Six ways to improve your self-esteem

Your self-esteem is one of the major keys to success. When you are confident in yourself, you’re in a better position to handle your goals and live the life you dream of.

Just as high self-esteem has a positive impact on your life, when it is at a low the opposite occurs. It causes you to stagnate in your work, your friendships and personal development.

There is no right time to nurture your self-esteem. It is a continuous job.

The guidelines below will help you learn how to improve your self-esteem. And the best part is that they are things you can practice every day.

• Find out the root cause of your esteem issues

This is the ultimate key to deep healing. It’s easy to turn to temporary fixes for your problems but the real solution is found from introspection. Find out what happened in your life that caused these problems and make an effort to heal those wounds before anything else.

• Don’t base your value on other’s opinions

If you continuously value other’s opinions more than your own, you’ll breed emotional chaos. When they say nice things about you, your esteem rises and when they don’t, your esteem drops. This isn’t how it should be. You should be able to maintain your confidence whether or not people notice you and your efforts. Put higher value on your opinion of yourself than you do others’ opinion and nothing will bring you down.

• Feed your vision

We all have dreams but what sets achievers apart from everyone else is they, achievers, actually put in the effort to work on their goals. Instead of spending countless hours in front of the TV or online, watching others make their dreams come true, get up and start working on your vision even if it’s one small step at a time. Slouching around, watching TV all day will only make you depressed and delay achieving your goals even more.

• Don’t say negative things about yourself

Negative self-talk is one of the biggest contributors of low self-esteem. You could be putting yourself down with those mean comments and criticisms you make about yourself. When you don’t take yourself seriously you make it hard for others’ to do the same. A good place to start is to counter every negative comment with a positive one. For example, if you catch yourself saying your skin looks horrible, counter that by appreciating the fact that you’re alive and well. Practice that regularly and with time, you’ll realize the negative self-talk has reduced.

• Nurture your talents

Doing your best to develop your talents can really boost your self-esteem. Of all the things about you, your abilities cannot be taken from you. They are inborn and all you need to do is improve them. When you fail to do this you are essentially throwing away any opportunities that could be waiting for you out there. Therefore, don’t ignore your talents and just as you give priority to your work and family life, make time to improve and exploit your talents.

• Look after your appearance

When you look good, you feel good. Try to always look your best no matter where you’re going and who you’re meeting. Do this, not to seek other’s approval but to boost your own confidence. At the same time, remember that we are visual creatures and we our perception of others is linked to their appearance. To make a good first impression, pay attention to how you look, within your comfort zone. In addition to that, make healthy living a part of your life to also improve your confidence.