A person’s self-esteem is how much they respect, value, and appreciate themselves.
High self-esteem individuals feel confident in themselves and their abilities and tend to have positive relationships with others. They make decisions easily and effectively.
People with low self-esteem often criticize themselves, feel negative, or even depressed. They might have difficulty making decisions or forming fulfilling relationships.
What Affects Self-Esteem?
There are MANY factors that affect self-esteem like:
- Your life experience. Research shows the number of successes and failures you’ve had contributes to your self-esteem.
- Your social status. Having a higher or lower social status in your environment can affect your self-esteem.
- Your age. Generally, older folks (65+) have higher self-esteem than their younger counterparts.
- Your genetics. Studies show that your personality and levels of self-esteem are generally stable over time.
- Your diet. Foods high in processed meat, chocolates, sweet desserts, fried foods, refined cereals, and high-fat dairy products have been linked to higher reports of depression.
There are many factors that can affect your self-esteem, but it is important to remember that your self-esteem is not static. It can change.
You can improve your self-esteem just like you would any other skill. Although some people may have lower self-esteem, it can be improved.
How to Build Self-Esteem
Most people who are selling a “get self-esteem quick” formula are probably only interested in a quick fix.
There is no one right answer to the question: How can I improve my self-esteem? There is no quick fix for improving self-esteem, and there is no one right answer to the question of how to improve self-esteem.
Take your time in building self-esteem and don’t worry about completing the process quickly. Follow this framework, and you’ll be on your way to a lifetime of high self-esteem:
Say Stop To Your Inner Critic
If you want to improve your self-esteem, start by learning how to deal with your inner critic.
We all have an inner critic.
It can give you the motivation to get things done or to do things to gain acceptance, but it can also lower your self-esteem.
- This inner voice whispers or shouts destructive thoughts in your mind. Thoughts like for example:
- You are lazy and sloppy, now get to work.
- You aren’t good at your job at all and someone will figure that out and throw you out.
- You are worse or uglier than your friend/co-worker/partner.
Instead of listening to the critical voice in your head, you can try to replace it with more helpful thoughts. This will change how you view yourself.
If you want to stop the critic in your mind, one way to do so is to say “stop” whenever it speaks up.
As the critic says something, mentally shout “STOP!”
We are not going to that place!
Find a way to break the thought process that is driven by the inner critic.
Then focus your thoughts on something more constructive, like planning what you want to eat for dinner or your tactic for the next soccer game.
It is helpful to find ways to motivate yourself that are more effective than listening to your inner critic.
Use Healthier Motivation Habits
To make the inner critic less useful for yourself, motivation habits must be healthy. This simultaneously weakens that voice and motivates you to take action. As a result, self-esteem is raised.
A few that I have used to replace and fill up much of the place that the inner critic once held in my mind are these:
Remind yourself of the benefits by writing down the benefits you will get from following your goal to help keep yourself motivated. For example if you are trying to lose weight, it might be getting into better shape and having more energy for your kids and the people close to you.
After creating your list, save it and keep it in a place where you will see it on a daily basis, such as your workspace or fridge.
Shift your focus to doing what you love. If you enjoy doing something, you will be naturally motivated to do it.  If something is what you really want, it becomes easier to push through any inner resistance.
So if you lose your motivation, ask yourself:
Am I doing what I really want to do?
If it’s not possible to do what you’re trying to do, then try to do something else that’s important.
After you have used your stop-word or phrase, focus on one of these techniques. Over time it will become a habit and your inner critic will pop up a lot less often.
Do a Social Media Cleanse
Many people who use social media will tell you that it is the best thing since sliced bread.
They will say that it is great to connect with friends, stay up to date on trends, and all of the other good things.
This isn’t the problem with social media.
The main issue with social media is that it can be quite damaging to one’s self-esteem if one is not careful. The more social media consumed, the lower the self-esteem.
We are really bad at gauging how much time we spend scrolling through posts on Facebook.
When a person gets a thumbs-down instead of a thumbs-up, it affects their self-esteem.
I used to try and convince myself that I could remain on social media and that it wouldn’t impact my self-esteem adversely. I would unfollow individuals I didn’t care for, set timers for myself, and try to only post positive content. While this helped to some degree, I found it wasn’t enough.
You should get rid of accounts on social media that make you feel bad or that you don’t find useful.
I decided to uninstall all social media from my phone a few weeks later. I couldn’t help myself when it was installed, but I reserve one hour to check it once a week on my computer. This way, I can check it purposefully.
Take a 2 Minute Self-Appreciation Break
This habit is very simple and fun. Just two minutes a day for a month can make a big difference.
Here’s what you do:
Calm yourself down by taking a deep breath, then ask yourself this question: what are three things you can appreciate about yourself?
A few examples that have come up when I have used to this exercise are that I:
- Help quite a few people each day through what I write.
- Can make people laugh and forget about their troubles.
- I Am very thoughtful and caring when it comes to our cats.
These things don’t have to be big things.
Perhaps giving just a few minutes of your undivided attention to someone who needed it today was all that was needed.
Taking short breaks can improve your self-esteem and change your mood from negative to positive.
Note three things in the evening that you appreciate about yourself. Write them down to remind yourself of your positive qualities before bed. This will help you go to sleep with a sense of contentment and self-worth.
This is a similar habit to the one above, and doing both of them together can be very effective in boosting your self-esteem twice a day.
The act of writing things down provides an additional benefit in that, after a few weeks have gone by, you can read through your responses to boost your self-esteem on days when you need it the most.
Cut Out Toxic Friends
Toxic friends are what happen when friendships go bad.
You know, those kinds of friends we don’t actually like to hang around because they constantly talk behind our backs, attack our dreams, and generally affect our self-esteem. Toxic friends can be:
- a colleague who is nice to you only at work,
- that annoying neighbor you avoid making eye contact with because his dog always poops in your yard,
- your roommate who snores loudly and always blasts ’90s hair metal
- an overly attached friend
Clean Your Environment
I think your environment could be cleaner.
Here’s why:
- If a person’s living space is very cluttered or has a lot of unfinished projects, it can make them feel tired and sad.
- The mere sight of clutter can make it difficult to focus.
- Housekeeping can help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression.
All of this leads to a happier, healthier you.
To start cleaning, get rid of the messy/toxic/distracting things in your environment:
- Use time blocking. If you’re really struggling to clean, set a timer for 10 minutes and do whatever you can. Clean the dishes. Organize your wardrobe. You get the idea. It might be hard to start, but when you give yourself 10 minutes of strict cleaning here and there, you’ll start racking up the cleaning hours in no time.
- Start with your bed. Making the bed is a great way to start cleaning. Even Navy SEAL commanders do it. Once you’ve done the bed, you can start with your workspace. Do you have scraps of paper lying around? Are your laptop charger and phone charger tangled together? The key here is to start small and add on just a little bit more cleaning each day. I like to start with just a corner of my room per day. This helps me compartmentalize and not get overwhelmed.
- Try on everything in your closet. If it doesn’t fit, donate it. If you don’t feel good about it, donate it. If you haven’t worn it in 1 year, try to wear it in the next 7 days or donate it.
You don’t have to leave your home environment to improve your self-esteem. When you live in a clean, uncluttered place, it helps you feel better about yourself.
Replace The Perfectionism
Destructive perfectionism is a problem for many people.
Being afraid of not meeting some standard can make you not want to take any action, which then leads to procrastination. This in turn will make your self-esteem go down.
You may find yourself constantly taking action but never being satisfied with the outcome or your own performance.
The more negative your opinion and feelings about yourself become, the less motivated you are to take action.
How can you overcome perfectionism?
A few things that really helped me are:
- Go for good enough.
- When you aim for perfection then that usually winds up in a project or a task never being finished. So simply go for good enough instead.
- Don’t use it as an excuse to slack off. But simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished.
