So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may want to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of the “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions, even if you miss lunch and dinner, or stay up half the night to go the extra yard. Avoid this mentality, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is healthy - to a point. But not to the extent of stepping on/over your co-workers. Keep it healthy by encouraging those around you to come up with more efficient or cost effective ideas.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown-nosers, gossip-mongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme. Avoid them at all costs, they have a way of sucking the life out of others.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may even cause some stress, but it will help us find ways to improve ourselves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson towards improvement.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativity of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations. A positive attitude will promote positivity in those around you. Even the worse of circumstances will offer something positive. It’s just a matter of how you choose to perceive the situation.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits are said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent.

In life, its hard to find your strength sometimes, especially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. During the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change.’ The kind of change which comes from within - Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change  will change 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement, if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have, and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination.

So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.