Self Esteem Building Activity: "Remember"

by Catherine Whipple

This self esteem building activity is one that I came up with one day when I was feeling down about pretty much everything in my life. As I sat down to work on some healing art, I became confused about which negative feeling to work on. Should I work on my feelings of being unattractive and over forty, should I focus on my feelings of inadequacy as an artist, or should I focus on that dreaded feeling (that I know we all have from time to time) of being unloved?

Since I was in the middle of a major pity party, I decided that I need to work on ALL of them at once. I decided what I needed was a self esteem building activity that could address all of my feelings at once.

So I took out my art-journal and wrote down on seperate pages, "REMEMBER". Then I went back and wrote in some positive affirmations about the things I was feeling bad about in my life (one affirmation per page). The self esteem building activity I came up with was as follows. (And of course, it will be different for you.)

On the first page I wrote: "Remember that you are the stars and the stars are you." This is from one of my favorite poems by Joy Harjo, called (what else) "Remember". It addresses my need to feel connected to the world, the Great Spirit, and the universe.

One the next page I wrote: "Remember that you are as beautiful as the color purple." This is something that just came to mind because I wanted a reason to use my favorite color purple in a least one of the art journal pages. The color purple always reminded me that the world is filled with beauty and makes me appreciate being alive. Is there a color that does that for you? If so, surround yourself with it.

On the page after that I wrote: "Remember that you are a very beautiful woman." This was directly addressing my feelings of being over 40 and feeling unattractive.

On another page I wrote: "Remember that you are a very talented artist." Of course, this is a affirmation contradicting my doubts about being a good artist.

I continued to write affirmations on each page until I felt I had addressed all the negative feelings I was dealing with. Then I went back and began to fill in each page with artwork; either by cutting and pasting in images from magazines, or by drawing and using markers and colored pencils.

For the page that had "Remember that you are a very beautiful woman" written on it, I pasted in a photo of my favorite actor Viggo Mortenson. Then I drew a caption bubble over his head to show him speaking the words. So when I look at the page, it looks like Viggo is saying that to me. Silly, yes. But very effective, none-the-less. Every time I look at that page I giggle like a silly school girl, and it always makes me feel beautiful.

As you can see, I've included some of the pages from this self esteem building activity. Take a look at my finished pages, and then start on your own "Remember" self esteem building activity. Have fun, be silly, and feel good about being you and being alive in this gorgeous amazing world.