Self-esteem is all about your opinion of yourself. You could be either saying good things or feeding yourself negative thoughts about what you can do. Allowing this negative feeling to linger in your system for a long time isn’t good especially for your mental state because it could lead to anxiety and depression. If you want to enhance your self-esteem, here are a few tips that you can try.
Tip #1 – Positive self-affirmations
Yes, definitely one of the most effective techniques to improve your self-esteem and be more confident with yourself is to practice positive self-affirmations like “I can handle this project” or “I’m going to give it my best shot to succeed”. You can try these positive affirmations whenever you are feeling down and need a morale boost. Just a piece of advice when you are practicing self-affirmations – make sure they are realistic.
Tip #2 – Know your potentials and develop them
Now it’s time to do a self-assessment on yourself. What are your potentials? Are you good at baking yummy goodies? If yes, why not enroll in an advanced baking class and get a certification or additional personal training? These types of actions will not only boost your confidence but also give you that feeling of accomplishment.
Tip #3 – Avoid setting unrealistic goals
Sometimes how we perceive ourselves is what will make us feel a total failure like setting our standard too high or setting unrealistic goals. It’s time to change this kind of strategy and focus more on what you can do for now. For example, instead of being too harsh on yourself to complete a project in a week (which in reality is quite impossible), why not leave yourself a buffer of a few days in case there are unforeseen delays? Why? If you set your expectations unrealistically, and you are unable to attain your goals, you will end up feeling incompetent.
Tip #4 – Listen more to compliments
There are times that we are too centered on our own negative feelings that we tend to neglect the compliments that other people give us. Listen more to compliments that your loved ones, friends, and even colleagues at work give you. If someone says, “You are doing great on your assigned task”, then, accept it with a grateful heart, rather than question if that person really means it or not.
Tip #5 – List your top qualities
Another tip to help enhance your self-esteem is to develop a list of your top qualities that set you apart from others. For example, you are kind, patient, and trustworthy. So, when you’ve had a bad day at work because you didn’t qualify for a promotion, go over your list and look for that quality that you feel strongly about and write a short paragraph about how this quality can help you get that promotion in the future. Try doing this every day before going to bed for a week, or whenever you need to boost your self-esteem.
These are just five simple tips that will not only improve your self-esteem but prevent it from going down whenever you are bombarded with challenges. It’s normal to feel low or not too confident at some points, but if it prevents you from living your life to the fullest, you have to face this issue and act upon immediately.
