How To Improve Self-esteem?

Improving self-esteem is a purpose that we could all adopt as our own: as we grow, we build our identity and strengthen our self-concept. This process of self-knowledge and personal growth becomes essential for us to relate in a healthier way with the world around us and with ourselves.

Self-esteem is closely associated with self-concept. The self-concept refers to the beliefs people have about themselves. Self-esteem would be the emotional echo of the self-concept: how we feel about this image we have of ourselves. Thus, self-concept and self-esteem are related concepts that feed each other back.

What happens when self-esteem and self-concept are so low that they have a negative impact on our lives? Specifically, how can we improve self-esteem? Below, we briefly explain some ways to enhance it if it is deteriorated.

Tips on how to improve your self-esteem

self care

How you take care of yourself is both a cause and a consequence of your self-esteem. We are able to do this with others: by taking good care of others, we can make them feel better. Well, we also follow this maxim, although we sometimes forget.

Therefore, you could start to improve self-esteem by making more realistic judgments about your achievements or about your real responsibility for certain mistakes or unfulfilled goals.

It is also important to consider the following questions: What do you want? What you need? How can you spend time for yourself?

identify your strengths

Another piece of advice on how to improve your self-esteem is to build on your strengths. Remember that we all have, in our profile, skill bases or peaks with which we can greatly enhance our performance.

The achievements achieved can give clues about these strengths. Ask yourself: What are my strengths? What are my strengths and my successes? What’s good about me? Seek honest answers; otherwise, they won’t help you.

Change your internal dialogue

How you communicate with yourself is a key factor in improving self-esteem. If your self-talk is based on constant negative criticism, self-reproach or punishment, self-esteem will be one of the first to foot the bill.

Let’s think: If you dedicate yourself to criticizing someone with phrases like “You can’t do it”, “You’re good for nothing,” “You’re worthless”… how will that person feel? The same is true if these words are spoken by us to ourselves. That’s how we become our worst enemies.

In a way, this internal dialogue is irrational, interpreting any situation in the worst possible way, even when the evidence supporting the conclusion is very weak. In the face of these negative thoughts, it is important to:

• Identify them: what is my internal dialogue like? What emotions does he provoke me? Is what I say to myself really real or is it irrational?
• Putting in place strategies that undermine your power.

One way to start making changes in your inner communication might be to ask questions like: What would you say to a friend? What words of encouragement would you say to someone you love? Use these responses to maintain a more positive internal language.

accept yourself and forgive yourself

In some situations, we all have difficulty accepting parts of ourselves, how we feel and how we are.

This is a resistance that can damage self-esteem: by not forgiving and accepting ourselves, we may be sponsoring our own psychological torturer: guilt, which always places us at a lower level.

In this sense, Kristin Neff, in her study on self-esteem conducted at the University of Texas, says that if you are able to treat yourself with greater kindness and self-compassion, you can increase your self – esteem in a healthier way.

So if you want to know how to improve your self-esteem, you need to forgive and accept that you are human and make mistakes, and you don’t need to blame yourself for it.

To conclude, an obstacle to improving self-esteem is to set high and hard-to-reach goals, those that can only generate frustration, and of course also serve to maintain a negative self-concept.

That’s why it ‘s important to combine different goals in your planning : challenges that help you to grow, but also small goals with which you can guarantee a reinforcement in case you get stuck in any of your bigger goals.