COMING OFF TRANQUILLIZERS WAYS OF PERPETUATING LOW SELF-ESTEEM
1. Not accepting full responsibility for your own growth and well-being.
2. Lacking clear cut and meaningful goals to guide your decisions and reduce the time spent aimlessly drifting.
3. Not doing your own thinking and making your own decisions. Requiring the permission, confirmation, and agreement of others for what you think, say, and do.
4. Neglecting and ignoring your own needs in order to 'serve' others, not recognizing your own growth as your number one responsibility.
5. Being a 'professional people pleaser'.
6. Working at an occupation you heartily dislike, especially one that is not meaningful to you.
7. Setting yourself too high a standard to reach, and therefore constantly finding fault with yourself for not maintaining it.
8. Belittling yourself for mistakes and failures, indulging in destructive self-criticism.
9. Depending on others for a sense of importance rather than realizing that everyone is of equal worth and importance.
10. Not allowing yourself the right of full expression, not developing your own talents and capabilities.
11. Giving up before a job is finished and never getting the satisfaction of completion.
12. Comparing yourself with others as a gauge of your individual worth and importance. Believing you must prove your worth through superior performance.
13. Not speaking up for your own convictions, letting others ignore and belittle you. Not realizing that no one can insult or 'put you down' unless you accept his worth and authority over you.
14. Refusing to recognize your good characteristics, and therefore building up a negative picture of yourself that is unrealistic.
15. Not recognizing your own needs for sleep, relaxation, satisfying work, companionship, good diet— not taking care of yourself.
16. Not letting others do things for you—or believing that they might want to. *32\49\8*
