Low self-esteem is more than just a problem of emotional health; it influences all areas of your wellbeing. From your relationship wellness and family interactions to your job performance and physical health, low self-esteem can infiltrate your life and make it impossible to be the best version of yourself, so it’s vital that you build your self-esteem up so that you’re in a healthy place.
1. Identify conditions or situations that you find troubling.
Everyone has certain things they go through that give their confidence a knock, so take a look at those situations or conditions that seem to deflate your self-esteem. You might not cope well with business presentations, a crisis at work or in your home life, when you’re challenged by the people you love and/or work with, or when there’s a big change in your life, like losing your job or your child leaving home. Before you can overcome these obstacles, you first have to know what you’re up against.
2. Identify your patterns of thoughts and beliefs.
Working out the situations that trouble you is great, but you’ve still got a little more poking and prodding to do in your life yet – you also need to think about how you, well, think. What do you tell yourself when these situations arise? What do you interpret these situations to mean? You may have positive, negative or neutral thoughts about the situation, and they could be rational and fact-based or irrational thoughts steeped in a warped sense of reality.
3. Challenge negative or inaccurate thinking.
Once you’ve identified the common thought’s you have, you then need to challenge your negative thinking. Though your initial thoughts are personal to you, they might not be the only possible way to view the situation. Test the accuracy of your thoughts by asking yourself if these perceptions are indeed consistent with logic or facts, or whether they might be a more plausible explanation for the situation. Sometimes it’s hard to recognise inaccuracies in your thinking, especially if your though pattern has been ingrained for a long time. This is why it’s helpful to pay close attention to the ways of thinking that tend to erode self-esteem:
- All-or-nothing thinking – You think everything is good OR bad, with no grey area. For example, you see yourself as a failure if you don’t succeed in every minor task.
- Mental filtering – You don’t see the positive aspects, you only see and dwell on the negatives, which distorts your view of a person or situation.
- Conversion – You change positive things into negatives by insisting your achievements don’t count because they were too easy to achieve, anyone could have done the same etc.
- Jumping to negative conclusions – With very little evidence, you go from “My friend didn’t text me back” to “she must hate me.”
- Self put-downs – You put yourself down or use self-deprecating humour.
4. Adjust your thoughts and beliefs.
Now it’s time to eliminate inaccurate thoughts and replace them with accurate, constructive thoughts. You can do this using certain strategies:
- Use hopeful statements – Pessimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy so try telling yourself things such as, “Even though it’s tough, I can handle this situation.”
- Forgive yourself – When things go wrong, as they inevitably will (it is life, after all) make statements that assert your mistakes aren’t a permanent reflection on you as a person. Say, “I made a mistake, but that doesn’t make me a bad person.”
- Avoid ‘should’ and ‘must’ statements – You might be putting unreasonable demands on yourself.
- Encourage yourself – Give yourself credit for making positive changes. For example, “My presentation might not have been perfect, but my colleagues asked questions and remained engaged.”
