How to improve your self esteem

Tips of improving self esteem

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”Maria Robinson

Nothing is more important than how you feel and think about yourself.

Our self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves. If you have low self-esteem you may feel:

like you hate or dislike yourself
worthless or not good enough
unable to make decisions or assert yourself
like no one likes you
you blame yourself for things that aren't your fault
guilt for spending time or money on yourself
unable to recognise your strengths
undeserving of happiness
low in confidence.

Having little self-belief can stop you from living the life you want to live. If you think your low self-esteem is impacting on your life, take a look at our tips on improving your self-esteem:

Is low self-esteem a mental health problem?

Having low self-esteem isn't a mental health problem in itself, but the two are closely linked.

Some of the experiences of low self-esteem can also be symptoms of mental health problems, such as:

· Feeling hopeless
· Blaming yourself unfairly
· Hating yourself
· Worrying about being unable to do things.

If lots of things are affecting your self-esteem for a long time, this may lead to a mental health problem, such as depression or anxiety.

Having a mental health problem can cause you to have low self-esteem, which can make it more difficult to cope or take steps to increase your self-esteem.

Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D(link is external), author writes Self-Esteem Workbook, describes healthy self-esteem as a realistic, appreciative opinion of oneself.

He writes, “Unconditional human worth assumes that each of us is born with all the capacities needed to live fruitfully, although everyone has a different mix of skills, which are at different levels of development.” He emphasizes that core worth is independent of externals that the marketplace values, such as wealth, education, health, status — or the way one has been treated.

Bring positive changes for personal grooming

Here are 10 things you can do to build up your self-esteem

Life becomes simpler and lighter:

When you like or love yourself more than things simply become easier. You won’t make mountains out of molehills (or out of plain air) nearly as often anymore. You won’t drag yourself down or beat yourself up over simple mistakes or over not reaching a perfect and inhuman standard.

Think what is affecting your self-esteem:

What affects our self-esteem differs for everyone.

Your confidence may have been lowered after a difficult experience or series of negative life event,such as

being bullied or abused
losing your job or difficulty finding employment
ongoing stress
physical illness
mental health problems
a difficult relationship, separation or divorce

Or you may have had low self-esteem for as long as you can remember. If this is the case, it can be hard to recognise how you feel and make changes to challenge your low self-belief.But whatever the cause, it can be helpful to remind yourself that you have the right to feel good about who you are. It can be difficult to break habits but there are steps you can take to feel better about yourself, bit by bit.

Visualize yourself as you want to be:

What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” --Napoleon Hill

Visualization is the technique of seeing an image of yourself that you are proud of, in your own mind. When we struggle with low self-confidence, we have a poor perception of ourselves that is often inaccurate. Practice visualizing a fantastic version of yourself, achieving your goals.

Remove Negativity and Be mindful:

We can’t change something if we don’t recognize that there is something to change. By simply becoming aware of our negative self-talk, we begin to distance ourselves from the feelings it brings up. This enables us to identify with them less. Without this awareness, we can easily fall into the trap of believing our self-limiting talk, and as meditation teacher Allan Lokos says, “Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that — thoughts.”

As soon as you find yourself going down the path of self-criticism, gently note what is happening, be curious about it, and remind yourself, “These are thoughts, not facts.”

Meditation and spirituality

Avoid falling into the compare to others:

“Two key things I emphasize are to practice acceptance and stop comparing yourself to others,” says psychotherapist Kimberly Hershenson, LMSW. “I emphasis that just because someone else appears happy on social media or even in person doesn’t mean they are happy. Comparisons only lead to negative self-talk, which leads to anxiety and stress.” Feelings of low self-worth can negatively affect your mental health as well as other areas in your life, such as work, relationships, and physical health.

Do one thing that scares you every day:

“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” -- T. Harv Eker The best way to overcome fear is to face it head-on. By doing something that scares you every day and gaining confidence from every experience, you will see your self-confidence soar. So, get out of your comfort zone and face your fears!

Say stop to your inner critic:

A good place to start with raising your self-esteem is by learning how to handle and to replace the voice of your own inner critic.We all have an inner critic.

It can spur you on to get things done or to do things to gain acceptance from the people in your life. But at the same time it will drag your self-esteem down.This inner voice whispers or shouts destructive thoughts in your mind. Thoughts like for example:

You are lazy and sloppy, now get to work.
You aren’t good at your job at all and someone will figure that out and throw you out.
You are worse or uglier than your friend/co-worker/partner.

You don’t have to accept this though. There are ways to minimize that critical voice and to replace it with more helpful thoughts. You can change how you view yourself.One way to do so is simply to say stop whenever the critic pipes up in your mind.You can do this by creating a stop-word or stop-phrase.

As the critic says something – in your mind – shout: STOP!Or use my favorite: No, no, no, we are not going there!Or come up with a phrase or word that you like that stops the train of the thought driven by the inner critic.Then refocus your thoughts to something more constructive. Like planning what you want to eat for dinner or your tactic for the next soccer game.In the long run it also helps a lot to find better ways to motivate yourself than listening to your inner critic. So let’s move on to that..

Set yourself up to win:

To establish true self-confidence, we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives.” -- Denis Waitley

Too many people are discouraged about their abilities because they set themselves goals that are too difficult to achieve. Start by setting yourself small goals that you can win easily.Once you have built a stream of successes that make you feel good about yourself, you can then move on to harder goals. Make sure that you also keep a list of all your achievements, both large and small, to remind yourself of the times that you have done well.Instead of focusing only on “to-do" lists.I like to spend time reflecting on “did-it" lists. Reflecting on the major milestones, projects and goals you’ve achieved is a great way to reinforce confidence in your skills.

Recognize Your ability:

Albert Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Someone may be a brilliant musician, but a dreadful cook. Neither quality defines their core worth. Recognize what your strengths are and the feelings of confidence they engender, especially in times of doubt. It’s easy to make generalizations when you “mess up” or “fail” at something, but reminding yourself of the ways you rock offers a more realistic perspective of yourself.

Kristie Overstreet, suggest Asking Yourself "Was there a time in your life where you had better self-esteem? What were you doing at that stage of your life?” If it’s difficult for you to identify your unique gifts, ask a friend to point them out to you. Sometimes it’s easier for others to see the best in us than it is for us to see it in ourselves.

Set yourself as a challenge:

Find something you like doing and do more of it.

You could take up a hobby, join a class or volunteer your time for something you feel passionate about.At times it can be hard to find the motivation to set goals for yourself, especially when you don't feel confident or worry about what other people may think. But it doesn't have to be something big.

Making small goals such as trying a recipe or learning the days of the week in a new language can help you to feel more positive about yourself.And try to remind yourself you don't have to be perfect at it to enjoy yourself.Joining a new group is also a great way of meeting people.

Refocus on doing what you really like to do:

When you really,like doing something then the motivation to do that thing tends to comes pretty automatically. When you really want something in life then it also becomes easier to push through any inner resistance you feel.So if you lose your motivation, ask yourself: Am I doing what I really want to do? If not and if possible, then refocus and start working on that very important thing instead.

After you have used your stop-word or phrase focus on one of these techniques. Over time it will become a habit and your inner critic will pop up a lot less often.

Daily Exercise & Increase your level of self-esteem:

Many studies(link is external) have shown a correlation between exercise and higher self-esteem, as well as improved mental health. “Exercising creates empowerment both physical and mental,” says Debbie Mandel,(link is external) author of Addicted to Stress, “especially weight lifting where you can calibrate the accomplishments. Exercise organizes your day around self-care.” She suggests dropping a task daily from your endless to-do list for the sole purpose of relaxation or doing something fun, and seeing how that feels. Other forms of self-care, such as proper nutrition and sufficient sleep(link is external), have also been shown to have positive effects on one’s self-perception.

Forgive others & gir rid of negativity:

Is there is someone in your life you haven’t forgiven(link is external)? An ex-partner? A family member? Yourself? By holding on to feelings of bitterness or resentment, we keep ourselves stuck in a cycle of negativity. If we haven’t forgiven ourselves, shame will keep us in this same loop.

“Forgiving self and others has been found to improve self-esteem,” says Schiraldi, “perhaps because it connects us with our innately loving nature and promotes an acceptance of people, despite our flaws.” He refers to the Buddhist meditation on forgiveness, which can be practiced at any time: "If I have hurt or harmed anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, I ask forgiveness. If anyone has hurt or harmed me, knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive them. For the ways I have hurt myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness."

Help someone else make feeling grateful:

Helping someone else often enables us to forget about ourselves and to feel grateful for what we have. It also feels good when you are able to make a difference for someone else.Instead of focusing on your own weaknesses, volunteer to mentor, practically assist or teach another, and you'll see your self-confidence grow automatically in the process.

Create personal boundaries for yourself:

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”-- Harvey Fierstein

Learn to say no. Teach others to respect your personal boundaries. If necessary, take classes on how to be more assertive and learn to ask for what you want. The more control and say that you have over your own life, the greater will be your self-confidence.

Replace the perfectionism in the better way:

Few thought habits can be so destructive in daily life as perfectionism.It can paralyze you from taking action because you become so afraid of not living up to some standard. And so you procrastinate and you do not get the results you want. This will make your self-esteem sink.Or you take action but are never or very rarely satisfied with what you accomplished and your own performance. And so your opinion and feelings about yourself become more and more negative and your motivation to take action plummets.

A few things that really helped me are:

When you aim for perfection then that usually winds up in a project or a task never being finished. So simply go for good enough instead. Don’t use it as an excuse to slack off. But simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished.

This simple reminder that life is not like in a movie, a song or a book can be good reality check whenever you are daydreaming of perfection. Because reality can clash with your expectations when they are out of this world and harm or even possibly lead to the end of relationships, jobs, projects and so on.

Take care of yourself:

If you have low self-worth it can be difficult to find the motivation to take care of your physical health. You may even feel guilty about spending time on yourself, but it's important for your mental wellbeing.

Think about how some of the following are affecting how you feel and what you could do to change them for the better:

Focusing on my favourite parts of myself really helped me to have a more positive view on myself and improve my self esteem.