Self-esteem is essentially the quality of being pleased with yourself. The opposite of having high self-esteem is loathing yourself, which is obviously a challenging way to live. Learning how to be happy with yourself can benefit you in every other aspect of your life. You’ll be a lot happier in general, too.
Learn to love yourself and raise your self-esteem with these tips:
- Volunteer. Demonstrate to yourself that you’re a good person by giving some of your spare time to a worthy cause. You’ll feel better about yourself than if you’d spent the same time watching a TV series marathon instead.
- Do something each day that you’re good at. We feel competent and confident while doing something that we know we’re good at. Make a list of the things you know in your heart that you do well. Do at least one of them each day and notice how you feel.
- Remind yourself of your successes daily. Spend a few minutes each day reviewing your successes. Include recent as well as successes from the past. You’ve done a lot of great things. Avoid forgetting about them.
- Avoid comparing yourself to others. There’s always someone that does something better than you. Just remember that there are things you can do better than them, too.
- Increase your knowledge or expertise. Constant improvement is a sure path to greater self-esteem. Keep improving yourself and your capabilities, and you’ll be more impressed with yourself. What do you want to become better at doing? What would you like to know more about?
- Release yourself from your mistakes. Allow your mistakes from the past to fade away. You can do this by forgiving yourself and keeping your mind focused on what is happening in the present time.
- You don’t know anyone that has never failed or made a mistake. This includes your closest friends and family members. You don’t hold their mistakes against them, so how can you hold them against yourself?
- Stick to your values. When you fail to live up to your values, you won’t feel very good about yourself. Understand your values and live them each day.
- Face a fear. Having too many fears can lessen the level of self-esteem we experience. Overcome a fear and you’ll be amazed with yourself. Start with a small fear and work your way up.
- Avoid doing things just to please others. Going too far to please or impress others demonstrates to you that your own preferences, values, and happiness come in second place. Be considerate of others but strive to make yourself happy.
- Be able to say “no”. The inability to say “no” to others shows that you give too much preference to others and too little to yourself. Show yourself that you matter by being able to refuse the requests of others when appropriate. You’ll receive more respect from others, too.
- Define what you believe a good person should be. You can’t be happy with yourself if you don’t have a target to strive for. Understand what it will take to feel a high level of self-esteem. Each day, you can choose to be the type of person you described.