Having low self-esteem is the biggest obstacle your life will encounter. Everything else can be successfully dealt with if you have patience. Putting yourself down and negative self-talk are permanent and will affect your potential even when good times are rolling. The good news is that there are ways to improve it. Here are some.
1. Self Love
If you suffer from low self-esteem try to highlight your strengths, love yourself and practice self-care rather than self abuse. Watch your confidence levels go up once you respect who you are and force others to do so.
2. Compete With Yourself, Not Others
In life, you will find people with stronger and weaker skills than you. People with better or worse physiques, sense of humor, intelligence. Competing with others and measuring yourself against these will only bring stress and steal from the real goal: self improvement. Who cares what your neighbor is or does? Improve your faults and highlight your strengths.
3. Forgive Yourself
You will make mistakes in life. Nobody is perfect. You will suffer and regret it when you do, but you will also learn. Try to see your mistakes as ways to improve your character, not self punishment.
4. Purify Your Environment
Eliminate judgmental people from your life. They are negative, they bring you down and make you feel guilty for who you are. You know who they are, you just can’t find the heart to let them go. Do so, without drama. Quietly walk away from them. Your life will improve dramatically.
5. Exercise
When you exercise, your body produces hormones called endorphins. They block pain sensors and boost your good mood. This is why we all feel a bit euphoric when we finish working out. The better your mood, the better you will feel about yourself.
6. Be Emphatic And Kind
Empathy is a social art that promotes feeling what others feel. If they are sad, you will feel for them and try to help them. If they are happy, that feeling will be contagious. Being kind to people will make then happier and give your a sense of purpose.
