In order for you to be happy, successful and feel good about yourself is important that you spend some time working on your self-esteem. When you focus on working on yourself you are building the structure that will sustain everything else in your life, your relationships, your confidence, the way you behave and the way you communicate. This process will help you create a positive self-image and change your internal dialogues.
What is self-esteem?
Self-esteem is by far the most important subject in personal development, as a life coach what I gather is that self-esteem is many times the root of all our problems. If we have low self-esteem, the probability is that we are not living our life to its fullest and that often we live in conditions that otherwise we wouldn´t accept.
Self-esteem is basically how we look at ourselves, our self-image. This self-image is often built while we were growing up, this is where our minds are more susceptible to be influenced by others, especially our authoritative figures. So, self-esteem could be affected by:
- How were you treated by your parents and siblings
- Experiences at home or school
- How were you raised while growing up
- Your home environment
- If you have some disease or something that makes you special
- Your culture or your religion
These experiences are stored in your subconscious, and that influences significantly the way you think about yourself and the way you act. But the moment you start to work actively in your self-esteem you will learn to replace those ideas about yourself. You will learn to make a difference from what you believed and what you realize now that is true.
Self-esteem can frequently vary, due to what we live or to different things that might present in our daily lives, but the thing is, in general, we all have an average level of self-esteem, it could be tend to low or healthy self-esteem.
Having healthy self-esteem is so important, that if you don’t, it might affect you more than you think. It has been proved that low self-esteem can contribute to depression, to think of yourself as not important, to have unhealthy relationships, and having difficulty living at your fullest potential because you don’t believe that you deserve it.
It is important that you realize, that now that you are an adult, the only thing that can influence your self-esteem greatly is your thoughts. And guess what? You can control your mind. You can control your thoughts. So you can change your self-image and improve your self-esteem. Of course, this is a constant practice of being aware of your self-talk and consciously eliminate your negative thoughts.
In this post, I share with you a couple of exercises that could help you improve your self-esteem. These practices will help you develop a better relationship with yourself; you will change the way you speak to yourself and the way you think about you.
Habits to boost your self-esteem:
To improve your self-esteem, you will need to change the negative practices you have been doing; you will need to be more aware of your thoughts and the way you speak to yourself and about yourself.
Some things that will help you achieve this are:
Limit and eliminate self-criticism
Self-criticism contributes significantly to lower our self-esteem. We are so used to criticize ourselves, that we rarely notice it anymore. We are so used to speaking poorly of ourselves that it has become a habit.
Maybe you think that by criticizing yourself you are actually helping you to change, or that you are a realist, and you are just accepting the truth, but let me tell that it is not true. What you are is just limiting yourself. There is a difference in acknowledging the areas where you can improve and in just focusing on the negative stuff.
Try to stop from degrading yourself. Every time you feel or think something bad about you stop and say to yourself that it is not true. Focus on your abilities, on the good things that you do, what makes other people like you.
Analyze your negative thoughts
From today, start by being more conscious about the way you speak to yourself and the adjectives you use to describe you and the things you do. Try to realize that you are a deserving being and that you are doing your best.
Love yourself
Make a list of three things you like about yourself. Write them down.
Every time you feel bad about yourself, read the list. Try to think about other things you love about yourself.
Be grateful
Nothing can change your state of mind and your mood than being grateful. You just have to focus on the things you have accomplished, what you are right now and all the people who love you for what you are.
Consider including your practice of gratitude on your daily routine.
Practice affirmations
Positive affirmations could help you to change the way you think about yourself and notice your negative self-talk. Once you have identified these negative ideas and ways to criticize yourself, you can start by repeating affirmations that could change them.
Make a commitment to work all day long on yourself, on thinking good thoughts about you. Repeat your affirmation as often as you can.
Remember to add as many affirmations as you like that will help you improve your self-esteem and build a positive self-image.
You are a beautiful person, deserving of all the good things in life.
Additional resources
Self-love affirmation cards – Etsy Self-Development Journal – The guidance you need to improve your habits and your life Self-Assessment Tool: The Wheel of Life
If you want more ideas on how to improve your self-esteem this blog has amazing tips for that.
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