How To Improve Self-esteem

Self-esteem is a person’s foundation, on which their way of feeling and acting is built. Self-esteem is always present and conditions all aspects of life. For this reason, it is so important to work on self-esteem in order to nourish a healthy, stable and positive self-esteem. For self-esteem to be a solid and realistic foundation, it is necessary to get to its origin.

First of all, to improve your self-esteem you must be aware of what your thoughts are both about yourself, others and the world in general. These thoughts or evaluations that we make about ourselves, others or what is happening usually have a negative or positive connotation depending on our belief system.

If you want to improve your self-esteem, secondly, you must examine what beliefs exist behind these thoughts. That is, many of your characteristics are neutral, however, there are deep-rooted beliefs that act as a filter in our mind.

When observing objective and neutral reality, our own filter is responsible for evaluating those characteristics negatively or positively.

Thirdly, when you are already aware of the beliefs that cause you to evaluate yourself poorly or negatively, you can begin to question these beliefs that you have acquired to improve self-esteem. In this article you will find more information about the determinants of self-esteem.

At this point, after questioning the beliefs, you can ask yourself if they are really true for you or not. If they are not, you can replace them with others that are more objective and true for you. If you want to know how to do it, in this article you will find some Exercises to change limiting beliefs.

Surrounding yourself with people who support and value you can have a positive impact on your self-esteem. Therefore, look for healthy relationships and encourage open and honest communication. If you want to improve self-esteem, it is advisable to maintain an active social life and enrich yourself with activities with other people and relationships with others.

On the contrary, avoid people who make you feel bad about yourself or who make constant criticisms of you or third parties.

If you want to increase self-esteem, it will help if you are healthy and maintain healthy habits regarding food, rest and exercise. In addition, physical exercise increases the release of endorphins, which produce well-being.

Practicing self-care is another main point to increase your self-esteem. For it, Take care of your physical, emotional and mental well-being. In this sense, it is important to get enough sleep, eat healthy, exercise and spend time doing activities that you enjoy.

If you are wondering how to improve self-esteem, you should know that use non-pejorative language It is one of the most important points. It consists of eliminating all words that have negative connotations: stupid, fat, ugly… These terms, especially when used continuously, can devour your self-esteem.

To avoid pejorative labels, the following thoughts can help you:

• That’s not me, it’s just a label.
• Labels exaggerate my weakest part.
• No more labels, we must specify more.
• I have more qualities than defects although I don’t see them now.
• I have always done what I could and I will continue to do so.
• What exactly do I understand by…?

To improve self-esteem, it is necessary to know oneself, accept oneself, and also take care of and treat oneself well, which in psychology we call self-compassion. To do this, it is necessary to exercise awareness, work on self-knowledge and practice self-compassion, as well as change our language:

• Use precise language: Don’t exaggerate or embellish negative traits, stick to the facts. For example, “I am not pretty to others” is an inaccurate term. It would have to be rephrased as “some people find me more attractive and others less attractive, because I have very pretty features and others less attractive, it depends on what they notice.” The idea of ​​“I don’t know how to do anything without my husband” should be changed to “I usually follow my husband’s ideas.
• Use specific rather than general language: Eliminates terms like everything, always, never, or totally. For example, change “I hate being alone” to other types of formulations such as “I would like to be accompanied when sometimes I am alone in my house.” Recognize that problems occur on certain occasions and with certain people.

Another important point to improve self-esteem is toFind exceptions or skills in which you excel. To do this, make a list of your strengths, talents, and past achievements. Focus on your positive qualities and the things you have accomplished instead of constantly comparing yourself to others. Celebrate your successes, no matter how small, and give yourself credit for your efforts and progress.

On the other hand, you can also try to change some of your thoughts. For example, “I’m shy when I have to flirt at the club, I’m insecure.” It can be changed to “I’m shy because I can’t speak calmly, when I meet someone in another context I get along much better. My favorite environment to flirt is…”

Constant comparisons can damage our self-esteem. There will always be someone who will be more successful, smarter, or more attractive than us in certain aspects. Focus on these negative comparisons can undermine our self-confidence and generate feelings of inferiority.

When you find yourself making comparisons, you can use the following statements such as “Everyone is different, with different qualities and defects”, “Just because I don’t have a career doesn’t mean I’m worse than them” or “I shouldn’t assume anything but check it out”.

Instead of comparing ourselves to others, it is best to focus on our own personal growth and development. Remember that each person has their own goals and challenges, so by focusing on our own goals and striving to constantly improve we can find greater satisfaction and personal fulfillment.

In case you get carried away by emotional reasoning, the following thoughts can help you:

• My feelings are not automatically true.
• Lie, my emotions deceive me!
• Be wary of all sudden feelings.
• What are the thoughts that make me feel so sad and nervous? I know that if I correct them and change them, this discomfort will disappear.

Guessing what others think about you can be detrimental to your self-esteem and emotional well-being, in addition to can lead to erroneous interpretations, a loss of authenticity and lack of control. When you find yourself trying to anticipate what others think about you:

• I have no way of knowing what they are thinking.
• The only way to know what others think is to ask them directly.
• Don’t assume anything. Check it.
• Why assume the negative? Can I give you another explanation?
• What are the facts?
• I don’t know what he thinks and I don’t care.
• He seems kind despite everything. Who knows what she really feels?
• It’s a waste of time trying to make up what they think of me.

“All or nothing” thoughts, also known as dichotomous thinking or polarized thinking, are a pattern of thinking in which a person tends to view situations in an extreme way, without considering intermediate possibilities or nuances. In this type of thinking, things are perceived as “all or nothing”, “good or bad”, “success or failure”, with no room for options in between.

To avoid all or nothing thoughts, the following thoughts are useful:

• Everybody makes mistakes. Is human
• Sometimes you are perfectly competent and other times less so.
• You are never totally incompetent.
• You do your job well.
• It’s not the end of the world.

Here you will find more techniques to improve self-esteem that can help you implement changes.

Psychological therapy can be very useful to improve self-esteem. Psychologists will provide you with professional and expert support and will allow you explore your thoughts and emotions, change thought patterns negatives, develop skills and strategies, and receive emotional support.

All of this will help you build healthier self-esteem and live a fuller, more satisfying life.

A good option to strengthen and improve self-esteem is to complement the tips mentioned above with bibliotherapy to learn more about self-esteem and self-knowledge. Below we show you a list with 20 books to improve self-esteem:

1. 40 reflections to awaken your self-esteem – Feli Garcia
2. Love yourself like your life depends on it -Kamal Ravikant
3. Self-esteem in 10 days -David Burns
4. Self-esteem: Evaluation and Improvement – Matthew Mckay, Patrick Fanning
5. Self-esteem to live: How to trust yourself and achieve what you want – Hermínia Gomà
6. Zero limits -Joe Vitale
7. How to believe in yourself (once and for all) – Patricia Cleghorn
8. Awakening the giant within -Anthony Robbins
9. the power of the word -Louise Hay
10. Fall in love with yourself: The essential value of self-esteem -Walter Riso
11. The brain and emotional intelligence – Daniel Goleman
12. The gifts of imperfection – Brene Brown
13. The six pillars of self esteem -Nathaniel Branden
14. Get out of your mind, get into your life – Steven C. Hayes
15. Be your best friend -Louis Proto
16. Have coffee with yourself -Walter Dresel
17. Your incorrect zones -Wayne Dyer
18. You are worth more than you think: Believe in yourself and awaken your self-esteem – Matthew McKay, Patrick Fanning, Carole Honeychurch and Catharine Sutker
19. A life without limits – Nick Vujicic
20. You can heal your life -Louise Hay

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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