Building your self-esteem = feeling better with yourself
Do you want to build your self-esteem?
So you can have a better relationship with yourself AND with the people you love? By valuing the person that you are, you are showing to yourself that you can count on you. That you are WORTH IT and GOOD ENOUGH.
It’s an amazing feeling that makes you feel great being who you truly are, you can trust yourself and count on you like you would on someone you love 🙂
I’ll start by defining what is self-esteem and why it is so important and then, I’ll give you the 6 essential steps you need to build healthy and high self-esteem! Let’s get this party started!!! 🙂
How do you define self-esteem?
Self-esteem is to me, the way you value yourself. It’s how much you estimate yourself, what you truly are.
I like how Dr. Nathaniel Brandon calls self-esteem “your reputation with yourself”.
To me, self-esteem is really the way you appreciate yourself.
Of course, it’s a mix of a few judgments that we have towards ourselves, about for example:
- our physic
- our character
- our qualities and flaws
- our skills and abilities
- our possibilities and limits
- our social position
- … many more!
It’s possible to have high self-esteem in one domain (for example, about our physic), but to doubt sometimes about another one (a flaw that we consider having).
But, you can already talk about someone that has high or low self-esteem in general, which means that she has a lot of self-esteem most of the time and in most of the situations in her everyday’s life.
I want to add also that self-esteem has something to me, comparable to an unconditional love that every parent have towards their kid. No matter what, you will love yourself. I know that people will debate with me about this, but I still think that when you have high self-esteem of yourself, you’ll always try to do your best and if not, you’ll try to fix it.
The same as self-confidence, there is no such thing as someone who was born with high self-esteem.
It’s a skill to develop and since I’ve read many books and learned A LOT in the past few years, I will happily share with you all that I found about that subject! 🙂
What about self-worth?
You can hear people saying that you don’t need to learn how to build your self-esteem.
I heard about this a lot, that you are worth it and that you shouldn’t doubt it.
I would agree 50% with this. It’s true that everybody is worthy! I’m just saying that stating this isn’t building someone’s self-esteem.
So, I would say that you need to know that you are worth it. You can have self-worth just by starting to believe in this.
But self-esteem is something that you can build by being aware first, by knowing yourself better and then by believing in yourself more than ever.
The benefits of having high self-esteem
There’s nothing more obvious that I can think of!
Having high self-esteem is SO IMPORTANT! Why is that?!
A few reasons!
- You feel comfortable being who you really are!
- You are okay that things aren’t perfect
- You are not taking things personally
- You don’t need other people’s approval
- You are able to say “no” and you don’t feel bad about it
- You have healthy relationships with the people you love
- You can achieve any goals that you want to achieve because you can count on you!
- You are very resilient and know that no matter what, you will be okay!
- Many more…!
As you can see, having self-esteem can only help you to live a life that can truly make you happy.
So, there’s no more time to lose, start becoming the person with the highest self-esteem that you know!!
Self-esteem/self-confidence, what’s the difference?
I wrote a post about this, you can check it out here!
You’ll see the difference in a glance…
Self-esteem as we said it before, is how you value yourself. It’s how much you estimate yourself, what you truly are.
Some people may call it also self-love. It’s really about the relationship we have with ourselves, that is reflecting on the relationships we have with others. They may say that it’s how much you love yourself if you like your qualities, your flaws, the person you are in general.
Self-confidence is more about trusting ourselves in the moment of doing an action. It’s when you trust yourself in your abilities and aptitudes.
Someone who has self-confidence will face challenges in life and will take responsibility for what’s happening to him/her because he/she knows what she/he’s capable of!
Related article:
Self-Esteem & Self-Confidence, What’s the Difference?
Do they always go together?
They do not.
It’s possible to have low self-confidence but high self-esteem when for example, we are happy with the person that we are (healthy self-esteem) but we don’t know how to be successful or are doubting our aptitudes (low self-confidence).
This can be transformed by going deep into personal development and learning about yourself!
On the opposite, it’s possible to feel sh*t about ourselves (low self-esteem) but to have a lot of self-confidence.
For example, a celebrity that is performing in front of lots of people, or anybody that likes to be in front of people: they are really good at what they are doing but deep inside, they may not feel good about themselves and can take drugs to try to feel better…
Why is self-esteem so important?
We know ourselves good enough and are happy about it.
We do not need other people’s approval and we are building healthy relationships around us and also with the person that we are.
We also do not fear failures, because we know that it’s an opportunity to learn about ourselves and about the life that we really want to live!
What causes low self-esteem?
It’s possible that some events happen to one’s life and makes him less love himself, less have self-esteem.
But as Brooke Castillo say, we are not damaged in any way. Of course, we don’t choose what happened to us, but we can choose what to do with it.
And what you can do now is to build your self-esteem, so you can start trusting yourself and count on yourself for the rest of your life! Experiences, events and no matter what will happen to your life can only make you stronger and grow your self-esteem like never!!
The 6 steps to build your self-esteem, how to truly practice self-love
1. Discover your values
The first step of building your self-esteem is discovering what are your values.
Why? Because your values are inspiring your choices and decisions. When you live in complete harmony with your values, you’ll build your self-esteem.
If you’re doing things that are going against your values, you won’t be comfortable, it will be kind of “against nature” and you’ll feel the tension and negative emotions towards it. So, discovering your values and living them fully through every day of your life participates actively in building your self-esteem.
For example, I’m dreaming about another kind of school, I like what they’re doing in Finland. Check it out if you never heard about it, they are really doing amazing things that are really helping to create happy, autonomous and smart adults.
About this, I like how Brian Tracy is talking about values when he says that “Living consistent with your values is the key to happiness, harmony, well-being, and high levels of self-confidence.”
Living consistent with your values is the key to happiness, harmony, well-being, and high levels of self-confidence. Brian Tracy
2. Treat yourself like you would treat someone that you love
I love this sentence. The first thing you’re doing with someone that you love is having consideration for this person and you’ll respect her.
Do the same with you. What is the best relationship that you can have with yourself? Do not criticize yourself, you won’t do this in the back of a true friend so don’t do it to yourself.
3. Show kindness to yourself!
There will be some time when it can get hard in life. No matter if you’re encountering challenges or tough situations, you know that you will be okay and you truly believe this. It’s not just something you’re trying to say to yourself, but you know it deep inside.
And you are kind towards yourself. Never say something that you wouldn’t say to someone that you love!
4. Accept everything about you…
Josiane de Saint Paul wrote a book about self-esteem and self-confidence and she’s saying that one of the steps to achieve high self-esteem is to accept everything about us.
She’s saying that “accepting isn’t necessary loving”, it’s a process and it needs to be without any judgments from us.
- Accept your physic…
Of course, this isn’t the easiest to do with all the advertisements and all the judgments out there!! I’m not 100% accepting my body, I’m working on it :), I’m trying to look at it like it’s helping me to do everything that I want to do with my life! For example, I love eating, I love traveling… And all of this couldn’t be possible without a body to digest or to get there 😉
- Accept your thoughts…
You know that I really like Brooke Castillo’s model of:
Thoughts > Feelings > Actions > Results.
Since your thoughts are creating your feelings, you can definitely change your thoughts to change the way you feel, but before any of that, you first need to ACCEPT your thoughts.
The moment that you accept that they are here, you can then work on them to change them so they are creating the feeling that you want to take actions that will get to the results you’re dreaming of 🙂
- Accept your feelings and emotions…
I wrote a complete another post about emotions, check it out here!
I always say that we never learned how to deal with our emotions and that we really should know how to deal with them. Why? Because emotions and feelings are letting us know how things are on the inside. They are the indicators if our needs are being fulfilled or if they are not!
We also may feel guilty about our emotions and this is the reason why we need to accept them in the first place and understand WHY we are feeling this way!
The very first step for dealing with our emotions is “accepting it”.
- Accept your behaviors…
We can be so hard on ourselves!
I always say that the behaviors don’t describe the person. It’s not because someone does something one day that we can decide that this person is like this or like that.
A person always tries to get a positive result of something that she’s doing. Even if the way that she’s using to get the results that she wants sounds completely crazy to us!! 🙂
We first need to accept our behaviors and you can ask yourself: why do I have this behavior? Can I maybe use another one and get the same or even better results?
- Accept your flaws…
We don’t need to change them or to try to become somebody that we are not!
We just need to accept that they are there and that they are a part of us and we can still reach all of our goals and live a fulfilling life even with a few flaws here and there 🙂
- Accept your shadow…
Carl Jung is the one that came with the concept of “shadow”.
He’s saying that our shadow is basically everything that we don’t accept about ourselves and that we’re trying to hide from ourselves.
It can also be the things that we are criticizing in others!!
You can try to understand what is part of your shadow by asking yourself: “what is it that I really don’t like about others?”
Sometimes, what we criticize about others can say a lot about us… 🙂
Related article:
How To Deal With Your Emotions And Boost Your Self-Confidence
5. Fall in love with the person that you are
I can’t stress this enough.
You are amazing! Truly 🙂 and you need to know it!
This step is for you to slowly slowly, really fall in love with who you are! And it’s really an unconditional love, a love that you’re sure that no matter what will happen, you know that you’ll be okay. You can count on yourself and trust yourself.
You can do it by doing more self-care activities, spending time with yourself and treating you well will help you grow the love that you have for yourself 🙂 like we’re doing when we’re going on a date with someone else 😉
6. Be 100% your most authentic self
I truly think that there is no time to be somebody else.
Life is really short and you ARE amazing and you HAVE all the self-confidence and self-esteem inside of you.
You just need to discover it and to bring it out there 🙂
Do not try to be somebody that you’re not, you are very unique and if you’re not convinced, I love this quote that back then helped me a lot feeling just myself 🙂
To sum up!
As you can see, self-esteem is already inside of you and you just need to go through these steps, again and again, to love yourself even more!!
You are worth it and you need to start believing in it 🙂
Having high self-esteem is really a part of you living a life that truly makes you happy and this is why you need to bring it out today! 🙂
