Building your self-esteem

If you are someone who wants to build your self esteem then you are not alone.

Most of us can identify times in our lives when we have felt low self-esteem and confidence.

Whilst confidence is contextual, I think that we can say that when life is going well we feel confident even though there will of course be contexts where we are not. When life hits us hard our overall feeling of confidence often drops too.

I think that self-esteem is somewhat different. This is how we feel about ourselves often regardless of how our life is going. This might stem from childhood experiences and memories when we were told we were not good enough or were hopeless at some things. In youth we are highly emotionally imprintable so we believe what we hear and carry this with us often into adulthood.

So how do you go about building your self-esteem? Here are my ten short top tips for you.

1. Have 'good enough' thoughts about yourself, avoiding the drive to be perfect that's impossible.
2. Help and support others, always aiming to do the right thing.
3. Do daily self-esteem habits, namely eat healthily (low sugar!), exercise and sleep well.
4. Remind yourself why? For health and happiness.
5. Ask people you care about what you are good at and note these down in a journal.
6. Write 3 things in your journal each day that you did well
7. Think about 'failures' as learning
8. Set small goals to achieve each week or month
9. Spend most of your time with supportive people and ask for what you need from them.
10. Remember that comparing yourself with others is the death of joy.

Often self-esteem issues rooted in our past can be hard to shift. Research shows that hypnotherapy can be effective in resolving subconscious dysfunctions such as low self esteem that are holding us back. If you would like help in this area please get in touch by e mailing me: pam@westofenglandcoachingandcounselling.co.uk