By:  David Othus

 

Many people, like myself, have dealt with issues of low self-esteem.  Growing up, I often didn’t feel good enough and didn’t feel I fit in.  These attitudes followed me from my teens, through college and into my adult life.  Having counseled many people, over several years, I have found that dealing with a sense of low self-esteem is actually fairly common.  For me, it was a battle that took several years to overcome.  In the process of going through this myself and helping others to get through this problem, I learned many tricks and techniques that have helped many to start living a better, happier and more productive life.

Few things in life can have a greater impact on a person’s life than self-esteem.  Getting over a sense of low self-esteem is critical to living a quality life.  The following are things you can do to help change this aspect of your life so you can build yourself up and find the real you that lays hidden within.  No single item will make the change, you need to implement as many of these as you can as often as you can to make a lasting positive change.

1.  Stay away from negative people.  Take a look at the people you hang around.  It is likely that some are positive and others negative.  To build self-esteem, you need to stay away from the negative people as much as possible.  Like it or not, negative attitudes rub off on people just like the scent of a skunk.  As these negative people look out at the world with a negative, “can’t do”, “isn’t going to happen” attitude, they lower your perception of the world around you, which causes you to miss opportunities to build yourself up.

Negative people are quick to find fault in nearly everything.  In learning to find so much fault, and so little good in all things external, they learn to apply these same methods of thought to themselves and hamper themselves.  Hanging around people like this, teaches you those same negative habits which will sabotage any dream you might want to achieve in the long run, and in turn, lower your self-esteem.

Sometimes these people are in your family and are hard to escape.  Do your best to stay away as much as possible until you build yourself up high enough and strong enough that they no longer affect you.

2.  Hang around positive people.  Just like hanging around negative people teaches you negative ways of thinking, hanging around positive people teaches you positive ways to think.  By hanging around them, you learn to identify the opportunities that are all around you and you learn to realize you don’t have to be perfect to make a significant positive impact.  You just need to be yourself and do your best.

You also will learn the importance of having a positive support group.    Having people who see the best in you, and lift you up when you are down is very powerful.  We all have our ups and downs in life, but hanging around positive people helps you to have more ups than downs and life better overall.

3.  A romantic partner can be a touchy subject, but I am going to cover it anyways.  Your romantic partner is probably the single thing that effects your level of self-esteem the most.  The right person can cause your self-esteem to soar to levels you never thought possible, while the wrong partner can cause your self-esteem to fall into what seems like the deepest pits of hell.  Even not having a partner at all can have strong effects on a person’s self-esteem as loneliness sets in.  While some people like to say, that not having a romantic partner at all sets you free and allows you to be yourself, the reality is that few people feel OK when they feel alone.  Being alone can make you feel sad and desperate for anyone.  The problem is that this often can lead you to an unhealthy relationship that lowers your self-esteem even more.

Your romantic partner should always bring out your best, lift you up and support you.  If you are with a partner that doesn’t do this, particularly if you are with an abusive partner, you should consider finding another partner.  We all have our ups and downs, and your partner will too; but making sure that your partner is generally supportive is what is important.  This may mean going through a period alone, but often this is much better than living with a relationship where your partner is constantly putting you and your goals and dreams down.  There is never a reason to put up with abuse of any kind, emotion, psychological or physical.  Abuse is always wrong.

If you happen to be alone, be sure to cut yourself some slack on your feelings of loneliness.  Take time to pamper yourself and treat yourself right, realizing that this is only a temporary situation until you find the right person.  With over 6 billion people in the world, the chances of the right person being out there for you is really quite high.  Keep looking and have patience and faith that you will meet that right person.

4.  Pay attention to your self-talk.  Have you ever listened to a homeless person talk to himself?  It is actually a very interesting thing, and after listening to them you start to realize why they are on the streets.  Homeless people have some of the most negative self-talk you will ever hear.  This doesn’t mean that homeless people are in any way bad, but it does mean that they have very low self-esteem, which is often one reason that they end up homeless.

Self-talk is one of the most important difference between people with high and low self-esteem.  People with high self-esteem talk themselves up, and people with low self-esteem talk themselves down.

Pay attention to your self-talk.  If you find yourself talking down about yourself, take a step back and counter your statement.  Remember, no one is perfect, but the people who work hard and always try their very best become the great leaders of the world.  Everyone makes mistakes.  It is not the mistakes we make that matter so much as how we deal with them.

Even if you don’t feel it deep down inside right away, by simply changing your self-talk, you can change your mental attitude towards yourself and become that can-do winner you want to be.

5.  Use affirmations every day.  Write them down and repeat them, listen to affirmation audios on the internet, or in MP3 format.  Affirmations are an amazing asset to changing that self-talk and self-perceptions that are in the background of your self-esteem.  Many of these can be found for free on the internet, and there is software you can use to make your own.  My favorite affirmation audios are from David McGraw, but there are many others out there as well.

6.  Believe it or not, going out and doing stuff can be very helpful for correcting self-esteem issues.  The more positive the activity you do, the better you will feel about yourself.  It is generally better if you have at least one other person with you, so you can have extra fun and friendship in your activity.

  • Focus on doing stuff you are good at and love.  There are few things that lift you up than doing something you are good at and enjoy.
  • Do stuff that helps others, in this way you see your value in the world and the good you do is reflected back to you from the people you help.  This allows you to see your own good and your self-esteem is enhanced.
  • Also spend time in activates that help you improve yourself.  There are so many books and programs out there to help you improve any personal attribute you have and want to improve.  For example, you may want to have a good memory.  There are books with exercises that help you to improve your memory.  Physical health, appearance, charisma, hand eye coordination, strength and virtually anything else you can think of can be improved with proper training and appropriate exercises.

7.  Finishing what you start.  While doing stuff is great, and starting great projects can be a nice boost to self-esteem, it is nothing compared to seeing these projects through to completion!

We all have too many projects that we have started and never quite finished.  In the back of our minds, we start beating ourselves up that we haven’t completed them.  By finishing what you start, you learn that you are capable, competent and able to handle the important things in the things you do in life.

8.  Organize your life.  Get rid of the clutter in your house and office.  Make things neat and tidy, and your mind will start to follow suit.  Schedule things that need to get done and follow up on those things to make sure they happen when schedule and you will start to see great improvements in your efficiency and effectiveness.  As you do this, you will see how much you have accomplished and will raise your perception of yourself and your overall self-esteem.

9.  Exercise daily.  Though this and the next item will sound kind of odd for an article on self-esteem, daily exercise has proven to increase chemicals in your body that help you to think more clearly and work more effectively.  Daily exercise will also help you to become healthier, which in turn will help your self-image and self-esteem.

10. Get proper rest.  We all know we are grumpy, moody and tend to be more negative when we don’t get enough sleep.  Doing this on a regular basis can have a deteriorating effect on your self-esteem.  Getting enough rest every day helps to set the proper foundation for raising your self-esteem.  Trying to do all the other steps while you are tired will simply result in frustration and more self-abuse that results in a lower self-esteem.  Treat yourself right and get the right amount of rest you need to be effective, productive and happy.

11. Find a goal bigger than yourself and achieve it.  Knowing that you are part of something that is bigger than yourself, that can help change the world for the better, is always a great feeling.  By involving yourself in a project or organization that helps to achieve this kind of goal, you can see a greater impact to what you do and the value that you have on the world.  This in turn changes your perception of yourself in to a person of impact and helps to improve your self-esteem.  Whether you are planting trees in places that have been deforested, reducing pollution in your local area, or doing paper work so that an important organization can receive a grant, get involved in something bigger than yourself and watch how you start to feel.

12. Smile and be kind and friendly to everyone.  As you put things out into the world, you will receive in kind.  Don’t believe me, start smiling at people and watch as they smile back.  Being kind to people results in all but the most cold hearted of people to be kind back to you.  As you make the conscious effort to be kind and friendly to everyone, nearly everyone will be kind and friendly back to you.  And as people are kind and friendly to you, you again will see your value in the world around you.  Beyond that, by being kind and friendly, you are helping people to feel better about themselves and the world around them, and are in turn, having a positive impact on the world around you.  Now that is something simple that you can feel good about.