Usually on wabba days I keep unconciously reminding myself over & over & over again what a loser I am.

So, when I think of situations where I messed up completely, I repeat over and over, “Be grateful this happened to you Trina. Without this, you would not be where you are in your life. It was only by making this really stupid mistake that you are so much the wiser today.”