How to Improve SELF-ESTEEM

The most effective strategy to improve self-esteem is to learn to conceive of yourself in more realistic terms and with acceptance. There is no use wanting to go from a completely destructive view of yourself to a totally idealized or deceptive one. The best thing is to learn to relativize failures and accept each of our physical and psychic characteristics, understanding that there are things that can be changed, others that can be improved and others that by their very nature or etiology are unchangeable.

If you ask yourself: how to improve my self-esteem? or how to increase my self-esteem and security?, keep reading this article of Psychology-Online, where you will find techniques and exercises and you will learn how to improve self esteem in adults and adolescents.

Index

1. How to improve self-esteem
2. Exercises to improve self-esteem
3. Techniques to improve self-esteem
4. Activities to improve self-esteem
5. Books to improve self-esteem

Self-esteem is the soil of a person, on which their way of feeling and acting is built. Self-esteem is always present and conditions all aspects of life. For this reason, it is so important to work on self-esteem in order to nurture a healthy, stable and positive self-esteem. How to improve self-esteem? For self-esteem to be a solid and realistic foundation, it is necessary to get to the source of it. To do this, you can follow these 4 steps:

1. Be aware of thoughts. To improve your self-esteem, first of all, you must be aware of what your thoughts are both about yourself, about others and about the world in general. These thoughts or assessments that we make about ourselves, about others or about what happens usually have a negative or positive connotation according to our belief system.
2. Recognize beliefs. If you want to improve your self-esteem, secondly, you must examine what beliefs exist behind these thoughts. That is, many of your characteristics are neutral, however, there are ingrained beliefs that act as a filter in our mind. Then, when observing the objective and neutral reality, our own filter is in charge of evaluating negatively or positively those characteristics.
3. Question beliefs. Third, when you are already aware of the beliefs that cause you to evaluate yourself poorly or negative to yourself, to improve self-esteem, you can start to question these beliefs that you have gone acquiring.
4. Change beliefs. At this point, after questioning the beliefs, you may wonder if they are really true for you or not. If they are not, you can replace them with others that are more objective and true for you.

How to raise my self-esteem? To improve self-esteem, it is necessary to know yourself, accept yourself and also take care of yourself and treat yourself well, what in psychology we call self-compassion. For this, it is necessary to exercise conscience, work on self-awareness and practice self-compassion. You can do it with these exercises to improve self-esteem:

1. Use non-pejorative language. If you are wondering "how to improve self-esteem", you should know that this is one of the most important points. It consists of eliminating all the words that have negative connotations: stupid, fat, ugly,... These terms, especially when used continuously, can eat up your self-esteem.
2. Use precise language. Don't exaggerate or embellish negative traits, stick to the facts. For example, "I'm not pretty to others" is an inaccurate term. It should be reformulated as "certain people find me more attractive and others less, because I have very beautiful features and others less, it depends on what they look at." The idea of ​​“I don't know how to do anything without my husband” should be reformulated as “I usually follow my husband's ideas.
3. Use specific language instead of general. Delete terms like everything, always, never, totally. For example, changing "I hate being alone" to other types of formulations such as "I would like to be accompanied when sometimes I am alone at home." Recognize that problems occur on certain occasions and with certain people.
4. Find exceptions or corresponding gifts. For example "I am shy when I have to flirt at the disco, I am insecure". It can be changed to “I am shy because I cannot speak calmly, when I meet someone in another context I develop much better. My favorite environment to flirt is… "

Performing the above exercises to improve self-esteem can be complex. Therefore, we provide you with some techniques to improve self-esteem that can help you implement the changes.

1. To avoid pejorative labels, the following thoughts may help:

• That's not me, it's just a label.
• Labels exaggerate my weakest part.
• No more labels, you have to specify more.
• I have more qualities than defects even though I don't see them now.
• I have always done what I could and will continue to do so.
• What exactly do I understand by ???

2. To avoid all or nothing thoughts, the following thoughts are helpful:

• Everybody makes mistakes. Is human.
• Sometimes you are perfectly competent and sometimes less.
• You are never totally incompetent.
• You do your job well.
• It's not the end of the world.

3. When you find yourself making comparisons, you can turn to the following statements:

• Everyone is different, with different qualities and flaws.
• That he has no career does not mean that he is worse than them.
• I must not assume anything but check it.

4. When you find yourself "guessing" what others think about you:

• I have no way of knowing what they are thinking.
• The only way to know the opinion of others is to ask them directly.
• Don't assume anything. Check it.
• Why assume the negative? Can I give you another explanation?
• What are the facts?
• I don't know what you think and I don't care.
• He is kind in spite of everything. Who knows what it really feels like?
• It's a waste of time trying to make up what they think of me.

5. In case you get carried away by emotional reasoning, the following thoughts may help:

• My feelings are not automatically true.
• Lie, my emotions deceive me!
• Be wary of all sudden feelings.
• What are the thoughts that make me feel so sad and nervous? I know that if I correct and change them, this discomfort will disappear.

In the following article you will find other strategies to improve self-esteem.

How to increase self-esteem? In addition to applying the above exercises and psychological techniques, you can perform other activities to improve self-esteem:

1. Maintain social relationships. To increase your self-esteem, it is advisable to maintain an active social life and enrich yourself from activities with other people and from relationships with others.
2. Get regular physical activity. If you want to increase your self-esteem, it will help if you are healthy and maintain healthy habits in terms of food, rest and exercise. In addition, physical exercise increases endorphin release, which produce well-being.

If you are over 40 and want tips to improve self-esteem more specific to your age, you will find them in the following article: How to improve self-esteem from the age of 40.

To strengthen and improve self-esteem, it is a good option to complement with bibliotherapy to learn more about self-esteem and self-knowledge. Next: we show a list with 20 books to improve self-esteem:

1. 40 reflections to awaken your self-esteem - Feli Garcia
2. Love yourself like your life depends on it - Kamal Ravikant
3. Self-esteem in 10 days - David Burns
4. Self-esteem: Evaluation and Improvement - Matthew Mckay, Patrick Fanning
5. Self-esteem for living: How to trust yourself and achieve what you want - Hermínia Gomà
6. Zero limits - Joe Vitale
7. How to believe in yourself (once and for all) - Patricia Cleghorn
8. Awakening the giant within - Anthony Robbins
9. the power of the word - Louise Hay
10. Fall in love with yourself: The essential value of self-esteem - Walter Riso
11. Emotional intelligence - Daniel Goleman
12. The gifts of imperfection - Brené Brown
13. The six pillars of self esteem - Nathaniel Branden
14. Get out of your mind, get into your life - Steven C. There is
15. Be your best friend - Louis Proto
16. Have a coffee with yourself - Walter Dresel
17. Your wrong areas - Wayne Dyer
18. You are worth more than you think: Believe in yourself and awaken your self-esteem - Matthew McKay, Patrick Fanning, Carole Honeychurch and Catharine Sutker
19. A life without limits - Nick Vujicic
20. You can heal your life - Louise Hay

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to improve self-esteem, we recommend that you enter our category of Personal growth and self-help.

• Branden, N. (1995). The six pillars of self esteem. Paidos.
• Branden, N., & Wolfson, L. (1989). How to improve your self-esteem. Paidos.
• Polaino-Lorente, A., & Manglano, J. P. (2003). In search of lost self esteem. Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer.