Improving self-esteem and self-confidence doesn't automatically make us superheroes, but it's the first step to better meet the challenges of everyday life and our more ambitious goals. Poor self-esteem can be a massive obstacle on the way to our dreams and goals. When we stop believing in ourselves, in our potential and our abilities, the outside world and those around us begin to make decisions that would be up to us alone.
The good news is that our level of self-esteem is not written in our genes. You can't choose what color your eyes or hair are in, but you can always learn to respect yourself more, recognize your limits, and appreciate your merits. That's right. You can learn to improve your self-esteem.
I want to talk about five practical actions that, in my case, have proved particularly useful in improving self-esteem:
1) Take care of your appearance.
I've always preferred the essence to the appearance, but caring for yourself, your physical appearance, and the way you dress can have a significant impact on your self-esteem. Sometimes, when we feel down and out of shape, a little sports activity, a nice shower, and our favorite item of clothing are a cure-all to increase our self-confidence.
2) Think about the way you think about yourself.
Taking care of your appearance not only makes us feel better but helps us to create a new image of ourselves. Much of our level of self-esteem is related to the image we project of ourselves into our minds. This image is not always real, and we often tend to give more weight to our faults than to our merits. This image is not carved in stone: to find out how to have self-esteem, modify it as if you had one of those digital retouching programs at your disposal. It's not about lying to yourself, but about balancing our strengths and weaknesses.
3) Learn how to define your goals.
Another critical component of our self-esteem is linked to the goals we manage to achieve. In some periods, our life seems to be dotted with continuous failures; the causes can be many: the damned misfortune (much less than we think), our lack of self-discipline (often, but not always), the inevitable obstacles that we had not budgeted. We often fail to achieve our goals because of how we define them. Better goals can lead us to better results and, consequently, to higher self-esteem.
4) Write a personal diary.
Most of the time we remember our failures very well and tend to forget our successes; for this reason, a personal diary, in which to collect our thoughts and experiences (positive and negative) daily, can help us to have a more objective picture of the results we have achieved in the past. Knowing yourself, what you have already faced, and how you came out of it, can be a significant push to increase confidence in yourself.
5) Speak slowly.
I will never cease to be surprised at how our bodies and gestures affect our minds and vice versa. A famous American saying says, "fake it till you make it": this means that even before you have high self-esteem, you should pretend to act like someone very confident. Any practical examples? Try to speak slowly: those who talk firmly and calmly show that they have full command of the subject and do not have to rush to express their opinion.
"When we believe in ourselves, we can experience curiosity, happiness, surprise, and all those emotions that make us profoundly human.
E.E. Cummings.
In your experience, what actions have allowed you to increase your self-confidence? If you want, share them in your comments.
Ps. I hope that the strategies I have proposed will help you to regain some "inches" of your self-esteem. However, I would like to be extremely clear on one point: self-confidence is not a pre-packaged cake that we can prepare in fifteen minutes by mixing 3-4 ingredients. To get back to believing in ourselves, we have to take a gradual path made of daily challenges.
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