Self-esteem is that internal sense of worth that we have an inner confidence. It reflects the value that you see yourself with in the world. Self-esteem and self-worth are tied together for most of us. It makes a big difference when we have high self-esteem we tend to see the world as a more positive place and value our place in it
Perhaps you feel that you are worthless or not good enough. Perhaps you find that you struggle to make decisions or that asserting your ideas and opinions just seems impossible. Maybe it goes further than that and you feel that no one really likes you. Often it’s easy to look at ourselves and what we have done to make things go wrong. We can ignore the circumstances or to feel we are undeserving of happiness. All of these are characteristic of thinking from a low-self-esteem perspective.
Improving Self-esteem
Often we will have an inner critic that seems to know all of our weaknesses and the right moments to push the button. In part this keeps our self-esteem low because it focuses on our faults and doesn’t acknowledge out achievements. So start to silence your inner critic reward yourself by noticing the good things that happen or that you do however small. Notice how easily you would do this for others, your best friend, your partner, your child and so forth. Yet you seem to find it hard to offer yourself a compassionate work.
Part of building self-esteem is being compassionate with yourself and noticing that you are human. Humans make mistakes, indeed we become better by making mistakes, whoever jumped on a cycle for the first time and rode off into the sunset. It is at best rare and most of us will have memories of wobbling along with scraped knees and elbows. But we got there. Compassion!
Through a change in the way that we think about ourselves we can make real differences to our self-esteem. It is not an easy process; after all we have spent many years running ourselves down. Yet by valuing the positives we have, by seeming any mistakes or flaws in perspective, we can re-value ourselves. Often an outside companion on this journey can help and that is why so many enter therapy. But if you have someone in your life who can be honest and open with you and with whom you feel you can be vulnerable then perhaps there is real opportunity for you to change your self-esteem and self-worth.