5 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem is crucial as it influences your decisions, your lifestyle, and aids in you reaching your fullest potential. We all have emotional wounds that at some point have made us feel low, insignificant, and not worthy of love. However, nurturing your self-esteem will make you more resilient and can help you get over rejection and emotional wounds.
The tricky part is, self-esteem is unstable and fluctuates. You might have a high self-esteem in the morning and the lowest by the end of the day. Your self-esteem might vary from how you feel overall as a person to how you feel as a father, mother, sister, or brother.
Here are five ways to nurture your self-esteem.
1. Identify your source of strength
We all need a source from where we can draw our strength when we feel insignificant or have low self-worth. Identify the source. If your strength lies in quietness, take time to be by yourself and meditate on all the little things in life you are grateful for. If your parents or your family is the source of your strength, spend time with your parents. When your strength fails and you feel you can’t take it anymore, draw your strength from the free-flowing grace of God (2 Timothy 2:1).
2. Acknowledge your present and focus on your future
Words are powerful. Life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). Start declaring positive statements. Making positive confessions may boost self-esteem for a few people. But it may make you feel worse if it has a stark discrepancy from the reality—for example, making confessions like “I am punctual” when one is a tidsoptimist will only cause frustration. Instead, you can change the statement to “I am going to be punctual”. It is important that we acknowledge the current situation or challenge and work towards it.
3. Don’t be hard on yourself
To err is human. We all have erred at some point in our lives and have regrets and guilt. One does not have to steal or murder to feel guilty. We all experience guilt—guilt of not being a perfect mother, a perfect father, a perfect son or daughter, a perfect husband or wife—guilt of not giving our best, etc. Don’t be hard on yourself or condemn yourself for everything that you are not, for we are a “work in progress”. Instead work towards and direct your energy on everything you are and want to be. Take one day at a time.
4. Know you are unique
What qualifies you as unique? The answer is “YOU”. There is only one you. Have you ever looked at someone and wondered why you don’t have fair complexion, or why you don’t have curly hair, or why you are not like someone you admire, the way they talk, walk, or smile? Remember that you are unique right from your DNA structure to your experiences, perception, and your attitude. Be “YOU” no matter what. Embrace your uniqueness.
5. Know your identity
Being the real you in the age of social media, I believe, is the greatest challenge one faces. One wants to be everything that they see on their Facebook post or Instagram feed. But your identity is not your social status, your profession, your religion, your appearance, or your Instagram feed. Your identity is a complex combination of your strength, perspective, and beliefs. In the book The gift of being yourself, David Benner, psychologist and author, defines identity as “who we experience ourselves to be—the I each of us carries within.”
The bottom line is to nurture a healthy self-esteem and in moderation. Although developing a healthy self-esteem is a process and involves building healthier emotional habits, it will determine how you are going to live your life.
Please do share the habits you follow to nurture your self-esteem.