Feeling Good About Yourself: Best Ways To Boost Self-Esteem

The way you see yourself has a huge effect on your entire life. From the success of your professional career to your relationships, it is all reliant on your self-esteem. There are a lot of things that can affect and reduce your self-esteem, but there are just as many ways to build your self-esteem back up. When it comes to the best ways to build your self-esteem, many of them have to do with retraining your brain to see situations and personal attributes in a whole different light.

This might sound challenging to some, and it will take dedication and patience, but feeling good about yourself is more important than succumbing to these challenges. That's why we thought it would be vitally important to give you some tools to help you begin taking the steps you need to take to feel good about yourself and confident in your daily life.

Self-Esteem Defined

Before we dive into how to boost your self-esteem, you have to really understand what it boils down to. How do you feel about yourself? What do you think about your self-worth? The answer to these questions is your self-esteem. In other words, it is the measurement of how you feel about yourself in regard to things like your values, your respect, and the way you appreciate yourself.

Typically, those with higher self-esteem feel good about themselves and their lives. This makes it a lot easier for them to make decisions and to have successful relationships. On the other hand, if you're suffering from low self-esteem, you are often more critical of yourself and talk about yourself and your life in negative terms. This will create challenges and struggles in your life, especially when it comes to making decisions and cultivating successful relationships.

Things That Affect Self-Esteem

So are we born with the self-esteem we currently have? The answer to that is no. There are a lot of different things that can actually play a part in building or demolishing one's self-esteem. Here are a few things that will play a part in what type of self-esteem you walk through life with:

• Life experiences
• Social standing
• Age
• Genetics
• Diet

Best Ways to Boost Self-Esteem

The opinion that you hold about yourself and your abilities can really alter how your life turns out. So your developed self-esteem and self-confidence in yourself must stay at an elevated level. No matter if you have high self-esteem or low self-esteem, there are always tools you can use to boost that self-esteem even higher.

Here are six of the best ways to boost self-esteem:

See That Toxic Person – Walk the Other Way

You are the sum of the 10 people that are closest to you! We have all heard this before, or if we haven't, you've heard some variation of this adage.

That's because the people that you surround yourself with really do affect the energy and frequency that you radiate in the world. That means if you have a bad relationship or one that is one-sided (often called toxic relationships) you might find yourself dealing with lower self-esteem.

One of the ways you can really boost your self-esteem is to take an inventory of your relationships and be honest about whether they are right for you. This exercise may be challenging, and you may find that even relationships within your own family are toxic. In the end, though, your self-confidence and worth are important, and that may mean that you have to cut some people out of your life that just don't fit with your vision of yourself or your future.

Be Kind to Yourself

Every single person in the world has a little voice inside of their head that speaks up and guides them through life. For those with lower self-esteem, this voice often is supercritical and very negative. Unfortunately, with that little voice in your head reiterating the same things over and over again, we often believe what we're being told.

If you're striving to build your self-esteem, you have to turn those words from that inner voice of yours into positive outlooks. This exercise can be very challenging, but by being kind to yourself and doing daily positive self-talk, you can turn around your self-esteem. To help teach yourself how to do this, it might help to begin journaling and start every day by writing down several things that you like about yourself.

Forget the Comparison Game

Every person in this world is a unique and beautiful soul. Unfortunately, because of society and the way that we have been trained through the media, many of us spend time comparing ourselves to other people. This can mean comparing yourself to someone on social media about the way you look or how successful you are.

Instead of focusing on other people’s goals and achievements, you should really be paying attention to yourself. Measure your accomplishments against your accomplishments from a previous moment in time. In other words, focus on being better today than you were yesterday instead of trying to reach other people’s ideas of what you should be.

Get Your Sweat On

It might be surprising, but no matter why your self-esteem is low, getting out and getting your body moving can be quite uplifting. Exercise triggers actions within your body that release important neurotransmitters that can help boost your mood.

By being happier and having those chemicals throughout your body, you'll find that your self-esteem is going to be higher. On top of that, especially if your self-esteem is tied to your physical appearance, this exercise will help you revamp your look and be healthier, which in turn will build your confidence.

There Is No Such Thing as Perfection

Striving for perfection may be what we were taught we were supposed to do, but this is also something that has driven many people's self-esteem into the ground. The truth is, nothing is ever going to be perfect. There is always room for improvement.

Instead of focusing on perfection, doing exercises such as journaling and meditation (or learning new things, traveling, and much more) can be helpful when you are trying to be the best version of yourself and when you are trying to continue growing. By doing this, you will be able to build your self-confidence along with bettering yourself daily.

Some Things Can’t Be Controlled

Sometimes self-esteem ends up taking a hit when you aren't able to reach your goals the way you want to. Maybe you make a few mistakes; this is just a way that life has been designed to learn. By understanding that everyone makes mistakes and that there are things in your life that just simply cannot be controlled, you'll be able to build your self-reliance and self-confidence.

This understanding, in turn, will elevate your self-esteem and allow you to be more flexible and basically learn to go with the flow. It can also help you build skills such as self-reflection and the ability to course-correct when needed. If you're looking to build on this tip, you can try once again journaling and writing down something that you're not happy with. Once you've done that, then really self-reflect and figure out ways you could change it.

Final Thoughts

Self-esteem plays a role in every aspect of your life. So when you struggle with low self-esteem, you may feel like you're going nowhere and that there's no way that you can find your way out of the dark.

But that is not true. There are so many ways to build your self-esteem. It may take some time and a conscious effort to restructure the way you think and react. But in the end, we hope that by giving you these ways to build your self-esteem, we've helped you on your path to feeling good about yourself.

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