My all-time favorate movie is “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. I totally agree that it is sentimental (read sappy) and idealistic, but I love it anyway. It remnds me of positive memories of past Christmas holidays and conveys some important truths.

As the movie opens, we see scenes from George Bailey’s early life, where he dreams of a life of success and travels around the world, building big buildings and bridges. He gets married and has children, but several life events destroy his dreams of success.

Already bitter and depressed, a financial mistake pushes George Bailey over the edge and he goes out to attempt suicide. At this point, an angel named Clarence, shows George the many ways he has positively touched others during his life. George finally realizes that he has had a rich and wonderful life.

The movie illustrates several truths:

1. Our lives often take a different course than the one we planned or dreamed, and sometimes this is a good thing.

2. Our most important actions in life may be the ones that received the least attention.

3. A life is better measured by the number of other lives positively touched, than by the projects completed or the money earned.

4. Life itself is a wonderful gift, and should not be ended prematurely. Suicide is always a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The pain is just passed on to those left behind

This week, look for opportnities to positvely touch those around you. It truly is a wonderful life.

Question: Have you gleaned some particular wisdom from a movie? If so, please share it here.

     Someone asked me yesterday how self-esteem will be affected by areas of genuine weakness. If you are like me, you have some things you don’t do well; areas where you aren’t talented or particularly competent. Does recognizing your true weaknesses indicate that you don’t have a good self-esteem, or does doing so harm your self-esteem?

Of course, everyone has weaknesses. We all have things we do poorly; areas where our skills are inferior to others. It’s just reality.

For example, I’m a really poor speller. When I was teaching at university level, I had to think ahead as I wrote on the board. If I couldn’t recall how to spell a word that I was about to write, I came up with a different word. Occasionally, however, my efforts failed and I misspelled a word during a lecture. My students seemed to take pleasure in pointing out my mistake, but it really didn’t bother me. I would just correct the word, sometimes joke about the mistake, and go on. I readily admitted that I was a poor speller. Thank goodness we now have spellcheck. Now, hopefully someone will develop spellcheck for classroom boards.

Your self-esteem isn’t injured by your weaknesses or mistakes, but it can be wounded by your reactions to them. Reacting to the recognition of a weakness or the discovery of a mistake with thoughts such as, “I can’t do anything right” or “I feel mortified that I made that mistake” or “They think I’m stupid” can lower the self-esteem.

Assuming that others are judging you or criticizing you for your mistakes or weaknesses can also hurt your self-esteem. Those with self-esteem wounds feel ashamed or embarrassed by mistakes seen by others, in that they believe others are thinking they are failures, stupid or losers.

Having a positive self-esteem enables you to accept the fact that, as a human being, you do have strengths and weaknesses. Like all other humans, you have weaknesses. You can’t be good at everything.

Whenever we begin a new task, one that we have never attempted, we begin with incompetence. We don’t know what we’re doing. We haven’t developed the skill. A positive self-esteem allows you to accept the fact that you will not be good at any task in the beginning. When you try something for the first time, you will probably do it poorly. You may continue to perform poorly the first few times you do it. In the beginning, you will be incompetent. This is normal. You need to embrace your incompetency. Enjoy the process of learning something new. Have fun with yourself, as you learn. To become a master at anything, you must be able to tolerate your early incompetence. Accept it. Embrace it as your first step toward mastery. Enjoy the journey!

Question: How do you embrace your incompetence?

Welcome to “Your Core Value.” My name is Terry L. Ledford, Ph.D. and I’m writing this blog to provide information about the causes of self-esteem wounds and the tools you can use to heal those wounds. My hope is that this blog can stimulate an online community of individuals who are passionate about helping themselves, those they love and even those they will never meet improve their self-esteem.

Once each week, I will provide articles about self-esteem issues and ideas for correcting negative self-beliefs. I will end each article with a question for readers. Hopefully, you will respond to those questions with feedback, a technique that has been helpful for you or an idea to help others.  Readers can then respond to other readers so we have a conversation, not just a monologue.

Many of the ideas I provide will be based on my recent book, “Parables for a Wounded Heart: Overcoming the Wounds to Your Self-Esteem and Transforming Your Perception of You.” Of course, I will be gathering new information as we go along and sharing that as well. I see this as an ongoing process. The direction of the community will depend on you as much as me. I know that I don’t have all the answers and look forward to your feedback.

We’ll cover this in much more detail later, but here is my basic premise about the origins of self-esteem wounds:

Children are not born with a negative or positive self-esteem. However, from the time they realize that they are beings, separate from the world, they begin looking for answers to the question, “Who am I?” They look to the reactions of their parents and other family members first. Then they look at the reactions they receive from teachers, other children and others. When children experience criticism, rejection or abuse, they conclude that there is something wrong with them that somehow warranted those experiences. They come to believe that they are inadequate, unimportant or defective. They believe that it must be their fault. Without intervention, these negative self-beliefs follow the child into adulthood and through the rest of their life.

These learned self-beliefs can be seen in the intelligent person who believes he is stupid or the kind, loveable person who believes that she is unimportant. The beliefs are also seen in the sexually abused child who believes the abuse was her fault. Without question, we know that these beliefs are wrong in others, but often fail to apply that knowledge to ourselves.

Question #1: What do you believe is the impact of low self-esteem or self-esteem wounds in our society? You can leave your comments by clicking here.