How to Build Your Self-esteem: 6 Keys to Success

Self-esteem refers to your opinion about yourself or the way you feel about yourself. At times you may feel low and hard to believe in yourself. But this doesn’t mean that you have low self-esteem at such a time. However, this can become one of the signs of low self-esteem when it becomes a long-term situation and can lead to mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

In most instances, self-esteem originates from a lifetime of experiences, especially when you were young. That is the time when you developed emotional wounds that make words such as failure and rejection a lot more painful and limit your ability to bounce back. However, you can build your self-esteem at any age, drop that self-fulling prophecy and avoid negative thoughts that keep you mired in erroneous and damaging beliefs.

The question is, how can you stop the vicious cycle and build your self-esteem. Here are 6 keys to success.

Embrace Positive Affirmations

People use phrases like “I am going to be successful” to motivate themselves to put more effort and do their best. They are also delighted when what they wished themselves come true. However, this is not true for people with low self-worth. These words are contrary to what they believe.

Still, a person with low self-worth can tweak such words a bit and make them a little more believable such as “I am going to persevere until I become successful.” In the end, you will be able to use the first phrase that people with high self-esteem use on themselves.

While a positive internal dialogue is a foundation to building strong self-esteem, you will have relapses now and then, continue referring to yourself with positive words, and you will eventually have high self-worth.

Take Account of Your Accomplishments

Write down what you have achieved in your life or what others have said about you that makes you feel proud of.

These things include good in sport, preparing a sumptuous meal, crotcheting, customer service, etc.

The list will come in handy when you feel low because these things remind you that there is plenty of good about you.

Surround Yourself with the Right People

Your day-to-day friends can have a profound effect on yourself and your self-esteem because of various reasons such as:

If almost all of your friends are cruel, cold, condescending, sarcastic, judgmental, and manipulative, how will you see low self-esteem perpetuated? You can only see the difference when you surround yourself with positive individuals.

You can only have a high-esteem when your key relationships, such as your best friend, coworkers, spouses, partners, and more, are loving, kind, supportive, encouraging, and compassionate.

Your associates have a lot of things that they can use against you to make you feel guilty, demean, coerce or manipulate you when you try to be different. This is a damaging type of relationship, but even though you know that they are not the right person, you may find it hard to remove them from your life or alter the quality of your friendship. This conflict is what is maintaining your self-esteem low.

No matter how tough the choice is, you should cut out bad relationships to get high self-esteem.

Be Assertive

This involves asking for what you want directly, but respectfully and honestly, as well as firmly saying no to the things you don’t want. Most people hold back from saying what they think because they want to appease others. In short, they want to go with the flow and never to appear different.

Others express their feelings disrespectfully and dismissively, which is wrong because this tends to ignore the rights of others. Such conduct is somewhat manipulative and threatening, which is not right.

Worse still, some people tend to be in the middle of the two, so they become sarcastic whenever they want to get what they want.

These three ways will erode your self-esteem and make you suffer because of constantly putting off your needs, and you may end up hurting others, which will cause you to feel guilty or become lonely or feel isolated because of alienating people.

Though hard at first, being assertive will help you because it allows you to align your words and needs while respecting others.

Have Reasonable Expectations

Generally, failure to meet expectations can lead to disappointment, frustration, and more. Having such negative emotions regularly can crush your self-esteem and contribute to bad habits such as isolation and self-judgment.

Managing your expectations, on the other hand, can help you maintain high self-esteem because keeping them fewer and more realistic will help you avoid painful emotional experiences.

A friend who has a custom of inviting you out for dinner, walk, hiking, and more may forget to do so when she invites her other friends. This may upset you when you learn about it because your expectations were violated and even cause you to withdraw and do your own things.

Because this is not what you wanted to do to your friend, you will begin to feel bad about yourself, and eventually, your self-esteem will start to chip away. However, managing your expectations can help you control your emotions. It will help you be grateful when invited or have “me time” when your friend forgets to include you. This is an excellent way of modifying your expectations and building your self-esteem.

Maintain Healthy Habits

You will feel good about yourself when you eat healthy food, exercise, and get enough sleep. However, people with low self-esteem don’t enjoy such things because they tend to neglect themselves. They usually feel that they don’t deserve to look after themselves.

However, finding time to do something for yourself and relax can help build your self-esteem as well as change your overall outlook. You will always feel your best when you look your best, and you can only achieve it when you take care of yourself. So let your self-assurance come through as a result of how good you feel from the inside.

In summary, low self-esteem doesn’t make you feel good about yourself and others; however, high self-esteem does. The five keys will help build your self-worth and eventually have super high self-esteem. So start acting as though you already have it, and it will be easy to cultivate it.