How To Boost Your Self Esteem

How often do you chastise yourself for something you did (or failed to do)? How often do you feel unhappy with your own actions and/or personal traits? How many times did you turn down interesting proposals because you weren’t confident in yourself? If things like these happen often, you need to work on your self-esteem. People aren’t born with healthy self-esteem, you know, but they can build it.

Types Of self-esteem

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Inflated. People with this type of self-esteem tend to think they only have strengths and no weaknesses at all. This often leads to conflicts with others.

Normal.  The happy mean you’d want to achieve. It means that you can make a sober estimate of both your strengths and weaknesses, clearly see your negative and positive traits. This type of self-esteem helps you growing and being open-minded.

Low. People with low self-esteem think that they are somehow worse than others, deliberately putting themselves on a lower step. They tend to think their negative traits outweigh their strengths and have issues with noticing positive things about themselves.

How To Determine Your Type Of Self-Esteem

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1. Take a sheet of paper and write down all the roles you have in your everyday life: student, son/daughter, friend, employee, driver etc. It’s not essay writing, so use whatever format you want.  Think of what roles you are best at. In which of them do you feel the most confident? It may turn out that you are a great student (professors give you high grades while writing a research paper), but not a very good friend (you failed to support your friends when they really needed it).

2. Now try to understand why this is happening. What are the positive things about the roles you are best at and what are the negative sides of others? For example, you spend most of your time diligently working on your assignments, but don’t get to see or talk to your friends too often.

3. Now you can see the directions you want to take to get better. Give yourself more breaks from studying (ordering a custom essay once in your life won’t hurt) and spend more time having fun with friends. By making sure every role in your life makes you feel happy, you boost your self-esteem.

How To Boost Your Self-esteem

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1. Write down a list of your strengths.

Make it at least twenty – don’t be too modest. Think of all those things you’ve done that made you feel proud, all your victories, big or small. What kind of traits helped you do that? Ask your friends and family. What do they say about your positive traits?

Read this list as often as possible. Another advantage of this method is that it improves your writing skills and helps you get better at job interviews.

2. Make a list of your personal achievements.

All of them – you can start from those times you went to kindergarten. What things were you able to achieve during your life? Include yourself-victories.

3. Learn to accept compliments.

When someone says something nice to you, don’t try to stop them or, god forbid, disagree with them. Don’t be shy and accept praise with gratitude. Don’t know what to answer? Say “thanks, that’s so nice”.

4. Stop comparing yourself to others.

There will always be someone who does something better than you. On the other hand, there will always be people who do something worse. The thing is all people are different and each and every person is unique, with all their bad and good traits and habits. Think of yourself as a unique human being: you are important simply because you exist. The only person you can compare yourself to is you in the past. Try to become better than yourself, not your neighbor or classmate.

5. Praise others.

Do it sincerely, smiling openly. You need to take other people’s achievements with composure, learn to be happy for them, give them compliments. Think of others as equals. Understand that different people measure success differently.

6. Avoid people who make your self-esteem go down.

Unfortunately, you can meet people like this anywhere. They point out your mistakes and your weaknesses, whenever you are around them, you feel faulty, inferior, smaller. Don’t let them influence your opinion of yourself – spend as little time as you can in their company or stop seeing them at all.

7. Learn to see something positive in every situation.

If you did something wrong, don’t be too hasty in chastising yourself: “I am such a loser/so stupid/so forgetful!”, but try to see something nice in it. Forgot to work on your essay topics? Well, at least you got some nice long sleep and feel well-rested and full of energy.

And in conclusion, one more advice: smile – at people around you and at your own reflection in the mirror. Share your positive feelings with others and give yourself more confidence.