12 Steps to Increase Your Self-Esteem

Last Updated on October 4, 2024 by Joshua Isibor

Self-esteem is your opinion about yourself and your abilities too. It can be high, low, or somewhere in between. While everyone occasionally has doubts about themselves, low self-esteem can leave you feeling insecure and unmotivated. Sometimes, people feel a bit low or find it hard to believe in themselves.

This could result in a long-term situation; it could lead to problems, including mental health issues such as anxiety. Self-esteem often results in a lifetime experience, particularly what happens to us as children. You may be able to identify a few things that are affecting your opinion of yourself (maybe you’re being bullied, or you might be feeling lonely), or it could be a mystery.
Either way, if you are wondering how to increase your self-esteem, you will find all the tips in this article.

Understanding Self-Esteem

Some people think self-esteem is their inner voice (or self-dialogue), the voice that tells you whether you are good enough to do or achieve something.
Self-esteem is actually about how you value yourself and your perception of who you are and what you are capable of.

Self-esteem is not about ability

Self-esteem is often not associated with either your own ability or other people’s perceptions of you.
It is quite possible for someone who is good at something to have poor self-esteem. Conversely, someone who struggles with a particular task might generally have good Self-esteem.

People with good Self-esteem generally feel positive about themselves and about life. This makes them much more resilient and better able to cope with their life’s ups and downs.
Those with poor Self-esteem, however, are often much more critical of themselves.    They find it harder to bounce back from challenges and setbacks. This may lead to unavoidable situations that can, however, decrease their Self-esteem Still Further because they even feel worse about themselves.
A lack of Self-esteem can, therefore, influence how people behave, not to mention what they achieve in their lives.

12 Steps To Increase Your Self-Esteem

1. Surround Yourself With a Supportive Squad

Find people who make you feel good about yourself and avoid these tend to trigger your negative Thinking

2. Be Nice to Yourself

That little voice that tells you you’re killing it(or not) is way more powerful than you might think. Make an effort to be kind to yourself; if you do slip up, try challenging any negative thoughts. A good rule of thumb is to speak to yourself like you speak to your mates. This can be really hard at first, but practice makes perfect.
Try: write down the things that you like about yourself

3. Build Positive Relationships and Avoid Negative Ones.

You will probably find that there are certain people – and certain relationships – that make you feel better than others.
If there are people that make you feel bad about yourself, try to avoid them.
Build relationships with people who make you feel good about yourself and avoid the relationships that drag you down.

4. Get Moving (Exercise)

Exercise is a great way to Increase motivation, practice setting goals, and build confidence. Breaking a sweat also cues the body to release endorphins, the feel-good hormones

5. Nobody’s Perfect

Always strive to be the best version of yourself, but it’s also important to accept that perfection is an unrealistic goal

6. Focus on what you can change

Getting hung up on things out of your control is easy, but it won’t achieve much. Instead, try to focus your energy on identifying the things that are within your control and seeing what you can do about them.
Try to write down one thing you’re not happy with and three ways to change it.

7. Improve Your Physical Health

It is much easier to feel good about ourselves when we are fit and healthy
However, people with low self-esteem often neglect themselves because they do not feel that they “deserve” to be looked after.

Try to do more exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep. It is also a good idea to make time to relax and to do something that you want to do rather than something that someone else expects you to do. You may find that simple changes like this can make a huge difference to your overall outlook.

8. Take on Challenges

People with low self-esteem often avoid challenges and different situations.
One way to improve Self-esteem is to take on a challenge. This doesn’t mean that you need to do everything yourself – part of the challenge might be seeking help when you need it – but be prepared to try something that you know will be difficult to achieve.
This challenges your negative beliefs and will, therefore, improve your self-esteem

9. Identify and Challenge your negative Beliefs

The first step is to identify and then challenge your negative Beliefs about yourself.
Notice your thoughts about yourself. For example, you might find yourself thinking, “I’m not clever enough to do that” or “I have no friends”. When you do, look for evidence that contradicts those statements. Write down your statement and evidence, and keep looking back at it. Remind yourself that your negative Beliefs about yourself are not.

10. Become more Assertive and Learn to say no

People with low self-esteem often find it hard to stand up for themselves or even say no to others.
This means they may have been burdened at home or work because they do not like to refuse anyone anything. However, this can increase stress and make it even harder to manage.

Developing your assertiveness can, therefore, help to improve your self-esteem. Sometimes, acting as if you believe in yourself can actually help increase your self-esteem/belief.

11. Identify the Positive About Yourself

It’s really a good, nice idea to write down positive things about yourself, such as nice things people have you say about you, or being good at sport or anything. When you start feeling low, just look back at these things and remind yourself that there is plenty of good about yourself.
In general, positive internal dialogue is a big part of improving your self-esteem
If you see yourself saying things like “I’m a failure” or “I’m not good enough”, you can start now to turn things around by saying, “I can beat this”, You can become more confident by viewing yourself in a more positive way.
To begin with, you will catch yourself falling back into old negative habits, but with regular effort, you can start to feel more positive and build your self-esteem as well.

12. Give Yourself a Break

You don’t have to be perfect every time, every hour of every day. No!! You don’t have to feel good about yourself at all times.
Self-esteem varies from situation to situation, from day to day and hour to hour. Some people feel relaxed and positive with friends and colleagues but uneasy and shy with strangers. Others may feel totally in command of themselves at work but struggle socially (or Vice Versa).

Give yourself a Break. We all have times when we feel a bit down or find it harder to maintain our self-belief.
The key is not to be too hard on yourself. Be kind to yourself and not Critical.

ALSO, READ How to stop being shy ( 8 sure ways)

Originally posted 2020-12-08 22:10:27.