How to Improve Self-Esteem: 15 Tips That Will Really Help

Learning how to improve self-esteem is one of the best ways to change your entire life.

Because lacking confidence and not liking how you see or feel about yourself can affect so much. It can be harmful to your mental health, relationships, and even the opportunities that become available.

And when so much in life demands high expectations, healing your confidence and self-esteem becomes essential.

It helps you get rid of the insecurities you’ve had for years, heal from the people who have hurt you, feel comfortable in your own skin, and gives you the determination to go after the life you actually want.

You’ll be able to overcome challenges and start feeling self-assured in your own abilities. So let’s help you understanding what self-esteem is, the causes, and get you on the path to improving it.

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What is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is how you see and feel about yourself and what you’re capable of. It’s based on the beliefs you have about who you are and what you’re worth.

So when you have good self-esteem, you’re confident in your ability to navigate the different positive and negative changes or situations in life. But if you have low self-esteem, you struggle to believe in your self-worth or ability to take on challenges and changes.

What Can Cause Low Self-Esteem?

Low self-esteem starts from a young age with the people you first interact with.

The adults in your life such as your parents, family members, or teachers can be the main cause of your negative self-perception. And other people and outlets can feed into this such as bad friends, bullies, or the media.

It can also come from not living up to other people’s expectations, not being taught proper social queues in childhood, or even stressful life events.

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15 Ways to Give Your Self-Esteem a Boost

1. Use Bridge Statements Instead of Affirmations

While affirmations work for many people, sometimes it might be too hard to outright say a statement like, “I am powerful and in control of my emotions.”

A lot of the time, you’ve probably said horribly negative things about yourself for years, and a statement like that feels unbelievable.

So Kati Morton, a mental health professional, talks about bridge statements.

You’re saying statements that help bridge the gap between self-doubt and hate to self-love and acceptance.

Example: Instead of saying, “I’m amazing and I deserve every good thing,” try, “I’m not a completely horrible person.” I know, doesn’t sound SUPER positive, but it’s what you might need to start the process.

2. Create a List of Reasons Why You Like Yourself

There are two ways you can do create this list:

1. Take 5-10 minutes and write out just 10 things you like about yourself. Then come back to these things each day and add to it. Or even ask people in your life what they like about you. It can be easy to oversee the good!
2. At the end of each day, find at least 3 things you did well. What did you do that made you appreciate yourself? Then try reviewing this in the morning. This will help you to stop ignoring and overlooking your good qualities and build self-worth. And as your self-esteem grows, it might inspire you to act out those positive qualities more often.

3. Figure Out Who You Want to Be

People are always saying, “be yourself!”

And while that’s important, you might also want to try figuring out the kind of person you want to be.

This can be very helpful in changing your self-esteem and how you perceive yourself.

So for example, around 10 years ago I really struggled with social anxiety.

But then I asked myself, “What would the Facebook me do?”

The Facebook me was so much more outgoing, confident, funny, and comfortable in her own skin. So I decided to intentionally take on her mindset and it worked!

So Here’s What You Do:

1. Take just 5 minutes (or less) to write down a thoughtful small list of the kind of person you want to become.
2. Take note of the common traits you see.
3. Start imagining yourself being this person. Visualize it.
4. Find small ways to live it out. Is your friend having a gathering? Attend and start living out that identity. Or do you feel like a mess-up because of your past mistakes? Take proactive actions today to love your future self by healing and improving your life.

4. Stop Thinking People See You a Certain Way

When you first meet people, it can be easy to think that they see you the way that you see yourself.

But the truth is, this person doesn’t even know anything about you.

They don’t know all of your past mistakes, failures, or insecurities. This person is neutral towards you and is probably very open to getting to know you.

So grow your self-esteem by being more comfortable with getting to know people without the assumption that they won’t like you.

5. Practice Self-Care

Taking care of you makes taking care of things like self-esteem a lot easier, and it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Case and point, last year I suffered from extreme anxiety and overthinking. It felt like an endless battle trying to take control of my thoughts and emotions.

You know what was causing a lot of my problems? I was on a prolonged calorie deficit, barely getting out of the house, and had a horrible sleep schedule.

So when I started changing things, I suddenly felt so much more at peace and I stopped overthinking.

Doing proper self-care isn’t a cure-all, but it can make it so much easier to work on problems like self image.

So start doing proper hydration, eating enough nutrient-rich meals, staying away from extreme calorie deficites, getting outside, gratitude journaling, hanging out with good friends, or just doing things that make you happy!

6. Change Up Your Social Media

If you’re finding yourself feeling uncomfortable and frustrated with yourself because of what you’re seeing on social media, then it might be time to change things up.

Start carefully curating your social media feeds with people who are uplifting, encouraging, and who are going to help your self-esteem.

Here Are a Few Good Pages for You to Check Out:

• ​the.holistic.psychologist​
• ​morganharpernichols​
• ​emotions-therapy

7. Don’t Think About the People Who Have Hurt You

While you’re thinking about them, they’re not even thinking about you. While you’re believing the bad statements they’ve made about you, they forgot what they even said.

It’s so important to remember this every time you give the people from your past power over your self-perception.

So Here’s What You Can Do:

1. Take some time to journal out the negative beliefs you have about yourself.
2. Next, ask yourself how many of these beliefs stemmed from something mean that was said to you.

Now you can start understanding how much of how you see yourself isn’t coming from you. It’s coming from the people who were bad to you.

These people don’t deserve to have control over how you see yourself, so start replacing those beliefs with positive ones that are going to help you heal and grow.

8. Get Comfortable With Compliments

Guy Winch, a licensed psychologist, gave a quick tip for this one.

If you’re someone who gets uncomfortable with compliments, then come prepared with a simple set response.

Basically you’re training yourself to use them automatically whenever you get positive feedback. And eventually, you might just start seeing your inclination to reject kindness and compliments leave, which can be a sign of a healing self-esteem.

9. Stop Comparing Your Beginning to Someone’s Middle

“Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle, or your middle to someone else’s end. Don’t compare the start of your second quarter of life to someone else’s third quarter.”

Jon Acuff

It’s so easy to do! You see someone who’s living the life you want and then you feel like a failure.

But the truth is that you’re not a failure, you just don’t know how many years it took them to actually work up the courage to go after that goal and see results. So don’t judge yourself for being at the starting line.

10. Be Kind With What You Say to Yourself

I’ve struggled with self-hate since I was a kid. I always felt like I was a mess up.

But something that suddenly helped me was this:

I started to visualize me saying these unkind words to my child self and was quickly racked with guilt. The idea of saying those things I say to my current self to an innocent child helped to change my perspective.

If she didn’t deserve that hate and mistreatment, then neither do I right now.

And the same goes for you; start showing yourself some self-compassion and forgiveness.

11. Celebrate Your Successes

I don’t care how small your wins are, you need to celebrate them!

If you’re not celebrating your successes, then that’s a great way to get discouraged when you don’t see the progress you want.

12. Let Go of the Toxic People

You know that friend who can be nice but says low-key uncalled-for cutting remarks?

Yeah, you don’t have time for them, so get rid of them immediately.

You are worth so much more than to keep people who diminish the enjoyment you get out of life and ruin your self-esteem.

13. Surround Yourself With Supportive People

Alright, now once you get rid of those toxic “friends,” it’s time to find people who are going to encourage you and be a positive influence.

So for instance, set up a time to hangout with that super kind person at the gym, set up a coffee date with that really nice coworker, or if you have a sibling, parent, or cousin that’s always lifting you up, then spend more time with them.

It’s essential that you’re creating a support system that’s gonna help you heal your self-confidence and self-belief.

14. Know That It’s Ok to Say No

It is ok to say no and when you do this, you help your self-esteem by showing yourself that your needs and desires matter.

You’re not relying on others for acceptance and worried that you’ll be rejected.

Also, it helps you to not tie your self-worth into helping others and whether you’re doing enough. It’s ok to help others, but it’s not ok to attach your self-esteem and self-worth to helpful actions that overwhelm you.

15. Set Small Goals

If doing big actions to improve your self-esteem feels too intimidating, then you can start with small goals that’ll help you to progress.

And remember, small is important. If you set goals that are too big for you to accomplish now, your self-esteem is gonna take a hit.

So for example, you might set a weekly goal to find one simple, positive mindset to take on and apply it to your thinking and actions.

Or you might try making peace with a past failure and moving forward and forgiving yourself.

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Learning how to improve your self-image and building lasting self-confidence is a process that will require your dedication.

But it’s so worthwhile to start implementing these tips each day so you can start changing how you see and feel about yourself, and even realizing your full potential.

So while it is a journey, it’s gonna so be worth it to start loving yourself and having a better life. You’ve got this! 💪