We need to feel confident and secure in ourselves to truly live happily. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve accomplished or the things you’ll experience, if you don’t feel like you’re good enough or even amazing, then it can be hard to truly appreciate all that you have. So many of us have struggled with insecurity and low self-esteem throughout our lives. I remember feeling like I was far from the ideal and didn’t deserve the good things that happened to me, but I eventually came to understand all the extraordinary things I am, and now I see my life from a different perspective. I want to share with you some strategies I used that helped my self-esteem. Remember that these are my personal tips, and the things that work for you may be completely different from what works for me! 

1. Validate Your Emotions 

People with low self-esteem will sometimes minimize or even ignore the negative emotions they may have in a situation or moment, such as anger, sadness, jealousy, guilt, embarrassment, or another negative emotion out of the belief that their emotions are illogical or aren’t worthy of recognition. Bottling up your emotions as if they don’t deserve as much care as someone else’s is another form of self-loathing and, as an extension, can be one of the roots of people pleasing and a lack of boundaries. 

One of the greatest steps you can take to eventually build up your self-esteem is to treat the actual emotions that you feel as something invaluable. The emotions that you feel are never things that make you bad, but only the ways that you react to them. Validating your emotions doesn’t mean that the way you perceive something is inherently correct, but it means that your feelings and perspective are important to consider. Always validate your emotions, even if others don’t regard them, and prioritize how you feel. 

2. Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over Mistakes 

Even to this day, I feel extremely upset when I make a mistake that I feel as if I shouldn’t have had any reason to make, which usually ruins my day and makes me think negatively about myself. However, I’ve personally been working on this trait, and when I mess up in one of my occupations, whether that be school, work, an internship, or even a social relationship, I always remind myself of the good that I bring to those places and how these places wouldn’t be the same without me. 

What most of us often forget when we beat ourselves up over a mistake is that most of us overall bring significantly more good than harm to those around us. When you make a mistake, you shouldn’t ever feel like a waste of space, but should treat your mistakes as a natural human flaw in the significantly more comprehensive and impactful good of everything that you are and everything that you provide. 

One method I use when I want to judge myself harshly for my mistakes is to think about how I would perceive a friend of mine if they made a mistake. I would believe to the bottom of my heart that my friend is amazing, and the mistakes that they make, big or small, are just mistakes that we all make as humans and don’t run any deeper than that. So many of us see those close in our human relationships as these remarkable beings, even when they’re critical about what they did. Why can’t we give ourselves the same mercy? Most of us are the friend or family member of someone who loves us dearly and sees us in this light, so why can’t we treat ourselves as if we were the close friend, family member, or partner? Whether you make a small and clumsy mistake or a larger one from your character, always remember that you, as a person, run significantly deeper than the mistakes you’ve made in your past. 

3. Focus on Your Most Passionate Interests and Even Create Something Amazing Out of It 

In the past, low self-esteem meddled with the way that I perceived my hobbies and interests. I would deem my hobbies and life as inferior as I perceived other people’s interests and lives as more interesting and unique than mine. I don’t know how many people lost interest in their own hobbies because of comparison in the past, but neglecting your own hobbies can show up for many different reasons, such as the fear of judgment, failure, or the loss of motivation that often results from having low self-esteem. However, your interests and hobbies will always have immeasurable worth in shaping your identity and who you are as a person; other people have no place in this. 

Create challenges from things you enjoy doing and accomplish them. Craft and attempt a long-term project based on your passions. Accomplishing a challenge based on your goals not only nourishes your hobbies, but it also gives you the self-reassurance that you’re an amazing human from finishing a difficult task. 

4. Prioritize Your Needs and Aspirations First Before Focusing on Someone Else’s 

So many people with low self-esteem judge our self-worth based on how much we value the needs and interests of others over what we truly want because of societal expectations and our innate wish to feel valued by those around us. This habit is much more harmful than we’d like to admit and degrades how much our own opinions and desires matter in the long run. The only person that will always remain with us forever and undoubtedly understands us the most is our own selves. It’s your needs that are the most important in the room, not those of your sibling, friend, etc. 

Prioritizing yourself doesn’t look like cutting off everybody who has done you ill, but rather setting up boundaries and communicating what you need from other people. Be assertive about what you want and say “no” when others ask you to do something that doesn’t help you out long-term. 

5. Write Down Negative Beliefs About Yourself and Contradict Them 

So many preconceived negative beliefs that you hold for yourself couldn’t be further from the truth about how you genuinely are in real life. Many people with low self-esteem see themselves in a much more detrimental light than what’s pertinent and accurate in their character. Questioning the authenticity of your self-doubts is crucial to steadily improving your self-confidence and how you see yourself. 

Whenever you notice yourself believing a negative thing about yourself, whether that be from the long-term or circumstance, write down the negative belief that you have. It could be that you’re “irresponsible” or that you’re “boring as a person.” Then, write down instances of your life that contradict those notions about yourself. It could be that you take care of your siblings or that you like a lot of very niche TV shows, making yourself more responsible and interesting than you initially thought yourself to be. Your “evidence” for how you’re not all the things you like to think you are could be anything! You could also throw in some general positive things about yourself that people like you for, or anything that would prove that you’re more than ok as a person. 

If you think it’s necessary, you could also seek a trained professional to understand what works for you in improving your confidence and self-esteem. Remember that you’re more than worthy to take up space in this world. You don’t deserve to hide from your lives, and especially not because other people told you to. Improving self-worth takes time, patience, and effort, but it will all be worth it when you see yourself as the wonderful person that so many other people see you as!