Ways to help you Develop your Self Esteem

                               Low Self Esteem?

Ever feel like you are not worthy? you are not beautiful enough? you are the least talented? you do not have enough friends? its your fault you are suffering? well this might be true to you but don’t ever feel low about yourself. A healthy dose of sadness/criticism is sometimes okay but when you are outright sad or criticise yourself too much, do not feel worthy etc., then there is a problem.

I would like you to know that the mind is very powerful, whatever we conceive or believe in our mind is most likely what we would become. There is a saying that goes, ‘nobody can hurt you without your permission’ – Mahatma Gandhi

So even if others may say harsh words to you or do not treat you well, as long as you value yourself and have a positive mindset and believe in who you are, then those harsh words won’t get to you or hurt you that much. There is nothing more important than how you feel and think about yourself as this would give you great peace of mind.

Self esteem in essence is for an individual to be appreciative, have confidence in his or her abilities, feel worthy and have self respect. A lack of these qualities is what we refer to having low self esteem.

A few steps that could help you develop your self esteem are such as;

1. Have a Positive Mindset – Like I previously stated, the mind is a powerful tool and having a positive mindset is an incredible feat. Let’s admit it, we all have that inner critic in us that likes to be critical and put negative thoughts in our mind. You know that little voice in you that sometimes tells you, you are not good enough or that you can’t do this, etc. Whenever we ever come across our negative voice, ,we should try as much as possible to shift our focus from listening or believing the negativity in our mind to something positive and constructive. Instead of thinking of how ugly you are, why not think of how unique you are and list down all your positive attributes to reaffirm your uniqueness and how awesome you are and will be.
2. Be Realistic and Avoid being a Perfectionist – Being realistic would help some of us who are trying to develop our self esteem but the idea of reality could be quite different to each person. Nonetheless, less of the perfectionist ideas and lets start being truthful to ourselves. Being a perfectionist might have its advantages but it also has its disadvantages as well. To me the idea of perfection is not that easy to attain, so instead of trying to be perfect, we need to set goals, and acknowledge what we have accomplished so far. For example we may want the idea of having the perfect children, perfect career, perfect boyfriend, attaining a top five position in school, Graduating with a first class honours, etc and when we come short of this goal we begin to belittle ourselves and start developing a negative mindset. As much as we may be disappointed that we do not have the mouth watering career like our friends do etc, we need to acknowledge our loss, take a deep breadth and be grateful for where we are and how much we have accomplished so far. Set new goals and take baby steps to achieve them. Also when we make mistakes in life, it does not mean we are bad or stupid; mistakes are opportunities for us to evaluate ourselves and what went wrong, take lessons from the situation and then hopefully do better in the future.
3. Do not Compare Yourself to Others – Comparing yourself to others might just be the easiest way of making yourself feel inadequate and you should not allow yourself be in that position. Yes we may compare ourselves with others if we wish but it should never be to develop feelings of envy, hate and negativity towards the individual and ourselves, rather we should be able to see what others have that we wish we had as a source of inspiration. Comparing yourself to those you admire could definitely be used as a source of inspiration for you to work hard in order to be like and acquire those things you admire from them instead of envy.
4. Be Kind and Supportive – Being kind and supportive to people would help you be in a positive state of mind. Always remember though that not everyone may reciprocate your kind and supportive attitude back to you. So try and do things from your heart without expecting anything in return and you would be better off for it.
5. Do Something New – Try and involve yourself in new activities or adventures, this would help keep your mind focused on something else and would help uplift your spirit and self worth. Rather than dwelling on negativity and self pity, why not do something different and out of your comfort zone, you would notice that your mind would start concentrating on something else.
6. Get Motivated – you may or may not find it difficult to get self motivated to do things and focus your energy on something productive that would help in developing your self esteem, if you do, you could try and use positive affirmative words to start your day. Once you start with a positive mindset, you would most likely be able to maintain it through the day. An example of a technique you could use to get you motivated is to;

• write a list of positive attributes about yourself and read it to yourself every morning and believe in it
• Create a vision board of what you want to achieve in life and look at it for a few minutes every morning or any suitable time during the day to remind you of your goal.
• Exercise – this helps us clear our minds and feel good about ourselves. You could also do some yoga in the morning, as this gives you a relaxing atmosphere where you can focus your mind on positivity

The points above are simple steps we could use to help develop ourselves when we begin to doubt our worth and feel less than we should. No matter how low we tend to feel about our self and situations, I would like to remind you all that you are Unique, Very Special and we all have Different paths in life. So instead of looking down on yourself and comparing yourself to others, focus that energy on having a positive mindset and becoming the best you can be!.