5 Ways to Cultivate a Healthy Self-Esteem

While self-esteem is an indication of how you see your value and worth, it can affect relationships, career, motivation, behaviour, and wellbeing. In short, self-esteem can significantly increase or decrease the overall quality of your life. 
 
A healthy self-esteem allows you to acknowledge your potential, set healthy boundaries, have a clear understanding of your needs and strengths, feel a sense of belonging, as well as feel courageous enough to grow, take risks and seize opportunities. 
 
Remaining in a healthy state, similar to physical exercise, requires regular efforts and attention. It may be hard, but it will prove to be worth the effort and time investment. In order to cultivate a healthy self-esteem, here are five suggested exercises that you could implement in your day-to-day life. 

1. Becoming your own best friend sounds difficult, but it is most certainly worth it. After all, the person you spend the most time with is YOU. How to go about it? Encourage, build up, be kind and generally speak to yourself as you would to a best friend. By constantly being caring and supportive you become more resilient and are more capable to handle any external factors that you may face. 
   
   
2. Associate with individuals that are successful in similar areas as you would like to be successful in. In doing so, you are exposed to recommendations, experience, and knowledge. It would be rather challenging not to feel inspired, encouraged and belonging in such a situation.
   
   
3. Affirmations are another great way to build self-esteem. When creating affirmations, it is important to make sure they are formulated to be present, positive, and personal. Affirmations should be realistic, as setting affirmations that are perhaps too far a reach may demotivate even more. Another tip to remember is to avoid using words such as attempt or try when forming affirmations. By including words where there is an option open for alternative action or results, you incorporate slight doubt and preparation for possible failure from the beginning. Once the most inspiring affirmation has been formulated, clearly stating where you would like to be, daily repetition thereof is recommended. By regularly repeating the affirmation the brain is being trained to believe that what is being said is already a reality, leading to behaviour that creates exactly that reality. Powerful, isn’t it? 
   
   
4. Accept compliments. The inability to do so is an indication of low self-esteem. Often, when one has a low self-esteem, a compliment is received as something that is not true. A comment that creates feelings of discomfort and even awkwardness, as one in fact does not believe oneself to be worthy of the positive feedback. A fantastic way to start accepting compliments is that no matter how uncomfortable it is, receive them with grace. One option is to mentally prepare a variety of responses to acknowledge and thank the individual giving the compliment. Replacing the doubt and disbelief with gratitude will eventually feel natural, receiving compliments will be easier and self-esteem will rise.
   
   
5. Identifying personal competencies and developing them can also be a fantastic way to grow self-esteem. When you focus on your strengths rather than weaknesses, positive feelings about yourself arise, and you are more likely to feel proud and empowered, increasing your self-esteem. In doing so, you will have more capacity to improve even in areas of weakness or challenge. You will be more resilient and capable to receive criticism and feedback. 

​Everyone creates their own reality. By raising self-esteem, this reality can include high self-worth, healthy relationships, a flourishing career and overall, a high-quality life. Once you can see your worth, value and capabilities, you are not only able to convince others thereof but also no longer will be standing in your own way to live a life of limitless potential. 

By Naomi Wernecke
Photo credit: Unsplash

Contact Naomi Wernecke for a chat on how she can support you to cultivate your self-esteem.