Do you love yourself? Are there traits that you dislike about yourself? What do you wish you could change in your life?
It is unsettling effortless how we can impact our mind with negative thoughts, but did you know that you can practice boosting your low self-esteem? Oftentimes, people tend to struggle to surround themselves with a positive environment, positive thinking, and positive goals to achieve.
The importance of boosting low self-esteem is a major key part of your life. Do you currently have healthy relationships such as family, friends, acquaintances, or co-workers? Do you have any healthy beliefs about life and yourself? How is your general well-being? Asking yourself these crucial questions opens up your mind to new thoughts and ideas. Higher self-esteem is known to improve coping skills towards challenges, overall positive mental health, and handling adversity. Therefore, high self-esteem matters, and building our self-esteem can go a long way.
Risks of lower self-esteem can lead to high amounts of unhealthy stress, lower social interactions or connections, fewer coping skills being used to face challenges, looking at life with a negative perspective, and smaller issues evolving into much greater issues.
Let’s explore some easy ways to boost our self-esteem.
1) Boosting Self-Esteem with Affirmations: Take the Challenge!
Establishing helpful affirmations to practice daily can improve your mind, your life, and your self-esteem. Let’s try saying these positive beliefs aloud and using them as often as we can.
-
“I am good enough.”
-
“I believe in myself.”
-
“I am worth it.”
-
“I can do it.”
-
“I love who I am.”
-
“People treat me with respect.”
-
“I can achieve my goals.”
-
“I expect the best for myself.”
-
“I appreciate myself.”
-
“I am beautiful.”
-
“I am strong.”
-
“I do my best every day.”
-
“I will succeed.”
-
“I won’t give up.”
-
“I will not fail.”
There are thousands of optimistic affirmations you can tell yourself to boost your self-esteem. You can be more specific for example: “I will complete my class or my work, I will pass and succeed.” Knowing how to use affirmations and testing out what works best for you is a great step towards boosting your self-esteem. You have all of the power to create and spark the positivity within you. If writing the affirmations down works best for you, try using a journal or notebook to spread your optimistic thoughts. As a challenge, see how many positive affirmations you can think of on your own and that apply best to you.
2) Positive Vibes Only
Now that we have initiated practice with boosting affirmations, let’s work on our optimistic vibes.
There are several ways through which you can begin to introduce the practice of positivity into your life, and these ways can ultimately help increase your self-esteem.
-
Deep Breathing - deep breathing exercises can help you manage your daily stress and remind you to stay in the moment and believe in yourself.
-
Practice Self-care or Self-love - you can do this by exhibiting a hobby you thrive for or have an interest in trying. Give yourself a proper pamper by taking a bath, listening to your favorite music, or taking a break from any hard work amongst other activities. Remember to prioritize yourself before anyone else, you are important too so remember to also take care of yourself.
-
Create a Gratitude List - What are you grateful for? Who are you grateful for? What could you be more grateful for?
-
Practice Positive Self-Talk - such as through the affirmations mentioned above or create your own that appeal to you.
-
Forgive Yourself - we all learn and grow. We can only improve and try again. Skills can only improve when we want to improve. Self-forgiveness promotes room for growth.
-
Self-Appreciation - give yourself the credit that you deserve, sometimes we need this the most.
-
Create Healthy Boundaries - whether this is on 7 Cups (have time limits on chats, schedule times to be on 7 Cups, take regular self-care breaks), with family or friends, or with school or work.
-
Help Others - Spreading kindness and gratitude to others has the effect of bouncing the positivity back to ourselves.
You can always explore other ways that help you practice positivity so that you can use positive vibes to support your self-esteem!
3) Show Yourself Love and Patience
Love is not only meant to be given but is also meant to be received. You deserve love just as much as someone else does. You are your own critic and you can improve your thoughts and actions by practicing self-love. If you are someone who likes to be reminded of anything, one great way to remember to show yourself love is to set reminders with positive sayings or positive goals, this can be done by setting them up on your phone, computer, or sticky notes around your room or home - the ideas and possibilities are endless.
It is important to love yourself before loving others, you are the one creating the best things for you. We can receive suggestions and recommendations from others, but it all comes down to you in the end. You have the power to embrace constructive criticism and improve at your own pace. As we all know, no one is perfect, but it is not impossible to better ourselves the best that we can. Let’s move past the fear of cheering on our own strengths and let’s challenge our weaknesses to improve ourselves, as practicing all of our skills is one of the best ways of showing growth. Be the change that you want to see, no matter how small or big, you can always work towards being who you want to be. When you understand your worth, you become untouchable. Your worth says a thousand words, so why not try to understand just how worthy you are?
Your mental health matters too, so giving yourself compassion and patience are great ways to support your wellbeing while boosting your self-esteem. This also additionally helps acknowledge that you deserve support and hence do not have to fight your battles alone.
For more support, join our empathetic community, connect with a free, trained listener, make progress through a community-driven growth path, or try affordable online therapy today.
Biography
This article was written by Kristin Wolfe (KristinHelps). Kristin is currently enrolled in the Content Development and Marketing academy program at 7 Cups. She joined 7 Cups in July of 2014 and has a passion for joining the Content Volunteer Team. In addition, Kristin has been leading Listener Sharing Circle group support sessions and has used her experience as a peer supporter to oversee active listening quality efforts.
References: