Self-esteem or self-confidence is a very important characteristic that helps you to believe in yourself and in your potential. Believing in yourself will make you more confident. Self-esteem is essential to deal with your life challenges. On the other hand, low self-esteem means feeling bad about your abilities and doubting yourself. Low self-esteem does have several harmful impacts on our minds and physical health.
Challenges Faced By People With Low Self-Esteem
People with low self-esteem avoid social gatherings. They avoid difficult situations and feel safe. Living with low self-esteem can lead to depression and anxiety. It impacts their daily life performance. It even leads to feelings like loneliness.
Causes Of Low Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem mostly begins in your childhood due to siblings, teachers, parents, and relative’s bad attitude towards the child with a demotivating opinion. The reason is that you find it difficult to live with the expectations of other people. If a child is not able to be up to the expectations of his parents, in that situation a child starts thinking bad about himself and this is the biggest reason for low self-esteem.
Benefits Of High Self-Esteem
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- When you have high self-esteem, you feel good about yourself then your face gets smiley and your laugh gets sillier. You feel proud of yourself.
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- When you are more confident you quickly recover from setbacks and learn from your mistakes instead of feeling bad about them.
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- You believe in your abilities and set high goals.
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- You have challenging abilities and you try to do something difficult and new things.
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- It gives you leadership abilities because it helps you appreciate your strengths and accept your faults and weaknesses.
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- You are more able to make stronger connections.
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- You can easily improve yourself.
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- You can easily manage your stress and advancement in your career.
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- You live a satisfied and happy life.
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- High self-confidence gives you greater independence and self-reliance.
How To Have A High Self-Esteem
To have high self-esteem or self-confidence you need to identify your weaknesses and negative thoughts you have about yourself and then try to challenge them. Start writing them on a piece of paper and then think about why you cannot do something that any other person can do. There are several different proven “Tips to boost your self-esteem” which are given below:
Some people find these tips very helpful, but one thing should must be kept in mind that for different people different things work at different times. Only try those tips which you feel comfortable with.
1) Write A List Of Things You Like About Yourself
It can be a very difficult, even uncomfortable task to sit down for hours and think about your positive traits. But discovering things you like about yourself can boost your self-talk.
Consider keeping a journal of your accomplishments that you found inspiring or enjoyable. Keeping a gratitude journal can help you greatly in recognizing what you have to be thankful for and it can also improve your outlook on life.
But don’t just write down every positive affirmation rather choose relevant affirmation and think how to accept yourself. What is it that you find valuable and admirable? Keep these qualities in mind the next time you find yourself thinking only bad things.
2) Always Try To Challenge Negative Thoughts About Yourself
Usually, in most cases, you unintentionally put yourself down which is totally wrong and can lower your self-esteem or self-confidence. So, next time when you find yourself doing this, directly stop yourself from doing this by saying that next time I will not put myself down unnecessarily.
3) Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
Stop comparing yourself to others like if you find someone very happy and living a very standardized life and having no problems in life and you question why I don’t have these things in my life? Please don’t make these comparisons of your life to others because you are just seeing the one side image of other’s life may be on the other side of the image, they may be facing more problems in their life than yours.
It is not an easy task to stop comparing yourself to others and one of the best practices that will help you to reduce this comparison is to stay away from social media as much as possible.
4) Stop being a people Pleaser
Individuals with low self-esteem may feel pressured to say yes to requests. They frequently prioritize the emotional health of others before their own. This can lead to being quickly overwhelmed at work or in your personal life. This in turn leads to a great deal of tension.
It’s admirable to be supportive and admirable to others, but your self-esteem gradually declines when you base your value on how much you accomplish for other people. You must have to learn when to say no to people.
5) Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
Individuals with low self-esteem try to stay away from new challenges and opportunities which in turn lowers their self-esteem. Fear or self-doubt may be the cause of this. However, any kind of success, no matter how tiny, illustrates to yourself that you are capable of enduring difficult times.
In order to step outside of your comfort zone doesn’t mean that you have to put yourself in situations that are extremely uncomfortable. It means you are ready to learn new things even if enter challenging circumstances.
6) Celebrate Your Victories
During one’s life victories come in different kinds and you should celebrate all of them which in turn leads to happiness because your victories will give you inner happiness or satisfaction due to which your self-esteem will rise. And these victories bring a big change in one’s life. Your victories will bring courage and encouragement in your whole personality.
7) Let go of negative people
Letting go of negative thoughts is one thing, but have you given any attention to letting go of negative people in your life? The people you surround with have great influence on your mood and self-esteem.
You will always have low self-esteem if people remind you of your errors, point out your shortcomings, or induce you to doubt yourself. However, letting go of negative people will make room for positive feedback and great ideas that will help you to boost or raise your self-esteem.
Recommended Books For Increasing Self-Esteem
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- The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem :
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- The Gifts of Imperfection:
5 ways to improve your self-esteem are the following:
- Write a list of things you like about yourself.
- Always try to challenge negative thoughts about yourself.
- Celebrate your wins.
- Let go of negative people.
- Step outside your comfort zone.
One of the biggest cause of low self-esteem is that if a child is not able to be up to the expectations of his parents then in that scenario child starts to think negative about himself and is the biggest reason of low-self which eventually grows with the increasing age.
It is how we perceive and value ourselves.