Improving Self-esteem: 4 Steps
Improving self-esteem is a goal we can all embrace. As we grow, we build our identity and strengthen our perception of ourselves. This process of self-knowledge and personal growth becomes essential so that we can live in a healthier way interacting with the world around us and ourselves.
Self-esteem is closely related to self-perception. The perception of ourselves refers to beliefs about ourselves. Self-esteem could thus be like an emotional echo of our own self-perception: how we feel and see ourselves with the image we have of our own self. This is why self-perception and self-esteem are significantly related concepts.
And what happens when self-esteem and self-perception are so low that they affect our lives? In particular, what can we do to improve self-esteem? In this article, we will briefly present the ways in which self-esteem can be successful when, for one reason or another, it is battered.
Improving self-esteem through self-care
At the same time, the way we take care of ourselves is a consequence that supports self-esteem. We are able to apply it to other people as well: caring for others can make them feel better. Well, we too should follow this principle, even if it is sometimes forgotten by us.
Therefore, improving self-esteem can begin by making more realistic assessments of our accomplishments or real responsibility for those mistakes or goals that we do not achieve for one reason or another. In addition, it is important to keep in mind what we want and need, as well as how we could dedicate more time to ourselves.
Identify your strengths
To improve our self-esteem, we need to trust our strengths. So keep in mind that we all have foundations or abilities in our personalities that we can work on and that can help us improve our own performance, and in a significant way.
Our accomplishments can give us clues as to what our true strengths are. So ask yourself: What strengths do I have? What are my strengths and successes? What good can I find? Always look for honest answers, otherwise they can’t help you.
Change your internal dialogue
The way we communicate with ourselves is a key factor in improving self-esteem. If internal dialogue is based on constant negative criticism, self-censorship, or punishment, self-esteem is one of the first to pay for the consequences of this negative attitude and outlook on life.
Let’s think about it: if you devoted yourself to criticizing someone with phrases like “you can’t or can’t,” “you’re useless,” or “you’re not worth anything”… Take a stand for another and think about how that person would feel? The same thing happens if we say those words to ourselves. That is when we become the worst enemies and critics of ourselves.
In a way, this internal dialogue is irrational and interprets the situation in the worst possible way, even if the evidence supporting this same conclusion is very weak. In the face of these negative thoughts and attitudes, the most important thing would be to do the following:
- Identify negative thoughts: What is my internal dialogue like? What kind of feelings does it evoke in me? Is what I say to myself actually true or is it irrational?
- Put in place strategies that undermine the power of negative thoughts.
One way to start making changes in the internal dialogue could be through the following questions, for example: What would I say to my friend? What encouraging words could I say to the person I love? Use the answers to these questions to improve your more positive inner language.
Improving Self-Esteem: Accept yourself and forgive yourself
Sometimes we all have difficulty accepting some parts of us or what we feel or what we are like. This resistance or resilience can damage self-esteem: the inability to forgive ourselves and the inability to accept us as our own selves can feed our own psychological torturer: The guilt that always puts us on a lower level.
In this sense, researcher Kristin Neff and her study of self-esteem at the University of Texas find that if we are able to treat ourselves more kindly and by understanding ourselves and our feelings, we can potentially increase our self-esteem in a much healthier way.
Therefore, when we want to improve self-esteem, we must forgive ourselves and accept that we are all human beings and therefore also make mistakes; however, we do not have to punish ourselves for the mistakes we make.
In conclusion, we can say that high and hard-to-achieve goals are an obstacle to improving self-esteem; goals that only succeed in causing frustration and, of course, also serve to maintain a negative self-perception.
For this reason, it is important to combine different goals in our internal plans: the challenges that help us grow and develop as individuals, but also the small goals that will allow us to be reinforced in the event of a period of conflict in our path.
