You are as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fears; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. Samuel Ullman
Welcome to step 4 of my series “The beginners guide to happiness.” In my last post I listed 30 things I have control over in daily life. In step 2 I challenged everyone to start shifting their thinking to a growth mindset. Step 1 was a simple task of writing down all the things that make you happy on an A4 piece of paper (Click here to see mine.)
This post is about boosting your self-esteem so I first thought I would start with explaining what self-esteem means. Self-esteem is your overall opinion of yourself. When you have a healthy self-esteem, it means you have a balanced, accurate view of yourself which positively affects every part of your life. When you have low self esteem you are literally your own worst critic, you might use negative words to describe yourself, downplay or ignore your positive qualities, destructive self-talk which negatively affects every part of your life.
I like to think of low self-esteem as a habit that can be broken but it’s up to YOU to break the cycle and I’m here to share some tips on how you can do exactly that. My main tips are based around limiting beliefs. They hold a ridiculous amount of power because they are about who you believe yourself to be; your identity.
Identify limiting beliefs – A limiting belief is something you believe to be true about yourself, about others, or about the world that limits you in some way. You will notice these beliefs appear at times in your life where you are out of your comfort zone, when a new opportunity arises, when you’re feeling challenged or even when someone compliments you. As you can imagine this can be detrimental to your self-esteem.
Challenge your limiting belief – Now that you have identified your limiting belief you need to challenge it. Here are some questions that may help. What evidence is there that proves your limiting belief to be true? What caused you to believe this in the first place? Where did you learn this? Is it even valid? Does this belief hold true in every situation? For everyone? Anywhere? Always? What are the exceptions to this belief?
Quiet your inner critic – By now you should have realised that a lot of what you believe to be true isn’t so shutting down your inner critic is essential to boosting your self-esteem. Replace any negative self-talk with positive self-talk, treat yourself as you would your best friend. Be supportive, kind and understanding. Don’t be hard on yourself when you make a mistake. Just like Allan Lokos said, “Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts.”
Celebrate yourself – Write down all your positive qualities, your achievements, your strengths, compliments you have received. Keep this close and don’t worry if there are gaps as you can continue adding to it as time goes on.
Adopt an unfuckwithable attitude – What is an unfuckwithable attitude you ask? This is when you’re truly at peace and in touch with yourself, and nothing anyone says or does bother you, and no negativity or drama can touch you.
Thanks for reading and make sure you share your smile with the world today ☮