Having self-esteem is essential for a happy and fulfilling life. Improving our self-worth and building confidence makes it easier to face challenges, form healthy relationships, and pursue goals. By focusing on ways to improve our self-esteem, we reclaim our power to live as our best, most authentic selves.
Why do we lack self-esteem?
The most important step of every journey is the first step—understanding why we lack self-esteem.
Self-esteem or self-worth is a collection of beliefs, thoughts, and feelings we have about ourselves, while confidence is something we build on top of self-esteem that shows we trust ourselves.
So where do these negative beliefs and lack of self-trust come from? In most cases, lack of self-esteem stems from our early life.
Somewhere along the way, someone who is dealing with their own insecurities told us who we are is wrong, unimportant, or flawed in some way. Or, they compared us to someone they perceived as ‘better’, damaging our self-worth.
If a young person is continuously exposed to such influences, they can be significantly impacted and carry this wound into their adult life. If left unhealed, this wound can cause numerous obstacles and prevent us from reaching our potential. For this reason, the following strategies are vital to reclaiming control of your life.
Strategies to improve your self-esteem
1. Commit to the healing process
Healing is a long-term goal, and while the process may take time, it’s worth the effort. To heal, you must address past traumas and allow yourself to feel the emotions you might’ve avoided.
Healing involves caring for your wounds. It means recognizing the thoughts, emotions, and triggers that reopen those wounds—and choosing to transform them into positive thoughts and feelings, using the power of your will.
2. Practice self-love
You’ve likely heard the phrase, “The most important relationship we have is with ourselves.”
When we lack self-worth, it means our relationship with ourselves is damaged or even toxic. It’s crucial to work on the negative aspects of our relationship and start loving yourself.
You can practice self-love by: practicing compassion when you make mistakes; practicing self-acceptance; committing to self-improvement; or simply taking time for self-care.
3. Become aware of negative thoughts
Becoming aware of your subconscious mind is a crucial part of the healing process.
Low self-esteem often leads to negative, accumulated beliefs and thoughts about ourselves. The key to overcoming this is to recognize these negative beliefs as separate from who you are and consciously replace them with thoughts that create self-love.
Focus on the positive aspects of yourself, even if they feel small at first. You can practice this by using affirmations, positive self-talk, cultivating gratitude, journaling, or other mindful practices. Also, through personal development, you can create new strengths and positive traits while working to minimize those you no longer identify with.
4. Practice Affirmations
Affirmations are probably the most powerful and direct way to influence your subconscious mind. They are phrases we say out loud and feel, thus creating a reaction in our body. Similarly to how your mind believed negative things someone said, affirmations are positive self-talk that creates new, positive beliefs.
Affirmations are a tool for reprograming your mind, and they work quite fast when done regularly.
An important thing to remember is to feel the affirmation. For example, if you say, “I love myself,” you have to try and really feel like this is true in your heart. Even if it’s not yet true, you’ll be surprised how quickly your mind will think of it as truth. Affirmations show how easily our mind is influenced.
5. Be grateful
Life is difficult, but it’s much more difficult if we constantly focus on things we are not and things we don’t have. Believe it or not, with such an attitude, you can be a rich supermodel, and you’d still be unhappy.
Gratitude shifts our focus from lack towards abundance because there’s always something to be grateful for.
Every day, try to find at least 3 things you are grateful for, even if they are very small. More importantly, try to feel the energy of gratitude, even if you have to fake it, similar to affirmations. Creating this energy will allow you to create it more naturally next time.
If you need, set a reminder each day and practice gratitude, either by writing down, saying out loud, or recording yourself.
6. Practice mindfulness
There’s many ways to practice mindfulness, but it all comes down to being aware of your inner state. Whether it’s through meditation, yoga, or simple observation, practices like these make you look inside instead of outside, which changes your perspective.
Mindfulness is a great way to combat negative beliefs and thoughts, as it invites you to practice silence and stillness so that you can observe what’s happening in your mind. Our mind can often be our biggest enemy, and with mindfulness, we take control of it. Instead of reacting to everything it tells us, we detach from it and are able to recognize negative patterns more easily.
7. Learn from experts
Knowledge is treasure, and regaining your self-esteem can be viewed as a project, so it’s necessary to keep learning about it. You can listen to one of many available resources online, whether in the form of video, audio, or reading materials.
When you can fully understand the problem, it will be much easier to deal with it. You will also be able to hear stories of people who found their ways to improve self-esteem. Believe it or not, most people have problems with self-esteem because most people met a few rotten fruits on their path. People who overcame their struggles are nothing more special than you; they simply committed to the process and didn’t stop. You are capable of overcoming this; just keep moving forward.
8. Talk to a therapist
Our minds are very complex and our wounds can run very deep, maybe even too deep for us to be able to see them. That is why bringing another, objective person into our healing process is very beneficial.
Especially if we haven’t done the majority of the work already, therapy can be a great way to improve your self-esteem. Having someone to start the healing with you can be much easier than having to do it yourself.
9. Set goals and stick to them
They say that discipline is the highest form of self-love. So, setting achievable goals is the key part of the process. When we achieve small wins every day, no matter what they are, we keep a promise we gave to ourselves, thus building our self-respect.
The practice of completing our goals, even if we don’t feel super motivated, is how we practice self-love.
Try using one of many available to-do apps; they can make your life organized and make you feel accomplished every time you tick something off the list.
10. Practice journaling
Journaling is a powerful tool you can use each day to be aware of what you’re thinking and feeling. Going to a therapist can be challenging in the beginning, since we struggle to open up to a total stranger, and maybe there’s something we don’t want to share at all.
Journaling can be our space to let out our thoughts and emotions, either in the form of writing them down or recording them. We can then reflect on what was said and objectively perceive our inner state, bringing more clarity and a sense of awareness.
11. Face your fears
Lastly, a powerful practice to improve our self-esteem is simply putting ourselves in situations that scare us.
For example, if you are scared of being perceived a certain way, you should intentionally plan the next situation when you know you will feel triggered and choose to manage your thoughts and feelings. The main idea is to view situations that used to trigger us as a sort of bootcamp, where we go to train our mind to react differently.
Ultimately, we can do many practices in private, but the most direct way to challenge your fears is to face them with an intention and strength to overcome them.
Final words
Improving your self-esteem and building confidence is a process that requires patience, consistency, and self-compassion. Notice that most of the activities for building self-worth are practices that should be done regularly. I’m not going to tell you that there’s a magical thing you can read in this post that will build your confidence over night.
Healing can be difficult, but the benefits are incredible. Not only will you regain your self-esteem and build lasting confidence, but you’ll also become a much stronger person by overcoming the biggest challenge—your own mind.
Committing to this process is the greatest testament to self-love and a step toward lasting change. Just by being here, you’ve shown that you care about yourself—and that’s already worth celebrating. Practice these strategies as much as possible, and enjoy the results. You’ve got this!
