Increasing self-esteem: Tips for increasing self-esteem

Sometimes you may feel that you are worthless. This makes it difficult to have self-esteem. Instead, it is important to increase your self-esteem so you don't fall into a slump and feel even more worthless. Increasing self-esteem can be done in several ways and has many benefits.

To ensure that you get the most out of yourself and find the most happiness in your life, in this blog I will discuss ways to increase your self-esteem.

Sense of self-worth

The word self-esteem already says something about its meaning. Self-esteem is the sense of how valuable you are to those around you. Because you attribute this feeling to yourself, it is also known as self-esteem.

Self-esteem is about valuing who you are and what you stand for. This can be about several things, such as appreciation for your appearance, appreciation for your character traits and appreciation for the work you do.

So the level of self-esteem need not always be the same. Perhaps you do all sorts of things super well at work and therefore have high self-esteem at work. However, if that means you have less time for your family and friends, that self-esteem can drop again when it comes to the social aspects of life.

Then you have the character traits, such as being very proud and therefore quick when someone jokes with you.

This combination of factors can be very important to how you view yourself. In addition, the level of self-confidence and self-assurance is also important to the appreciation you have for yourself(1).

Also check out this video on improving your self-esteem:

Self-Acceptance

For good self-esteem, it is important to accept yourself as you are. There is also evidence that this is quite possible.

For example, there are people who are stigmatized, such as homosexuals or transgender people, who have high self-esteem and confidence despite this.

This already shows that accepting yourself is important for raising your self-esteem.

Research also reveals another paradox. Namely, there is an expectation that people become more insecure with increasing age, but nothing could be further from the truth. People who age can actually have higher levels of self-confidence and self-esteem(2).

This may also be because as you get older, you know more and more about life and are better able to accept yourself.

There are multiple ways to accept yourself as you are.

Accepting Your Body

Every day we look in the mirror and see something we like and don't like. Unfortunately, we don't always see our bodies as a whole, but zoom in on "parts" we like and don't like.

If you don't accept your body as it is, because you feel, for example, that you are too fat or too thin, this is often due to things that happened in the past. Perhaps your mother or father competed with you because they had trouble growing old. Perhaps you compared yourself too much to models to accept your "normal" body.

By identifying where not accepting your body started, it is already much easier to accept your body just the way it is.

If you find this difficult, a hypnotherapist can help you with this through regression therapy.

In addition, your body is not just something other people can see. It is the body you carry with you all your life that allows you to do all kinds of things, such as walking, typing, talking and making sure you can dance when you feel like it.

Yoga allows you to focus more on the function that your body has and, as a result, allows you to have a greater appreciation for your body and yourself.

Accepting Your Character

First of all, let me just emphasize here that no one is perfect. I too have my flaws; for example, I can totally wallow in victimhood before I pick myself up to solve my problems.

Everyone has little things they just can't seem to change. Those little things can be just that little trait that makes you unique.

To better accept your character, there is actually 1 question that is very important to ask yourself:

Do other people suffer from this trait?

For example, if you get angry easily over nothing, this can be annoying to others. But if that malice manifests itself precisely because you are quick to gasp at someone who plays a joke on you then it may also be a trait that other people around you like. "Because you always bite, hahahaha" then you are actually suffering from it yourself.

Self-compassion for self-esteem

We live in a tough world. Bullying behavior is a major social problem. Bullying has long since ceased to be something that reveals itself only at school, but it is increasingly happening at work as well.

This can be very bad for your sense of self-esteem. Therefore, sometimes it is necessary to increase your self-esteem. Even if it's just to speak up after an evaluation meeting with your manager.

Of course there are things to improve, but what you can't do yet you can learn. So you are certainly not worthless.

In doing so, it's also important not to hang your self-esteem completely on the things you achieve in business. Research on students shows that students who make their self-esteem dependent on their grades have lower self-esteem at times when their grades are down.

This could have unpleasant consequences in the future. After all, getting fired is the worst thing that can happen to you, and it can lower your self-esteem tremendously. This is very unnecessary, for example if your dismissal is the result of a reorganization or if it is the result of a loss-making company in which you are not responsible for sales or can do anything you want to do to boost those sales.

Self-compassion is especially important at difficult times like these to increase your self-esteem.

Increasing your self-esteem through self-compassion can be done in several ways.

Increasing self-esteem with self-hypnosis

For example, you can use self-hypnosis to increase your self-esteem. First, you can write down all the positive aspects of yourself.

For example:

My body is functioning properly.
I am always there for my friends.
At work, I always look for the best solution.
I help out colleagues when they need a day off.
Increase self-esteem with a journal.

By finding out these kinds of positive traits about yourself, you can repeat them to yourself during self-hypnosis. You may read them aloud at first, but over time they become a real mantra.

By continuing to repeat these suggestions, they become beliefs that do your self-esteem good.

Increasing self-esteem by helping others

Another way to increase your self-esteem with self-compassion is to show compassion to other people.

Helping other people has all kinds of benefits. One of those benefits is that it becomes very clear that you have real added value, even if you're sitting on the couch unemployed. Even if you've become disabled. Even if you feel you can't really be of help to anyone.

Just by doing it, you'll notice immediately that you can help others, which is good for your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Increasing self-esteem with mindfulness

A third way to increase your self-esteem is to apply mindfulness. How often do you have a thought that undermines your self-esteem? "I can't do this at all." Or "No one likes me." Or "I need to be more strict with myself." These are examples of thoughts you are actually hurting yourself with.

By keeping an eye on your thoughts, you can stop negative thinking faster. Mindfulness allows you to enjoy the here and now more, and therefore negative thoughts also fall through faster.

With such a negative thought, you can ask yourself the following question.

Would you say the same to a friend who is in the same situation?

If the answer then is "No," you may not say it to yourself either. Why should you be more strict with yourself than with your friends? In the end, you have their best interests at heart, too.

So it's important to keep in mind that self-esteem is about more than just accepting and appreciating your body. Self-esteem is also about valuing your thoughts, behaviors and the work you do. It is important to accept and appreciate the good and not so good sides of yourself for what it is.

Only when other people are really affected by character traits is it important to change your behavior, and otherwise it can actually be an asset of yours while you don't even realize it.

If you want to learn more about mental techniques to increase your self-esteem, come to the free online master class on hypnosis. Or check out the training courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands.

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