How To Improve Low Self Esteem
- The effects of low self esteem destroy success.
- Eliminate negative influences as they are a major cause of low self esteem.
- If you have low self esteem, fake it until you make it.
- You can train your brain to develop high self esteem.
In this article you will learn briefly about what self esteem is, and how to improve low self esteem.
For more detailed information about self esteem, head over to the personal development section and read each article on self esteem in the order they are listed.
What Is Self Esteem?
In its most simplest form, self esteem means liking the person you are and seeing yourself as a worthwhile and important individual.
Many people wrongly assume that any person who is rich, famous or good looking, will automatically have high self esteem.
The reason this is incorrect is because true self esteem can only come from within you, and should not be dependant upon other people or other things.
If your self esteem comes from these external factors, it is vulnerable to fluctuations throughout your life. Sometimes it may go up. Sometimes it may go down. It will all depend on the circumstances in your life.
This last point can be seen in numerous celebrities who have suffered with low self esteem. For example, Keith Ledger, Angelina Jolie, and Britney Spears are all reported to have suffered from low self esteem.
Despite the “average” person considering these people to have perfect lives, their lack of true self esteem lead to a rejection of themselves. As a result, they experienced much pain and psychological discomfort in their lives.
Self Esteem Is Your Foundation For Growth
Everyone has the potential to change who they are, and improve the life they live. However this self improvement must come from within. It comes from improving your level of self esteem, and learning to accept and love the person you are.
Without a strong foundation of self esteem, anything you build upon it is likely to crumble and fall. As you have already seen with the many celebrities who suffer very public breakdowns.
What Is The Cause Of Low Self Esteem?
Anything that makes you feel valuable, special, worthwhile, needed, important or anything else that makes you feel good, will raise your level of self esteem. However, the opposite is also true.
Anything that makes you feel bad such as fear of failure, poverty, self doubt, rejection or criticism will lower your feeling of self worth and create low self esteem.
So when you break self esteem down to this level, it really is quite simple to understand. Things that make you feel good, will raise your self esteem. Things that make you feel bad, will lower your self esteem.
Of course, self esteem is a bit more complicated than this, and there are many other factors which play a role in shaping your self esteem.
But if you can apply this basic principle of maximising the good things in your life, and eliminating or reducing the bad, you will notice your self esteem will rapidly start to improve.
Low Self Esteem And Failure
Virtually all human failure occurs due to low self esteem, because accompanying it are limiting belief systems that make you believe you unable to achieve your goal.
For example, if you doubt your ability to complete a certain task you unlikely to give it 100% of your best effort.
As a result you will perform far below your true potential, and therefore achieve far less than you were capable of. If you set out with an attitude that failure is inevitable, ultimately that is what you will achieve, failure.
What is the result of failure? Feelings of inadequacy, self doubt and a reduced confidence in your abilities. In other words failure makes you feel bad, and as you already know, things that make you feel bad can lower your self esteem.
This just goes to show the affect of low self esteem on failure. It is a self reinforcing cycle, whereby the lower your self esteem is the more likely you are to fail, which then causes your self esteem to drop even more.
When self esteem reaches absolutely rock bottom, many people then resort to drugs, alcohol or even suicide.
You Become What You Think About Most Of The Time
It is often suggested that in order to build self esteem you should just think positive thoughts. I agree, but only partly.
There is no doubt that negative self talk will lower your self esteem, however there are also many other factors which play a role.
Low Self Esteem And Self Talk
In case you don’t know what self talk is, self talk is a term used to describe how you speak to yourself on a daily basis. It is those little voices in your head which say you can do something, or you can’t do something.
How you talk to yourself today, is often a reflection of how your parents talked to you as a child. So for example, if you call yourself an idiot after doing something wrong, it is likely you were called an idiot by your parent(s) when you did something wrong.
The most common form of self talk is negative, and usually involves putting yourself down or doubting your ability to do something.
It is very destructive because it is often done without really thinking about it, and on a day to day basis.
The affect of negative self talk serves to reinforce limiting beliefs into the mind, thereby reducing your overall level of confidence and belief in what you are capable of.
Obviously this will lower your self esteem. So monitoring and improving the way you talk to yourself can be an easy and effective way of improving self esteem.
Birds Of A Feather Flock Together
Whilst eliminating negative self talk certainly is beneficial, it is also important to eliminate negative external influences that may be contributing towards creating low self esteem.
Low Self Esteem And Social Groups
Associating with negative individuals is perhaps one of the worst things that you can do when trying to raise your self esteem.
It is best to avoid these people whenever possible, as they will just bring you down and further lower your self esteem.
Have you ever noticed how you feel good around some people, whilst you feel tense, anxious or uncomfortable around others? This occurs because the way a person is feeling affects the energy field, or aura, that surrounds them.
When you are filled with negativity you emit a negative aura around you. This aura will repel people and make them feel uncomfortable in your presence.
When you are feeling good about yourself, your aura changes. It becomes filled with a positive energy, that attracts people and makes them feel good being around you.
This is why you should always eliminate or reduce the number of negative people you associate with. Their negativity bring you down, and make you feel worse about yourself.
By spending your time with happy positive people their energy will spread to you, and you will automatically begin to feel better.
If you would like more information on the human aura, how energy fields affect people and a video of an aura, see this article : Develop Rapport With Anyone
Acting Your Way Into High Self Esteem
One of the best ways to boost self esteem is to feel good about yourself, after-all, that’s what self esteem is. But it’s difficult to feel good if you feel down. Isn’t it?
There has been countless research that shows if you feel a certain way you will act a certain way, but if you don’t feel a certain way, you can act a certain way to feel that way. In other words, fake it until you make it! And this is exactly what actors do!
I’m not going detail how to act confidently, because that would take several articles to do justice. But the basic idea is that if you act confident and courageous, soon enough you will become confident and courageous, here’s why…
Practice Makes Perfect
The more you practice something, the better you get at it. This occurs because the brain begins to form new connections. In this example, I will call them confidence connections.
Creating Confidence Connections In The Brain
If you have low self confidence your “confidence connections” are weak and few in number, just like the twigs on a young tree.
But if you practice acting confident an amazing thing happens. The brain begins to produce more confidence connections, and the existing ones become stronger. The twigs are now branches on a mighty oak tree!
Raise Your Self Esteem Everyday
This process occurs for any skill or thought pattern you learn and use. However if you do not use a skill the reverse happens, these connections get weaker and start to break up.
So the more you work on improving your self esteem, the weaker low self esteem becomes. This is why it is important to surround yourself with positive influences, and to do something each day that will raise your self esteem.
However the reverse of this is also true. The more you give into fear, the worse your fear will become. By fearing your fears you are literally feeding them and making things worse.
So focus on the things you want in your life, and allow them to grow and develop. Avoid focusing on the things you don’t want in your life, so that they can shrink and disappear.
But be warned, mental fitness is like physical fitness! At the start it is hard. But the more you practice the stronger those connections will become, and the higher your self esteem will be.
You Are Destined For Success
Success is not an accident or luck, it is a skill, it is predictable and can be learnt by you or anyone. The sooner you learn the skill of success, the sooner you will achieve what you were destined to accomplish in life.
Remember, success must be learnt and it is only through small but constant daily improvement will you succeed. Things won’t happen overnight, but they are guaranteed to happen if you never ever give up.
If you fail try again, learn from your mistakes and you will be one step closer to achieving your goal.
‘I firmly believe anything is possible. You just have to know what to do, how to do it, then keep doing it until you succeed.’ Martin
Keep them coming man!
You are so right on!! Success is not an accident. It takes hard work to get “out of the bad habits’ we’ve created for ourselves. I’m trying to more positive, each day. Habits are learned.
Thank you for the information
your welcome Julie, glad you found the article useful
Hey whoever wrote this i just want to say thank you .Because being young is hard. And this has helped me out a lot.
hey !! thank you so much because i’ve read this at the right moment just before i open the door of success , and you show me exactly how to walk once the door is opened!!!
thank you again !!!!!
Thank you, I am really inspired because I believe all that you say is so true..I fell over and over and I keep trying knowing I won’t give up. I believe in me!
As long as you keep trying you will allways have a chance. You only truly fail when you give up. So keep going no matter what!
I am always amazed to read something like this and feel inspired. Just by reading motivational text is one very unique and special way to build self esteem. You have done a wonderful job here.
Great post and nice pointers up there! Keep it up and hope that it will provide further guidance for people who need help =)
This information is very plainly stated and effective. Is there any medical support from your studies?
What do you mean by medical support Geoff?
5 stars for your post.
Thanks.
Thank you for this article. I was getting annoyed by friends stating that only way out is through medications and counselors. I was looking for something that I could do for myself without the need of any of that. You have given me great tools and that don’t cost a thing…it is all ME. I have the power to do it. Thank you very much!
Thanks for writing this… I’m sure it’s helped many people but it hasn’t helped me; not that it’s your fault. I must be too depressed to care now and since I am I just need to face the facts and realise that I’m worthless and that I need to just move on from trying to correct myself.
Hi Josh,
Thank you for your honesty. Have you read all 12 articles on self esteem? As they are each designed to build on each other.
Reading these articles by themselves will not automatically improve your self esteem. You may read, understand and agree with something, but if you have limiting negative beliefs about yourself, it will take time to change them.
The only way you can change something about yourself, is by continually learning new information, trying to apply it in your life and never giving up.
It is obvious from what you have written that you have very low self esteem, and by calling yourself worthless, I would guess that you also have very negative self talk. Are you aware of what self talk is?
The truth is you are not worthless. The reason you feel this way is because you have accepted to believe that you are worthless, and therefore your negative beliefs are driving your thoughts and your actions. The result, is a feeling of depression.
Josh, we all have times in our life where we feel depressed, and feel like nothing is going our way. I know, this has happened to me many times in the past.
But I have found that there are often many valuable lessons that can be learnt from our misfortunes, and if we listen to these lessons, we will become a better and stronger person as a result.
Here is my advice to you, based on what i have personally found to be most helpful in improving my life.
1 - Always learn from failure, and never give up. Try to see what an experience is teaching you, and use that to improve yourself.
2 - Have a desire to learn new information. The only way we can improve ourselves is by learning new things. Make an effort to read self improvement material daily.
There are plenty of articles on my website to get you started, and lots of books in the free stuff section on this site.
3 - Accept yourself for the person you are, and don’t worry what other people think of you.
You may not like the person you are now, but if you can accept your current situation, you put yourself in a position to change it.
4 - Things take time to change. I used to expect things to happen quickly and easily, but i have found this not to be the case.
Anything of value takes time and effort, so think about things from a longer term perspective, rather than just focusing on the present now.
Josh, i know you are probably feeling down right now, but don’t give in. I promise you, if you keep on going no matter what happens, eventually you will get to where you want to go.
But if you give in now, you will always feel the way you do and your life won’t improve.
So make the choice, do you want your life to improve for the better, or do you want it to stay the same and possibly get worse? Only you can turn your life around, and it all depends on the choice you make today.
Its worth reading and worth practicing, coz its a life changing article.
Thank you
I love this article, it is completely true. I read it over and over again. You are conveying something so simple to an otherwise douphus like population, I included lol. I get the message you use baby talk to get the idea into peoples minds. It’s all done really well and craftily.
- Vahid.
Well I have a low self esteem problem I know why my whole life I get put down by people my mother hang out with and by herself. I just wish sometimes she don’t have to critize everything I do I mean I know I’m not like the thinnest girl in the world but it seem like everything I do or wear is a problem. Just like today I was wearing leggings and a shirt I mean I’m just at home with the family and she had a problem with it cause it’s tight and said why won’t I go change cause it’s showing too much probably cause in her eyes I’m fat so I shouldn’t wear it or the other time I went to my neice birthday party and was wearing a dress probably a little above the knees and she said that it was too short and people going to see my pu$$y so why won’t I go change seriously it’s not that it’s short or was slutty looking it’s because she I’m not so thin in her eyes and since I’m not thin i shouldn’t wear anything cute or like other people I should hid myself in big ugly clothes and look uglier. Sometimes I wish I can talk to my mother but I know I can’t because when I was younger I always get mad fun of by my aunt at parties they use to call me “Fat Girl” so I asked one my own mom ” why don’t you ever say anything or tell them to stop making fun of me” her reply was “cause it’s the truth what can I say” so from that day I knew I can’t depend or count on her. Seriously I hate the way she treat me always like shit I’m never good enough cause i’m not a size 0 or 2 well she isn’t that skinny herself either I actually use to starve myself and she knew bout it and she didn’t even are she always say the reason why I’m not thin like other girls is because I don’t want to be pretty enough like them. Who don’t wanna be pretty I just want to be thin so she don’t have to put me down I mean yea I”ve gain a bit of weight from having a child but god do I have to get put down my whole life I know it’s mean to say this but sometimes I hate her and wish she wasn’t my mother I will never put my daughter down more like she will and make my daughter have self esteem problem. If anyone want to reply to me feel free at sphal83@yahoo.com I feel like shit.
Dear Anonymous,
I feel I can reply to your comment because I can relate to what you are going through. First of all, you have to understand that your mother has been through similar thing’s in her life and also feels insecure. Therefore she is a creature of habit and repeats the type of behaviour that has been onto her and that she is familiar with.
Low self esteem is so rampant on this planet, that it is in fact, something we inherit at an early age, as early as birth! I’m not kidding here.
Sometimes as we grow older, we tend to form a layer of self defense, which comes in the form of weight. This is a normal healthy way of defending oneself against outside negativity and trauma.
The law of attraction as the teaching’s of Abaraham state: like attracts like. Therefore when one is thinking and therefore emiting the freuquency/vibration of low self esteem and weight, all the dieting and excersize in the world may not help him or her. This is becomming a world-wide recognised phenomena.
Low self esteem comes in many forms and layers, here are some common manifestations of low self esteem.
- Skin Picking.
- Acne.
- Weight.
- Self-Blame.
- Shame.
- Feeling unworthy.
- Regret.
- Anger at others behaviour.
- Dependance.
- Addictive behaviours.
- Overreating.
- Obessesive behaviour.
And the list goes on..
I have had insecurity since birth and am just attending to the issue and already feel the shift in my consiousness, and you can too!
A famous way of increasing self esteem, is an excersize established by the world renouned author ‘Louise L Hay’ She introduced an excersize called the ‘Mirror Excersize’. This is how it works.
You get a handheld mirror, or you stand in front of the bathroom mirror. You look at yourself, every part of yourself, good, bad, ugly, perfect, whatever. And you bless each part with love and state ‘I love and approve of myself’. You continue doing this every morning as you wake up and every night before you sleep.
Other affirmations you can use is.
- I love and accept myself.
- It is safe to be me.
- I am loving and lovable.
- I feel proud.
- I am worthy of all great thing’s.
- I trust and beleive in myself.
Each of these affirmations will explore and activate new parts of the brain, so you will become smarter as well as feel better. Over time you will experience the following outcome:
1. Your mother will either stop berating you, or you will no longer be affected by her comments.
2. Your weight will almost MAGICALLY start melting off you, it will almost feel like a miracle.
3. You will experience more sucess and confidence in life and you will generally be a happier person!
But you have to do persistent with this excersize, each and every day, it could take up to a year or more, but if you are persistent, you will reap the benefits. I don’t care if you draw love hearts on your wrist, anything that represents loving yourself, DO IT! Such as:
- Go for a walk, collect wild flowers from outside and put them in a vase.
- Keep your home, yourself clean and as well kept as you can.
- Adore in attractive household items or appliences, anything you can afford, and affirm to yourself that you deserve all wonderful thing’s.
- Treat yourself and others with love and respect and as you emit that frequency so it shall be brought unto you.
- Forgive your mother and understand that she does not know she is hurting you, if she really knew, she would not do it, she is just repeating negative patterns which she has experienced.
In retrospect I wish you the best dear lady, and I hope you can learn to love yourself and experience the magic of life.
- Vahid.
In addition to what Vahid said, it seems like you want to be accepted by your mum for who you are. But she doesn’t want to accept you for who you are.
Understandably you are upset by this, since it is natural for children to want to be accepted by their parents.
However some parents don’t give us this acceptance, and no matter how hard we try, nothing seems to be good enough. This desire for parental approval can even cause you to live a life that is not your own, since the things you do are done with the intention of pleasing a parent. In other words, we end up living the life our parents want us to, rather than how we want to.
You may find it helpful to read the following article series on how childhood affects your adult life. It will be benefical to you, and to your child.
http://www.eruptingmind.com/effect-childhood-adult-life/
Considering that your mother has never been able to accept you your whole life, you may never be able to gain her acceptance. so if you have tried for many years and have not succeeded so far, it may be better just to move on and accept that she is not going to accept you for you, unless you become her.
Use this experience to give your daughter the best unbringing possible, and make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to her. There is lots of information on this site about childhood, the beliefs we form during childhood and how all this influences the type of person we become.
I’m going to try…..but it won’t be easy especially when people around you criticize and make fun of you…
thanks for the information and advices… they are surely a great help! God bless!
hello
I am always self sabotaging. I say ” i will not eat fattening foods” then moments later i am picking up fattening foods. Sometimes its beyond me. I talk to myself saying “why am i doing this” but at the same time i’ll be queueing up to buy the fattening food.
Its so beyond me sometimes.
I guess my parents had a lot to do with how i am coping. They never really believed in me. And always put me down in front of other people and at home in private.
I just hope i get over this. It has really ruined my life.
I have missed out on so much. And i continue to self sabortage. It’s so difficult sometimes.
I hope i get better.
Thanks.