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

a) Negative Work Environment, beware of ?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, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

b) Other People's Behavior, bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers? all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

c) Changing Environment, you cannot 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 cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

d) Past Experience, it is okay to cry and say ?ouch!? when we experience pain. But do not 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.

e) Negative World View, look at what you are looking at. Do not wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

f) Determination Theory, the way you are and your behavioral traits is 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 does not mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people's experience, so you will never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to 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. God would not come down from heaven and tell you, ?George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.?

In life, it is hard to stay tough specially 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. Along 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 changes 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. It is 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.