Building your self esteem is the first step towards building a better life for yourself. If you have low self esteem you will find it impossible to be the person you want to be and happiness will elude you at every turn. Taking the first steps toward building your self esteem is probably one of the single most important things you could do for yourself. Low esteem causes depression, unhappiness, lack of self confidence, it gives you a defeatus attitude and you have a hard time finding the good in any situation. I am going to give you some easy steps you can take to help build your self esteem.
To build your self esteem you must start facing the things that you fear in your life. Avoiding our fears does nothing but strengthen their hold over us. Start to speak up for yourself, be a person of strong convictions. If you believe in something with all your heart, by all means speak up about it. Don’t ever allow someone else to take away your personal power, if you have an opinion that differs from what someone else has, speak up, express how you feel and explain why if you feel its necessary. The very act of standing up for what you believe will give you a sense of true personal power and your self esteem will shoot through the roof. Make this a habit, everyday of your life, you matter, your opinions matter and you have every right to contribute to the world around you. Find your strength and use it, use it everyday and eventually it will just be a natural part of your life. Your self esteem will grow right along with your confidence to join the ranks of those who have something of value to contribute to this world.
Make the decision right now to forgive yourself for any past failures that you most likely find it hard to let go of. Everyone fails at many things in life, it is those that can look past the failures that go on to achieve some true success in life. When you focus on past failures your self esteem takes a real beating. Learn from your mistakes. Whenever something doesn’t go the way you had hoped it would the first thing you want to do is ask yourself how you could have done it better. When you get in the habit of finding out how to avoid problems you will be amazed at how your self confidence grows and your self esteem right along with it.
Get into the habit of being very assertive. I don’t mean assertive in a pushy way I mean decide what you want and do what it takes to obtain it. When you have low self esteem you have a tendency to let things go that you really don’t want to. If someone you know makes a statement that you know for a fact to be untrue, don’t be afraid to speak up and correct that person. When you just sit back and accept these falsehoods it is usually because you have some underlining fear of speaking up and correcting the situation. When you learn to become part of the world and pitch in with your own personal opinions your belief in yourself will grow and thus your self esteem get even better. Everything you do that improves your self esteem improves your entire outlook on life. Improving your self esteem should be something that you are totally committed to as it affects so much in the way that you look at life.
When you are truly working on improving your self esteem you are going to have to start taking more chances in life. When your self esteem is in the dumps you are typically to afraid to even attempt to do something new. You have to start trying things that you have never tried before, its your job to build your confidence and believe in yourself that you can do all those things you have been avoiding. Just think of all the things you have avoided doing in the past because you did not have faith in yourself. This has to change right now! Go out and try something you have always wanted to do but didn’t have the confidence to even attempt it. Once you start accomplishing these things in your life there is no way your self esteem won’t grow. Believing in yourself is an important step that you have to take, it may not be easy at first but once you have a few successes under your belt you will begin to believe in yourself much more, and this will, open so many doors to opportunity for you.
Stop comparing yourself to other people, when you do this you have a tendency to pick out your negative attributes which are usually something you have made up in your own mind. Your self esteem takes a real shot to the head when you start comparing yourself to others. The reason this is such a bad idea is because when you compare yourself to other people you generally pick highly successful people to compare yourself to. Live your own life and live it on your terms. If you want to compare yourself to successful people then make it a habit to learn something from them. You should always be trying to better yourself, so instead of seeing what other people have or can do that you don’t have or cannot do, study them and learn how you can accomplish some of the attributes that you admire. When you gain knowledge and accomplish more then you ever have before your self esteem will grow with every success you achieve.
If you are serious about building your self esteem….and I hope you are….you have stop putting yourself down. The whole idea is to build yourself up but if you are purposely saying negative comments about yourself your subconscious mind will pick up on this and just attract negativity into your life. Everyone talks to themselves and it is very important that we never put ourselves down. Get into the habit of only saying good, positive things to yourself. Focus your thoughts on positive events and keep the negativity out of your life.
Use positive affirmations to draw good things into your life. I use this practice on a daily basis, I am constantly building myself up through positive affirmations. Become aware of what your mind is thinking, you have the power to change your thoughts so if you ever catch yourself thinking something negative change your thoughts right away. Focus on something you accomplished that made you feel good about yourself. We all have moments in our life that we are proud of, when you are feeling a little down focus on one or more of these moments.
Building your self esteem is easy when you have a number of options to choose from. Whenever you are not feeling that great about yourself don’t just sit there and accept it, use one of the methods I gave you to help change your mood. You have the power to boost your own self esteem just by using some of the tips I have given you. Never accept yourself as any less then anyone else because you are unique and special and you have an unlimited amount of good that you can focus on.
A sure fire way to build your self esteem is to help someone else out. This gives you a sense of self worth, when you are able to contribute to someone else’s life.
Involve yourself in activities you enjoy or volunteer for a special project at work. When you keep yourself busy accomplishing things you enjoy your self esteem just naturally soars. You feel good about how you are living your life and you place a whole lot more value on yourself.
Begin everyday on a positive note, as soon as you awake in the morning affirm to yourself that it is going to be a terrific day. I never get out of bed without telling myself this is going to be a great day, I have been doing this for years and it really works to start your day off right. If something goes wrong I just remind myself that it is only one small part of my day and I refuse to allow it to ruin anymore of my time. When you begin to realize that you have some control over what type of day you will have your self esteem grows substaintially.
Self esteem comes from deep down inside yourself, you have to learn to accept your imperfections. You can be your own best advocte or you can be your own worst enemy. Learn to love yourself, find your value and focus your life on that, never stop growing and learning, you have the personal power to increase your own self esteem, start to believe in yourself.
Tags: first steps, low self esteem, personal power, self confidence, true success
