9 WAYS TO OVERCOME LOW-SELF ESTEEM

Low self-esteem isn’t other people’s wrong opinion about you but your own opinion about yourself. When your opinion about yourself is low, it will affect your composure and you’d never be confident in the society because you already believe you don’t make sense, others are better than you and you cannot meet up to them. Low self-esteem also comes with some kind of insecurity because anyone that laughs at you, you’d feel they are laughing at your ignorance, your looks, your steps or even your appearance entirely while they may be laughing at the admiration of you. When you don’t have confidence in yourself, it will be difficult to also get people to have confidence in you. In a line, we can say that low self-esteem is just a lack of confidence in oneself.

How to know you have low self-esteem

1. Anti-Social: Do you always discover you withdraw from the crowd when necessary and when unnecessary? Are you always scared of attending events and meeting up with people? That is a good sign of low self-esteem.
2. Always against others: When you always feel low about yourself, you may try talking others down just to feel good about yourself. If you discover that each time you engage with people in the discussion you always talk against others and their decisions, you may have to think again about how you see yourself.
3. Can’t say no or disagree: People who feel low about their esteem always agree to virtually everything and they find it hard to say no! They believe by trying to please everybody and never hurt a fly they’d be able to get people to believe in them. This makes people use them just the way they want and still leave them.
4. Falls cheap into relationships: When someone doesn’t have self-confidence, he or she may always fall into wrong relationships. This is because they always feel they need people around to feel good and therefore they hardly make strict choices but rather go for any available option.
5. Blame others: People with low self-esteem always want to think the world is against them. Whenever they are wrong, they want to find a way to sneak out of being responsible for that wrong and they tend to blame others. They do everything possible to try proving a point about themselves.
6. Over exaggeration: When we have low self-esteem we will discover we always want people to sympathize with us when things aren’t fine because we are just scared of taking responsibility of our own lives and therefore we always want the challenges we face to appear bigger than it actually is.
7. Pessimism: We can know we have low self-esteem when we always find ourselves thinking that we aren’t good enough. If you always feel you are unlovable and you are the worst among others, you have low self-esteem.

There lots of factors that make people feel low about themselves. Sometimes these factors include how we started our childhood and how we have never been motivated by our parents, friends and relative. When a child is always talked down on, there are chances that the child will grow up having a poor view of himself. However, whatever contributed to your low self-esteem, you can start improving it from today.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM

1. Stop comparing yourself to others: No matter what people around you have achieved and how happy they are, you shouldn’t compare yourself to them and wonder why you haven’t gotten what they have. No matter how insignificant, there are things you have they don’t have and there is also something about you they envy. Focus on your own life principles and try achieving those personal goals.
2. Love and encourage yourself: Many times we need encouragement from others but other times we need personal motivations and encouragement. Treat yourself with so much love and talk to yourself sometimes about how great you are. You can take yourself alone to the movies or to those places you would have gone with others just to get them like you. When a negative thought comes up, look yourself in the mirror and encourage yourself with smile and boldness. You can practice confidence with yourself.
3. Learn to say “no”: Start at the very little things because you may find it difficult at first. Learn to say no to things you personally don’t want to do knowing that it should be about respecting your own values first. You may begin by saying “no” to casual things! Start by turning down little requests and then you’d be able to build enough confidence to turn down huge requests.
4. Stop fighting for attention: Stop doing everything to get people to like you or stick to you. Understand that they too need your own attention and if they act as though you aren’t worth their attention you have to move on politely and never complain or talk about it. Stop giving so much just to get people to stay by you because they always leave at the end. It is better to be in a relationship when you are confident of yourself than when you think people are doing you a favour when they agree to be in a relationship with you.
5. Don’t be perfect: Oh yea! Don’t be perfect because you can’t. It is good to get things right but you also have to accept that you will not always get it right. When things don’t go right, don’t feel bad about yourself. Absolute perfection is not realistic and people who are obsessed with trying to be perfect are people who just want to prove a point which they will never prove in the end. When you make a mistake, just rise and keep moving without regrets.
6. Stay around people who support you: You don’t need to always stay around people who mock you or never give you attention or just feels less concerned about you. When you stay around people who support you, it helps to build your confidence in yourself because each time you want to give up, they are there to encourage you to keep moving.
7. It is also about others: Don’t just make friends because you want a shoulder to lean on, you also have to be the shoulder others will lean on. Try to support other persons and be a source of hope to them. When you are helping people, it makes you know that you too have a say and can make impacts. Their appreciation will go a long way to boost your confidence. But be careful not to try buying people or getting them stay with your good deeds.
8. Focus on your circle of influence: Don’t try to stop the volcanoes from erupting because you cannot. You simply cannot change everything but there are things you can change and therefore focus on the things you have a direct influence on. Trying to change things you cannot change will leave you depressed.
9. Do it again: It doesn’t happen in a flash! You may need to practice over and over again till it becomes part of you. You can be bold and confident!

Now, let’s get to work!
Blessings!
~ George O.N

DOWNLOAD APP

DONATE TO GEORGE’S DIARY