7 Ways to Increase Your Self Esteem

Eleanor Roosevelt once said ‘no-one can make you feel inferior without your consent’.

No one can make you feel anything, you are the only person that can feel what you are feeling.  It’s your choice on what you choose to feel.

Here are ten ways to increase your self esteem…

Competence 

Low self-esteem is an acceptance that in some all areas of your life, you don’t make the grade, you don’t match up, and you don’t measure up.  You may feel inferior by not being as good as another, comparing yourself to others.  Carry out a true evaluation of you, explore your life and list all your competencies.

Locus of Control

We each have a locus of control; we have an internal thermostat if you like, of how much control we feel over our lives.  Some people feel that they have none or very little control, they go through life blaming others and complaining how everything happens to them and they had no control over it.

This behaviour lowers self-esteem, by not increasing your locus of control you are giving away power and accepting that life is a defeating process.

Look back over you life to date, where did you give up control where you know today, that in hindsight, you could have control than you had.

Valuable 

People with low self-esteem have the belief, feelings and behaviour that state they are worth nothing to no-one or anything.

Have you ever said ‘I’m not worthy?’  In order to raise your self-esteem you may have to start by reviewing your definition of the ‘worth’.  Start taking a Life Inventory, a stock take of all your strengths, achievements and start looking for the distortions and generalisations you make about your self.

Contribution 

Everyone has something to contribute.  Everyone.  For example, people out of work may see their self-esteem lower during this time.  One of the causes is the in fact that employment (paid or unpaid) assist us in making a contribution, without it we may feel insignificant that we are no longer part of something that has an end result.  We all have something to contribute.

Acceptance

Acceptance is the ability to embrace who you are NOW, this moment including all things that you want to change or are no longer happy with.  Acceptance is not a declaration of ‘well, this is it, this is how it is going to be, I accept that’.  By choosing to accept the truth of you at this moment you can move forward.  There is truly no need to find fault in yourself all the time, adopting a ‘know what, I’m okay, let’s move on’ frees up the mind.

Self Love

The greatest, most passionate, exhilarating and unconditional love affairs you can have is with yourself!  Many baulk at sayings such as ‘love yourself first’ or ‘unless you love yourself, how can you love anyone else’.

Love is an emotion, we all describe it differently, we all feel it’s power and yet we provide lack of it for ourselves.  It really does not make any sense, it has no logic, there is wonderful saying ‘take care of the caretaker’.  Have you heard it?  We are so often willing to give up love to others and yet struggle to love ourselves.  Define your definition of love, what does it mean to you?  Next, apply your meaning to yourself, where does it fall short?  What needs worked?

No Judgement

We are our biggest critics; we are experts in reminding ourselves of our biggest failings and where we went wrong moments.  We are all too ready to belittle, pass comments, make snide remarks about us!  Who sits in your own personal jury?  Who is responsible for sentencing you to low self-esteem?  By who’s laws are you trying to abide by?  I give it to you; judgment is not the same as an honest evaluation, if there are people that are on the prosecution in your life, you do not have to accept all their closing statements.