Is Asking How to Improve Your Self Esteem Even Important?

Self esteem may not seem that important to some (they’re probably feeling fine about themselves) but it has a huge impact on your daily life. It has an affect on your moods, your reactions and how people treat you. So it is important to ask how to improve your self esteem.

Seek learning on how to get past negative emotions like anger, jealousy and blame and not let them overshadow your thinking. (Check out this tool .)

Everyone experiences small episodes of these harmful emotions but if you let them be your whole focus, you will never be happy and everyone you meet will know it.

In addition, these emotions build up and create harmful physical conditions like heart disease and high blood pressure. Make sure you laugh everyday. Watch a comedy show to lift your mood. You can’t possibly feel hopeless or angry if you are laughing.

Following are more ways how to improve your self esteem:

1. Increase your self esteem by doing nice things for other people. They don’t even need to know you did it. In fact, it might is better if they don’t. It will make you feel very good about yourself though, and that is what is important.
2. Stop criticizing every little mistake you make. Watch the words you say about yourself. No more “stupid” or “dummy”. Everyone makes mistakes.
3. Take all those negative things you are thinking about yourself and turn them into  positive thoughts and your self esteem will be on the rise one little step at a time.
4. Learn to choose how you respond to whatever situation you may find yourself in. You can decide to calmly handle a situation with as little stress and bad feelings as possible or you can freak out yell, scream, cry and make a bad situation worse.
5. And if your emotional residue from the past is so large it doesn’t feel like you have a choice, seek help – self-help, coaching or therapy. Whatever suits you.
6. Another way to make yourself feel better and give your self esteem a little boost is to dress up now and then for no reason. It will make you feel good knowing that you look good. Do not allow yourself any criticisms about how you look, only good thoughts.
7. If you up for a real stretch, ask 3 people what they like about you. Let what they say about you wash over you. Let it in and just say, “Thank you”.

The next time you ask how to improve your self esteem, think back to this list and get to work.

Journal template

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve been journaling on and off for over 30 years. In the beginning it was such a novelty to put my thoughts and feelings on paper, I certainly didn’t need a journal template. So why would someone want a kind of journal template?

Journaling requires that what is rattling around inside your head that will allow you to express your inner feelings, thoughts and emotions will now get written or typed out. That may be so uncomfortable for you even though journaling sounds like such a good idea, that you’d want a way to prime the writing pump, so to speak. I mean that stuff has been rattling around for years, most likely. It wants to come out but:

a)      you will have to look at it and acknowledge that it’s there

b)      you will have to make time to do something you’ve been most likely procrastinating about for some time now

c)      you might have to make changes down the road

With all that going on, of course you might want a journal template. That way someone else has given your initial “kick in the butt” to get that pen or those fingers moving on the keyboard.

Here’s an example of a journal template you would run across in our journaling community:

This is the week where you begin to take notice of the existing state of your mind, your body, your emotional state. This is where you really begin looking at you.

Each day this week it is your mission to pay attention to your mood, your emotional state, your level of happiness and your general disposition.  Your goal is to identify the mood or emotion that is present as you are journaling and capture it with as much description as possible.  Identify the things, events and conversations that trigger your mood.  You may choose to journal several times a day, and you may notice that your mood may change many times throughout the day.

Take the time to write how your mood is expressed or displayed in your actions, your body language, and by the response by others.   Here is an example: I am frustrated today.  I am agitated and restless.  I can’t seem to sit still.  I feel nervous and people bug me.  I am hungry and can’t seem to find the ice cream I like – I have to settle for butterscotch when what I really want is double chocolate fudge.  I feel like a mouse running aimlessly on a mouse sized Ferris wheel. People are so impatient – they cut me off while I am driving and show no respect.  My friend Maria thinks I need a vacation – maybe I do.

This is the baseline activity of all your journaling and is by far the most significant.  Your feelings  are an indicator of your thoughts.  If you are not happy with your mood, you can learn to choose different thoughts to create a better mood. You can also learn that learning how to process your emotions properly will lead to a more consistent sense of joy and happiness.

Really take the time to notice how your mood and feelings – the state of you – affects the way you spend your day, the things you do, your reactions to others, or to situations.

What if you were able to actually have tools to make changes and make them permanent? What would that be like?

Do you think having a journal template like the one above might get you past your initial resistance? Try it. I bet you’ll like it. And check out our YOU University Online Journaling Community.

Using self esteem activities with an issue that all of us have dealt with at one time or another.

Some view life and themselves in a positive light while others don’t. Various self esteem activities that have been developed to assist people suffering from common self esteem issues. These activities are often employed:

• in counseling sessions,
• classrooms,
• under the guidance of parents,
• by life coaches and
• even by the individual looking to improve their self image.

Here are some examples of self esteem activities:

Write down your positive attributes for a few minutes everyday. Focus on inner qualities and things you’ve achieved. Don’t expect overnight results but stick with it.

Send an email to your closest friends and ask them to take a few minutes to write back their favorite qualities about you. It’s quite an experience to read the words that you would ever be likely to say about yourself.

There are a number of self esteem activities that can be found online, many of which are suited for a wide range of people. Some have a more recreational feel which is purposely done so you will be more willing to give it a shot. These activities vary in approach but all can be very effective when applied.

Someone with low self esteem has self-doubt and other emotions bundled deep within them. Realizing these issues and taking the initiative to do something about them is the first step towards a positive outlook and a positive self image.

I’ve done it. So can you!

High Self Esteem = Competence AND Worth

What is high self-esteem? Some say it’s the feeling of personal competence. Some say the feeling of personal worth. Or is it both? I say both.

Ask yourself the following questions to determine the areas where you may need to examine find your level of high self-esteem:

Am I able to earn my living doing what I enjoy? Does what I do to earn a living improve or take away from my self esteem?

Do I know how to give and receive love? Or do I get stepped on and used in my relationships.

Do I have wonderful friends? Or are my friends undermining and backbiting?

Do I take good care of myself physically? Or do I eat poorly, sleep little or too much and do no exercise?

Do I earn an income that is appropriate my age? Or do I go from one low-paying job to another?

Even if you answer positively for four out of the five of your answers, one area of your life that isn’t working the way you’d like it to is enough to throw your life out of balance and negatively effect you high self esteem. Be honest with yourself. Do something for yourself. Think about hiring a life coach and focus in particular on the area you need a boost on.

When you have high self esteem you can accomplish what you want to in your life. When you have high self esteem you can stick to what you want to accomplish – even if it takes years. As one who suffered from low self esteem, I know how long and hard it can be but I also know the rewards of high self esteem.

As an example, in three major areas of my life, I’ll give you a little synopsis:

Relationships – from a really long and bad first marriage with two partners with clear self esteem issues,  I now have a long-term marriage with two of us feeling good about ourselves.

Career – from floundering around doing jobs I was either over or under-qualified for, I now know my talents and how to use them.

Self-care – from years of overweight and health problems I now am actually tired of my clothes because they keep fitting me.

Obviously that is not every area of my life but I think it is quite easy to see that having high self esteem makes all the difference in the world in life. If I can do it, so can you.

I’m a personal development coach and I train others if they want to become a personal development coach themselves. So what happens if you or a client is stuck in a job or some other situation that they can’t see a way of changing right away and it’s hard or boring or annoying or some other not enjoyable feeling?

Well as you will see in the story below you must look into your personal growth and inspiration. Sometimes after some searching we can see that what we think we want and what we really want are two separate items.

Sometimes on no-work mornings my husband asks me to put on my personal development coach’s hat and help him through a situation as I would a client. So this morning over coffee he reiterated his situation: he teaches high school and this semester he has not had much success in the teaching material department. Usually, although his population of kids are inner city bi-lingual and not up to where we’d like to see them in high school, he has successes all through the semester to give him (and his ego) happiness at his achievements as a teacher. This semester it just isn’t happening that way and as a result, he’s not been having a very enjoyable time.

What’s the coach to suggest? (Of course this little article will take you a minute to read and the “coaching session” took an hour, so don’t get the impression that I get asked a question and then just jump to an answer. Then I’d be the “answer woman” not the personal development coach.)  So after our own inspiration talk, it came down to two main things:

1. He has something very special to offer the kids whether they are learning the material or not. And that is he respects them and they are not usually treated that way. That impression that he makes on them will follow them throughout their life whereas Physics probably won’t.
2. He has to be the parent for himself (or whoever is in charge of keeping his ego satisfied). It wants to see outer success. So he needs to keep telling it that it is succeeding by looking at the impact he’s had on other kids and feeding his ego the facts it wants to justify its existence and desire to protect him.

How can personal growth and inspiration be applied to you or anyone you are coaching, when they are or are not enjoying a certain situation?

1. Find the purpose within your life relating to any situation.
2. Stay in charge of your ego and give it what it needs.

How to Improve Self Esteem Is Not as Hard as You Think

You may repeat the same patterns over and over in your life and never realize that you end up in these situations because you may not feel that you are worthy of something better. For example, several of my clients continue to have relationship partners who do not treat them the way ought to be treated. These women are controlled and disrespected.

You may repeat the same patterns over and over in your life and never realize that you end up in these situations because you may not feel that you are worthy of something better. For example, several of my clients continue to have relationship partners who do not treat them the way ought to be treated. These women are controlled and disrespected.

Once you discover that your self esteem may be lacking, it may seem like it is too late to change but that is far from the truth.  Self esteem programs are never too late to start.

Low self esteem leads to negative thinking about yourself and negative thinking about others – to make yourself feel better than them and, therefore, make yourself feel better about yourself – the proverbial vicious cycle . The negative thinking feeds off of your lack of self worth and continues to throw more negatives at you, until you make the decision to let go of the negative and find the positive.

Here is one simple self esteem program. Start watching your thoughts. Simply observe them. When you notice that you have a negative thought about yourself, observe it and replace it with the truth about yourself. For example, you may think, “There I go again! I never get it right!”

1. Now you notice that you had that thought.
2. Try not to then follow that with a judgment about your negative thoughts,
3. Now replace it by saying to yourself: “Sometimes I don’t get it right and sometimes I do.”

Now you try it.

Relationship Advice

Are you one of those people who think that they have to show the people you date that you have the same interests they do? You probably read a magazine article that suggested you do just this type of relationship advice. DON’T DO THAT. Be yourself. Relationships come in all types but the strongest relationships have proven time and time again certain things. Following are two of them:

1. One of these things is that you need to do is to stay true to yourself and who you are. Dating is difficult but it is even more difficult if you waste your time trying to be someone that you aren’t. You see it happen all the time. People begin dating and like each other but try to convince each other that they have many things in common whether they really do or not. For example, a women might claim she is a huge football fan when in reality she knows nothing about the game and could care less. For this relationship to go anywhere, sooner or later she is going to be found out and have to come clean and admit she isn’t a football fan. You may not realize it but this is lying. Is this any way to start a relationship that has any hope to survive? And how can you ever be sure you are loved for who you are if you don’t show who you are?
2. Another important piece of the relationship of relationship advice is to keep your humor. You need to be able to laugh together and about yourselves. This keeps your relationship fun and playful and there is less chance that you will be hurt over silly little things that don’t really matter. Supposedly men especially don’t like women that take life too seriously and make everything a matter of life and death. I agree the less drama in the relationship the better but I don’t want my partner to take every little thing too seriously either. I hate it when he takes things personally that I never meant that way,

The better you are able to be yourself with each other and laugh with each other, the more you prove that you can work together even when things aren’t so great. A positive relationship can only really happen when both partners are happy with themselves first and then with each other and laugh a lot.