“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand brake on.” — Maxwell Malt
Do people possessing high self-esteem achieve greater success in life?
You may have heard from many people that they want to increase their self esteem. They believe that once their confidence and self esteem is high, they’ll be able to achieve more and greater successes.
While that’s a valid fact that high self esteem assists you in achieve all you want in your life, the mistake most of the people make is how they think about self-esteem. It’s not a thing to be increased or decreased! Instead, self esteem is the process of esteeming yourself. In other words, the process of boosting your self esteem starts with thinking of how valuable you are and treating yourself the same.
Self Confidence is closely related to self esteem. It is an external behavior that stems from a high self esteem.
Self confidence means believing in yourself that you can be effective in the world, feeling able to handle the challenges of the world to achieve goals.
So, how to build confidence and self esteem?
Here are some ways to do so!
Believe in Yourself: The first step is to believe in yourself. It’s your responsibility to take charge for your own beliefs and self-concept, belief in your talent, abilities, potential and your worth.
Affirm Yourself: We tend to behave according to our own self image. To have this lasting, change how you view yourself! These are positive & uplifting statements we say to ourselves. To get your brain accept this quickly, phrase your affirmations as questions such as “Why am I so good in cooking?” instead of “I am so good in cooking”
Do one thing that scares you everyday: Overcome your fear by facing it! Do something that scares you! You’ll see your self confidence soar! Get out of your comfort zones and face your fear!
Question Your Inner Critic: Some of the harshest comment we get is from ourselves via our inner voice. Question your inner critic and look for evidence to support or deny things. Congratulate and appreciate yourself even for small successes.
Display Success Symbols: Surround yourself with awards and pictures that remind you of your own success. Create a separate space in your house to display your symbols. This will keep you motivated as someone who has consistent successes in life.
Keep your Agreements: This is one of the most overlooked ways to boost and build your self esteem. Every commitment you make is to yourself even if it involves other people. If you don’t follow through, you’ll lose trust and faith in yourself.
Take 100 day rejection challenge: Overcoming fear is not easy as it sounds, but if you want to build up your confidence and self esteem, this is one of the powerful ways to do so.
Help someone: This enables us to forget about ourselves and grateful for what we have. It feels great when you are able to make difference for someone else. Assist, teach or volunteer to mentor to see your confidence grow automatically.
Create Personal Boundaries: Teach other to respect your personal boundaries. Learn to say NO. The more control and say you have over your life; the greater will be your confidence.
Shift to equality mentality: See yourself as equal to everyone. People with low self confidence always see others better and more deserving. Make this mental shift to see an improvement in your confidence and self esteem.