How to Boost Your Self Esteem

How to Boost Self Esteem

Improving your self-worth and value is important to living a joyful life. If you can’t appreciate your own contribution to life, your character or the morals you hold, it can be difficult to make sound decisions because you don’t value yourself or trust yourself. If you want to have more self-esteem, you can boost it in the following ways.

  1. Know Your Own Thoughts: Most people have a voice inside their head telling them that they are not good enough and have no worth. It is essential to become aware of these thoughts to discover how to alter them to sustain and not limit your personal development.
  2. Know What You’re Good At: Every individual on earth has at least one talent that is either known or hidden. What have you tried if you do not think you’re proficient at anything? If you’ve not tried enough things, you may have merely not found what you’re skilled at yet. When you have actually learned what you are proficient at, you need to embrace it. After all, if you don’t, you are merely stating that you are not good at anything. It is terrible to feel skilled at nothing as the rational conclusion will be that you are good for nothing.
  3. Understand what’s at the core of Self Estee:. Be kind, be loving, and be a person of character. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing what you’re good at or like. However, doing can also be a distraction, a type of avoidance. 
  4. Surround Yourself with Positive People: The world is full of negativity. Still, you can restrict your exposure to it by limiting your direct exposure to unfavourable individuals and energy. Maximize your exposure to positivity.
  5. Volunteer in Your Community: Your community contribution is essential to unlocking your self-esteem “account”. The key is to escape your negativity by finding ways to assist your community. You help those in need when you get away from self-seeking behaviours that benefit you more than others. Moreover, you provide something of value to your community as a whole.
  6. Practice Self-Care: Care involves looking after yourself to make sure that you have all the essential things you require to be happy. Self-care is about the food you consume, the people you surround yourself with, and whatever you focus on that affects your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
  7. Return To Nature: Even if you think that you do not like the outdoors, the fact is, as a human being, you require nature. You require the sunlight to keep your circadian rhythms in check and the fresh air to oxygenate your blood. You need great natural food to supply all the healthy nutrition you require.

Be careful not to build your Self Esteem solely around what you can do to feel good about yourself. In our effort to improve our Self Esteem, we may end up constantly doing because we are terrified that once we stop doing, our lives hold no meaning or value. 

Frequently doing doesn’t necessarily imply we are living or flourishing. If we are prone to fill our days with endless tasks or amusements, let’s not forget a vital part of boosting your Self Esteem is just to “be”.

Are Emotions the Source of Our Power and Strength?

We are “hard-wired for connection”. As we practice connection, language is important. It’s a bridge between ourselves and other people – it allows us to express how we’re feeling and, crucially, seek help, support and understanding when we need it.

How we are feeling is tied up with our emotions, but most of us are just like the person with a painful shoulder when it comes to emotions. We just don’t have the words to describe what’s happening in us to others or even understand it for ourselves.

Social scientist and author Brene Brown has been studying the Science of Compassion. She has discovered the more she learns, the more she understands that our emotions are the source of our power and our strength. And the more compassion we feel for ourselves, the greater our capacity to feel compassion for others too.

In her latest book “Atlas of the Heart”, Brene describes how she and a team of researchers asked 7000 people to identify all the emotions they experienced and guess what? The average number of emotions people listed were, wait for it- 3: sad, angry, and happy that’s it: mad, sad, glad. All of the emotions in the world, all the nuances of human experience, most people could only describe them in three categories., which seems pretty scary, right?

I would say I’m virtually clueless when it comes to understanding and expressing my emotions. I can identify a few of them, but I definitely have a lot to learn. For example, here are a few emotions I’ve experienced recently in a typical week: I feel happy when I’m singing with my choir members. I feel sad when hearing of the loss of life on the news from the war in Ukraine; I feel fear when I’m walking in an unfamiliar neighbourhood late at night; I feel mad when my mobile phone freezes for no apparent reason and won’t work.

Although I am aware of the above emotions, there is a problem since my level of awareness and descriptive language is just like the painful shoulder example above: it’s as if I could only tell the doctor that I have a pain somewhere in the upper half of my body. And I could only describe that pain as bad. Instead of saying that it’s throbbing, or aching or shooting pain.

When experiencing moods or challenging life circumstances, unless we find the right words to acknowledge or express our emotional state, we tend to withdraw and avoid dealing with the emotional pain. However, this avoidance can lead to isolation and feelings of powerlessness as we cannot process and understand the emotions we are experiencing. It’s even more difficult to build that bridge of connection to the people who really care and want to support us through what we are going through.

The ability to have the awareness of, and the precise language to describe your emotions is what researchers call “emotional granularity.” This granularity can enrich your life in many ways. Having the right words allows you to identify your feelings and figure out where they come from. So, next time you’re feeling down about something, try to find the courage to seek first to understand what’s happening in your emotions and as you grapple your feelings, remember that you’re not alone.

Read More: Goal Setting: The Importance Of Goal Setting

How to Express Your Feelings Appropriately

To enjoy a deep and meaningful life it is essential to understand your feelings that drive your emotions. Take some time to reflect on how you feel about moods and challenging circumstances as you consider how to express what you are feeling to someone else. This awareness will help you to express yourself more appropriately and appropriately. Here are some points to reflect on to improve your expression of feelings:

  1. Accept your feelings – All feelings are normal and natural. Emotions such as love, anger, sadness, and happiness are all normal and natural. It doesn’t matter if it’s a feeling of beauty or ugliness.
  2. Take Note of Your Physiological Responses – When we feel afraid, our body reacts by producing adrenaline, a hormone that makes us feel aroused and ready to respond to a threat. The hormone also helps our body produce glucose and other substances to help us fight or fight a dangerous situation. Some people get shaky, their heart feels like it’s beating in their ears, or they might even break a sweat. Sometimes we might “shut down” or feeze when we feel overwhelmed by a situation. How does your body react to various feelings you’ve experienced? 
  3. Learn the Words You Need to Express Your Feelings – If you want to communicate your feelings, you need to learn the vocabulary to help you. When you develop the language to express your feelings, it will make it easier to communicate your feelings to others.
  4. Discover Why You Feel That Way – The first thing to do is to identify the feeling you are having. Then, you need to find out why you feel this way. Feelings are not wrong, but sometimes they are based on false information. Keep asking yourself “why” to determine if the feeling you’re experiencing is real or not. 
  5. Use I Statements When Expressing Feelings -The best way to express your feelings is by using “I” statements to avoid putting others on guard when you express yourself. For example, you want to avoid saying things like, “You are so annoying.” This puts the other person on the defensive. Rather, say, “I don’t like when you do that, as it makes me feel annoyed.”
  6. Learn to Communicate Clearly – If you want to express yourself well, you need to be clear about what you are trying to say. it helps to have a vocabulary as well as an understanding of how to communicate. Communication is a two-way street, but it’s up to the person delivering the message to ensure that they convey properly what they really mean to the other person. 
  7. Remember to Breathe Properly – When you are ready to express to anyone what your feelings are about any topic, if you’re nervous, take some time to breathe. A method to calm yourself down is called “Triangle Breathing,” and it can make a big difference in how you get through talking about your feelings. 
  8. Be with Positive Friends and Family That You Trust – Keep your relationships positive. It will make it easier to be who you are, and to feel the way you do.
  9. Keep a Journal to Record Your Feelings  – A journal is a good way of recording your feelings as they happen.
  10. Visualize – Imagine yourself talking to a friend about a situation. Before you talk to someone about your feelings, it helps to practice doing it before you actually do it. Visualizing different responses can help too. 
  11. Get Professional Help When Needed – It can be hard to express yourself when you are feeling down. You may need a counselor or life coach to help you express your feelings in a helpful way.

The truth is that all of our feelings are normal and healthy. We do not have control over how we feel, and we only have control over how we react to how we feel. Learning how to express our feelings appropriately will also help us notice other people’s feelings more.