Self-esteem is the positive or negative evaluation of ourselves, which is formed throughout life. It is cemented in childhood, where the upbringing by our parents was based on their confidence in our abilities, but not everything should be reduced to what was experienced in infancy. Achievements and projects as well as relationships and social valuation build the continuous flow of self-esteem. Self-esteem is formed in relation to the context, that is, it is learned through experiences in the environment, therefore, it is susceptible to modifications.
Self-esteem corresponds to how we think of ourselves as skiers, how we see ourselves skiing, and how we react to challenges. It is the way we esteem and value ourselves through opinions, beliefs, and emotions which establish a cognitive-emotional set that defines the attitude towards ourselves. This aspect is important in our skiing because the conditioning of the unfolding of our potentialities depends on the valuation we make of ourselves.
Our own beliefs of what we are and what we are worth determines what we feel. Our thoughts and feelings oriented towards the same direction institute the belief of what we are, therefore, if we control our thoughts, we control our skiing.
Each stage of skiing brings experiences that are transformed into general feelings of valuation and appreciation or, on the contrary, of discredit and depreciation. We build our self-esteem as skiers from the first messages, internal or external, that we receive during the initial stage of learning. There are messages that make us feel like a winner and others like a failure.
Self-esteem is not always constant since it suffers fluctuations due to the psychological or emotional state of the moment and the circumstances. The more stable it is, the better we will feel when facing skiing situations and the quicker we will recover from failures. The vulnerability of self-esteem as skiers is also present when we are competent in other sports, but not in skiing.
The four modalities of self-esteem according to level and permanence:
- High and stable: external events and the events of our own skiing have little influence on our self-esteem.
- High and unstable: the level of self-esteem suffers constant ups and downs. Both criticism from others and our own failures can be perceived as threats to the Self. We depend, to some extent, on the opinion of others.
- Low and unstable: self-esteem is vulnerable to external events and conditioned to the recognition of other skiers.
- Low and stable: we tend to self-devaluation, do not contemplate favorable external scenarios, and are prone to victimization since we do not believe we can do anything to reverse the situation, perceiving ourselves as our own enemy.
Pathological criticism undermines self-esteem
One factor that negatively affects self-esteem is vulnerability to negative or pathological criticism, which refers to the contact with our inner censorious voice. This criticism weakens self-esteem as it compares the way we ski with how we should ski, generating a negative self-evaluation.
Constructive ways to recompose pathological criticism are:
- Re-evaluate our own personal schemes for the current situation.
- Learn to accept ourselves realistically.
- Challenging the old belief that we are worth according to how we ski.
- To reconsider if the proposed objectives are appropriate for ourselves.
- Redefine the meaning of mistakes by recognizing that every performance can be improved.
- Dismiss guilt by claiming that the performance was the best given the characteristics of the situation.
High and low self-esteem
A healthy self-esteem allows facing difficulties, overcome failures, and disregard the influence of the negative opinion of other skiers, but also allows to accept our own limitations and ask for help.
The depreciation of self-esteem interferes with our own skiing abilities and the possibilities of pleasantly enjoying skiing, turning the mountain into a disturbing environment. To act with low self-esteem is to value what others say more than what we say to ourselves.
Low self-esteem tends to polarize our self-valuation by making judgments of perfection or discredit. We perceive every skiing experience as a test of our own worth, tend to be sensitive to failures and are slow to recover from them. In contrast, with high self-esteem we are proud of our successes, tolerant of our failures and we recover quickly from negative experiences.
If we are skiers with diminished self-esteem, we may exhibit some of the following aspects:
- Resort to rejection and dissatisfaction with ourselves.
- Adopt a severe self-criticism of our skiing.
- Exhibit hypersensitivity to criticism from other skiers.
- Experience a feeling of inferiority and an ever-present fear of being wrong.
- Magnify our weaknesses and minimize our skiing abilities.
- When comparing with others, we perceive an imperfect self-image.
Self-esteem and locus of control
Feeling effective when skiing generates the perception of control over the behavior adopted to interact with the environment, which translates into a pleasurable sensation that reinforces our self-esteem. This is significantly related to the locus of control, that is, our belief regarding the control we exercise in our skiing.
With high self-esteem we tend to attribute our successes to internal factors such as ability and effort, and our failures to lack of effort. On the other hand, with low self-esteem we are prone to attribute our successes to uncontrollable external factors such as chance, and our failures to internal and stable factors such as lack of ability.
Aspects that weaken and aspects that strengthen our self-esteem
Aspects that damage self-esteem can be:
- Self-demanding personal requirements.
- Inadequate beliefs about what is and is not desirable.
- Disqualifications of our own aptitudes.
- Victimization in terms of assuming a role of failure.
- Negative self-talk.
- The importance assigned to negative emotions.
- Lack of positive stimuli.
The aspects that strengthen it can be the following, among others:
- Allowing ourselves to feel satisfied with our own skiing.
- Avoid paying attention to what other skiers say or will say.
- Recognizing that we are the protagonists of our own skiing.
Restructuring self-esteem
To restructure our self-esteem is to modify our own beliefs about the skiing reality. We are the skiers that we think we are and from this place we act or react to skiing challenges. We are the architects of our skiing reality and we can change it, first of all, by modifying our self-esteem, that is, by practicing self-love. Our skier’s Self will be there until the day we stop skiing, so we should be more compassionate with ourselves than with any other skier. In addition, in the judgments of self-worth, it is common that we compare ourselves with our own ideals, but these should not be too demanding because of being prone to focus on what is lacking.
Strategies to overcome low self-esteem:
- Visualize positive aspects and results.
- Avoid self-censoring thoughts.
- Use objective affirmations.
- Recognize and restructure our own beliefs.
