Positive Thinking

As we are approaching the Festive Season of Christmas and New Year, I have decided to bring a lighter element to this blog for once. Today's topic is Positive Thinking - this time with the Morecombe & Wise musical spin on the topic. For those old enough to remember and for anyone else, please click on the link below to hear the music:

Positive Thinking - The Musical Way

Blog Post Written by Life Coach David

Self Esteem and Stress

I recently received an interesting email from a student who is doing a research project to try and find out if there is a correlation between self esteem and stress. I'm not aware of any research that exists around this question and would be interested if anyone has any knowledge of what research might have been done or any thoughts - please post a response to this blog.

My own thoughts are that:

1. If you have low self esteem then you may have a tendency to put yourself down and an underlying negative self belief which might contribute to you:
- not believing that you will be able to cope with certain stresses or
- not giving yourself appropriate credit if you do manage to cope with them.

2. On the other hand, if you have good self esteem but then unexpectedly come across a stressful situation which you find difficult to cope with, this can affect you all the more deeply because your positive self image is then threatened.

I guess this amounts to saying that (1) low self esteem might make it harder to cope with stress and that (2) stress, if you are unable to cope with it very well, could contribute to low self esteem. But with human beings it is not always easy to predict, so maybe people can come up with some counterexamples?

Blog Post Written by Life Coach David