What we say to ourselves, our inner voice, greatly influences our own self image and self esteem. Most of us have heard “I’m my own worst critic,” as we let our inner voice criticize our selves it can bring down our motivation and raise feelings of helplessness. When we feel we are stupid, wrong, a bad friend, a bad employee, a bad mother, we bring ourselves down, lowering our self esteem and our mood as a whole. Often times this can lead to losing relationships, working or otherwise, because many people feed off our negativity or find a need to avoid it for their own happiness.
What is Self Esteem?
Self esteem is the confidence we have in our own worth and abilities. This can mean the confidence in your ability to do our job, our confidence in our own talents, our confidence in our own knowledge, and our confidence in who ourselves in whole. There are many factors that can effect our self esteem.
Do you have low self esteem?
What causes low self esteem?
There are too many causes to really list them all. We could have had a bad experience in school, low grades, less skill in a sport. We could have had run ins with bullies, been in physical and verbally abusive relationships, worked for a verbally abusive or stressful boss and ongoing medical problems, like chronic pain. There are many factors that can cause low self esteem really though these factors are often causing us to have negative self talk. We beat ourselves up for little mistakes and our self esteem lowers as a result of losing confidence in ourselves.
How do we know if we have low self esteem?
Characteristics of low self esteem.
- Heavy self criticism
- Hypersensitivity to criticism
- Chronic indecision
- Excessive need to please
- Perfectionism
- Hostility
- Irritability
- Feeling of insignificance
- General negativity
How can we raise our self esteem?
Fight your inner critic.
Get mad at it. Fight back every time you hear yourself say “you can’t” because you can. Every time you hear “I’m a failure” respond with a loud, confident “NO!”
Remember everyone makes mistakes
Perfectionism is a challenge for so many. Mainly because nobody is perfect. Remember everyone makes mistakes and it is okay to do so.
Stop comparing
Everyone is unique. Remember that. There will always be someone better than you at something and that is okay. Do not compare yourself to others.
List your accomplishments
Take a moment, or as much time as you need, and list out all of your accomplishments. List everything you like about yourself and why they’re unique.
Heal your past
It can take time to heal from any hurtful situations that are in our past but doing so can help us get over negative self criticism and self talk. (More on healing our past in a future post).
Have you ever experienced low self esteem? What were causes? Do you resolve them? How did you raise your self-esteem?
Sarah
31 Days to a positive inner voice…..
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