Shannon Costello

When someone makes it clear that they do not approve of me, I wilt inside. When somebody honks at me, I feel guilty and ashamed. When a parent of a student makes it clear that their child doesn’t like me, I feel like I have completely failed and may spend long minutes agonizing about it.

That is normal for me, and I imagine it is normal for a lot of people. I base my self esteem on how I perceive others to be thinking of me. I am measuring myself by what I think another person’s standards are, often with very little solid information. That isn’t even all of it…sometime I measure myself by my own standard of what perfection should be.

I’ve been working more on trying to think of myself with sober judgement. For example:

1) I make mistakes.
2) There is no such thing as a perfect teacher.
3) There will always be people who do not like me.
4) Some people will tell me they don’t like me.
5) I will probably never be comfortable with that, which is perfectly normal.
6) Personal inquisitions based on random, shifting standards are not a good idea.
7) The ideas and guidelines on which I seek to base my life are a much better standard by which to measure myself. Examining myself by those types of standards is a good idea, even when I do not feel attacked by another person.