APART from February being the month of love, it is also celebrated as Boost Your Self-Esteem Month. Self-esteem is the concept you have of yourself – the confidence you have in your worth and abilities. This belief you have of yourself determines the quality of the relationship you have with yourself and other people – it also determines how you show up in life. When you have a positive belief in yourself, then you have what is called high self-esteem, which shows up as confidence.
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Your self-concept, which determines your self-esteem, is most likely to be built in developmental/childhood stages where our caregivers were responsible for how we felt about ourselves. It is also built through life experiences. In my adult life, I have taken the initiative to boost my self-esteem through reading. I will be sharing steps to boost your self-esteem that I have learned and practised from two of my book readings: Be a Triangle by Lilly Singh, and What Happened to You? by Bruce D Perry and Oprah Winfrey.
Have a relationship with yourself
We are always pursuing relationships and miss the most important one, which is the one with ourselves. Having a relationship with yourself will give you an opportunity to learn about yourself – your strengths and weaknesses. When you are aware of yourself, you accept yourself for who you are, and when you reach that point, you hardly care what people think of you, and their validation is the least of your worries. Having a relationship with yourself entails doing things alone, just for yourself. In one of my readings, the author suggests that you should take care of yourself the way you would take care of someone else. It also involves staying in check with your emotions, good and bad, without judging yourself, and as you are checking in with your emotions, you are likely to learn about your triggers and how you can regulate and self-soothe.
Stop living in your head
As a person who has been growing in self-esteem, before, I was the worst person to myself. I thought I was not good enough, I thought everyone was better than me, and I worked to make sure that everyone liked me and found no faults in me. I viewed the world through that lens, and most encounters proved that. You need to see things for what they are and not what you believe them to be.
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Heal your emotional traumas
When you experience traumatic events, your body has ways of protecting you from that pain and from feeling it in the future. You also embody beliefs that were carved into you by those experiences and go on to live your life in that frequency. Those ways can be unhealthy and toxic when the pain is not addressed accordingly. Healing emotional trauma helps you find your authentic self that existed before the trauma.
Put yourself up for a challenge
The brain collects memories of our life experiences and creates a pattern. Constantly trying new things will activate your brain to accept challenges with less fear. That builds confidence for the future and for yourself. Mistakes we make when trying new things also help us make better decisions in the future.
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Do things that make you happy
You are most likely to thrive and become a better person when you are at your happiest. Investing in your happiness is one of the biggest ways to boost your self-esteem. Making yourself happy comes with the understanding that it is an inside job and has less to do with external factors.
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