Your self-esteem builds up over the years from environmental influences. Sometimes, those experiences encourage you to have confidence. Yet other times, new influences knock your self-esteem backward.
When you know you want to feel better about yourself, you’ve already taken the first step. But changing years’ worth of conditioning in your mind isn’t an overnight process. It takes time, consistency, and self-awareness to recognize when you’re slipping into old patterns of thinking.
Are you ready to transform into someone with confidence, and be fully aware of your strengths?
Try these tips to shed past influences and create your own self-worth!
1. Recognize the Stories You’ve Told Yourself
Much of the way we feel about ourselves is a combination of experiences viewed through the lens of a skewed perspective. That means how we perceive what happened is based on our own biases and insecurities at the time.
Leaning on your past self and the versions of your experiences are universal. The trick is to go back to that younger you and rewind the movie to look for cues that show you might not have seen what really happened.
While the script remains the same, shift the perspective. Change how you look at the people in the scene — including you.
Do you recognize how you may have colored what happened a little differently? Or do you understand more about the events and can take power away from them?
It can be challenging to revisit hard times, but doing so often lets us see a bit of reality we hadn’t observed before. And sometimes, that’s all it takes to adjust our own view of ourselves.
2. Learn How to Adjust Your Views
A little knowledge goes a long way in understanding why we feel how we do about ourselves.
Five significant components comprise a person’s self-worth.
Take some time to analyze your beliefs in each of these categories:
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Your overall appearance, including how you dress, style your hair, and your body’s characteristics
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Your net worth, which covers assets and debts
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Your support system of friends and family who are always there for you when you need them as well as your spiritual support
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Your societal contributions, which can include volunteer work, raising your children to be good citizens or your job
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Your achievements, from school to family and beyond
Trying to see why you feel how you do about yourself in them lets you acknowledge your weaknesses. This, in turn, can drive you to set realistic goals to improve if necessary.
Taking action, no matter how small it is, improves your confidence.
3. Watch Your Words
You’ve probably heard the motivational speeches that tell you to think positively. It’s not always easy, but it needs to become your habit.
There really is power in what we think and say. When you think negatively, you respond similarly, and vice vera.
Think about a random encounter in a public place.
If a stranger smiles at you and compliments your outfit, you feel good about yourself, right?
Or, instead, if that person gives you a nasty look and asks if you shopped from a garbage bin, you’d feel a bit less confident about yourself.
The same idea holds true in your own head. The more you nag at yourself for not being good enough, the more it holds you back.
Focus on areas that are your strengths and high points. Remind yourself that you’re working on your weaknesses and be patient.
4. Give and Receive Compliments
The same idea of being kind to yourself leads to the psychology of compliments. Psychologists suggest that compliments can actually create positive energy around the people involved.
Yet learning how to take a compliment is a dying art. Today, people often buy into the belief system that to think well of themselves is selfish. A compliment then becomes a trigger to deny the factor in question.
How do you respond when someone compliments you? Do you deflect and disallow the compliment? Or turn it back on the complimenter?
Discounting the compliment is one of the most common reactions. This takes away the power of the complimenter to give a positive statement to you. And it limits the ability the compliment has to make you feel good about yourself.
Learn how to take compliments gracefully, instead. Say “thank you” at first, until you are more comfortable with responding.
Above all, practice the art of regularly complimenting to see how others feel and how you feel when you do!
5. Find Coping Strategies to Avoid Pity Parties
Do you ever feel like you’re not good enough, but don’t want others to throw you a pity party?
The trick is to acknowledge what you’re feeling and then use a strategy to address it.
When you recognize you’re about to fall into a pit of despair, try one of these coping mechanisms to prevent, or cushion, the pain:
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Give yourself a time-out from whatever you’re doing and do something you enjoy instead.
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Find a meditation or mindfulness podcast, app, or another medium to ground you to reality.
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Allow yourself a set time to wallow in your pity party and then force yourself to do something else. Set a timer on your phone if you must.
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Put a reminder on your computer screen, phone screen, or refrigerator of things you’re grateful for.
These little strategies are often just enough to remind you of how blessed you are and boost your self-worth.
Conclusion
Improving your sense of self-worth is already a worthy endeavor. But it’s not going to happen right away.
When you’re ready to create your own view of yourself and shed the years’ worth of others’ opinions, use these tips to get started!
Dominique Daniels has five years of Property Management experience working primarily in high-end apartment community living. Her ability to consistently deliver white-glove service to her residents and prospects has propelled her in a successful career that now finds her leading the team at Tobin Estate Apartments.