Essay On Self Concept

One’s self-knowledge and personal outlook in life are said to be crucial to personal life and professional growth. According to Branden (1969), one’s ability to cope with the problems and challenges in life, to discover new and better ways of striving with life’s problems, and to expand the range of one’s abilities depends on these two factors. It is therefore important to have a healthy self-concept and a positive mental attitude.

The self-concept of a person may have come into sight starting from a very young age. Childhood experience, family and friends, culture, and one’s environment may have a contribution to its development. These are sets of knowledge that one’s knows and understand about one’s self. This includes schemas about one’s

Estacion (1994) in his research noted these three aspects of self-concept. Personal self-concept refers to the degree to which a person perceives one’s self to be energetic, dynamic, cheerful, smart, self-confident, self-reliant, courageous, broad-minded, patient and resilient. Social self-concept refers to the degree to which one’s perceived one’s self to be friendly, approachable, helpful, generous, a good sport, fair with others, respectful, tactful, considerate and courteous. And work-related self-concept refers to the degree to which an individual perceives one’s self as creative, versatile, diligent, meticulous, goal-oriented, assertive, industrious, hardworking, studious, and

Mental attitude refers to the complex mental state of a person which includes beliefs, emotions, values, and attitudes on which one’s acts certainly. Even before until now, self-help books and popular beliefs have already speculated the power of positive mental attitude in the lives of a person. Similarly, a number of theories on positive psychology may support this claim. On the basis of Seligman’s (1998) theory, pessimists tend to explain bad events that happened in their life as internal, stable, and global throughout their lives. Such people tend to develop learned helplessness and are prone to depression. Personal outlook in life, therefore, affects students’ performance. In school, study shows that pessimistic student performs less than their level of “talent” whereas optimistic student performs high (Seligman,