Self-esteem is about how we value ourselves, how we are appropriate to life's challenges and our perception of who we are and what we are capable of, our resilience to bounce back from a failure, dealing with challenges appropriately, and not feeling worse after a minor setback.
People who deal with poor self-esteem are more critical of themselves, they avoid difficult situations just to feel good about themselves, they avoid social gatherings or hard conversations because these situations make them feel even worse.
Our self-esteem develops in the early stages of life, it often starts in childhood. Self-esteem is not something fixed and it changes during life, if you have poor self-esteem, you can improve it.
Stress and difficult life events can harm self-esteem, terminal illnesses, loss of a loved one, can hurt self-esteem as well.
Poor self-esteem sets off patterns of negative thinking, in the long term, this can be damaging for relationships, possible career choices, and general mental health.
To improve your self-esteem you have to do a few things, which are mentioned below.
You need to replace your negative self-talk with positive self-talk, for example, if you call yourself “too stupid” to apply for a new job, you need to challenge that type of thinking and change it to, “it’s okay if you’re not good at it”.
Of course, you need evidence to challenge these negative beliefs about yourself, for example in the statement mentioned above, looking for evidence looks like this: look for anything that reinforces or mitigates the “too stupid” statement throughout your life, write them down, read and then reflect.
There are other ways of improving self-esteem as well, which I’ll be mentioning briefly:
Recognize your good traits
Build positive relationships
Build kind to yourself
Learn to be assertive
Start saying “no”
Give yourself a challenge
