Self-esteem is incredibly important and is a much talked about concept. If you have high self-esteem, you are more likely to believe in your chances of accomplishing your goals. You feel worthy of the rewards that achieving your goals will bring e.g. a higher salary. This greater confidence and feelings of worthiness lead you to work harder in pursuit of your goals. A bit like a self fulfilling prophecy, believing you can achieve your goals, and working harder to achieve them, greatly increases your chances of success. If you have low self-esteem, the opposite is true. You do not believe in your ability to achieve success and you feel unworthy of the rewards which that success would bring. Therefore you do not work as hard to achieve your goals and you subsequently fail to achieve them.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”Do’s and Don’ts of Self-Esteem“] I have created a FREE Checklist to help you determine what you should and should not be doing to maintain high self-esteem.
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Essentials for high self-esteem
It is important that you focus on maintaining high self-esteem. You need to identify the people/things which bring you down and remove them from your life. Also, you need to find the people/things which raise your self-esteem and increase their presence in your life. The following are some simple tips for helping you to maintain high self-esteem.
1. Be appreciative
Take time each day to practise appreciation for all of the good things in your life. Those with low self-esteem often fail to recognise all of the good things in their life, including their achievements. When appreciating, take the time not only to recognise the good but also to understand how you benefit from it e.g. ‘I am grateful for my friend Jamie and all of the skills which he has taught me. These skills have helped me to develop my website and grow my business.’
2. Challenge your inner critic
Each of us has an inner critic which identifies and highlights the negative aspects of the things that we do. If you fail to challenge your inner critic, it becomes very easy for you to accept and believe all of the negativity. However, when you take the time to challenge your inner critic, you soon realise that much of the negativity is based on assumptions which are unproven and untrue.
3. Know who you are and what you want
A great deal of stress and disappointment is caused by competing and comparing yourself with others. In reality, it is impossible to truly compete and compare yourself with someone else as you are two different people, leading different lives and pursuing different objectives. You can easily fail to realise this if you do not take the time to learn more about yourself e.g.
- Your purpose
- Your vision for the life you wish to create
- Your goals
When you take the time to understand all of these aspects of yourself, you realise that you are a unique individual and there can be no joy from competing with others. Instead of comparing yourself with others, you now begin to measure your progress against your own objectives. It is when you see the progress you make against these objectives that you start to achieve high self-esteem.
4. Do the best you can at that moment in time
Perfection is both unobtainable and unnecessary. There will always be new methods and skills for you to learn in order to improve your performance. Rather than pursue perfection, choose to do the best you can at that given moment. When you know that you did your best, you realise that nobody, including yourself, could have asked anymore of you.
Also, when you look back at past efforts, remember that you did not have the same knowledge, skills or tools as you do now. Therefore you cannot make a fair judgement on past performances. All you can do is determine whether you gave your best effort.
5. Enjoy positive relationships; eliminate negative relationships
A few moments ago, I read the following online:
‘Don’t let negative people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.’
Having the wrong type of people in your life can be toxic. They fill you with negativity and rob you of your emotional energy. It is imperative that you identify these people and remove them from your life. You do not have to have arguments, you simply need to identify the people who make you feel more positive and help you to raise your self-esteem. Then, choose to spend more time with them.
People are prepared to evaluate most areas of their life but for some reason they resist evaluating their friendships. If this is you, it is likely that you have some ‘fake friends’ whom you need to let go.
[thrive_text_block color=”blue” headline=”Do’s and Don’ts of Self-Esteem“] I have created a FREE Checklist to help you determine what you should and should not be doing to maintain high self-esteem.
Get Your Copy Here[/thrive_text_block]
If you want to successfully pursue your goals and develop the required motivation, it is imperative that you maintain high self-esteem. High self-esteem will help you enjoy a more successful and enjoyable life. You believe in your own abilities and become more resilient in the face of adversity. When tough times occur, self-esteem is one of the critical factors in determining your ability to overcome them. There are many ways in which you can work on your self-esteem but the 5, listed above, can be applied by anyone to make a significant impact on their self-esteem levels.
Image credit: Lynn Davis