Change Your Life By Boosting Your Self-Esteem. Here's How...

Healthy self-esteem is the basis of a good rewarding life, and is the key to having peace of mind. Our self-esteem also provides the core of our level of self-confidence. Self-esteem is often defined as ‘how you feel about yourself, when you are alone, and contemplating yourself and your self-worth. Confidence describes how assured you feel when going out into the world to accomplish things.

A lot of self-defeating behaviour is rooted in low or doubtful self-esteem. People often deny themselves what they want in life because of some feeling that they ‘don’t deserve’ what they really want.

A traditional way of helping people with self-esteem is to use something like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This helps people to identify people or aspects of the environment that are acting as 'triggers' for negative emotions. This is a very sound approach, as it helps people to challenge the negative self-talk they are giving to themselves, and the negative beliefs they are fostering. But it can be slow, and a lot of work can be needed to really train oneself out of negative attitudes.

However, there are some very powerful steps you can take to build genuine self-esteem, to the extent that you need not employ any techniques or methods to repair or restore good feelings about yourself.

The real key to genuine self-esteem is to get back in touch with who you really are. Find or clarify your AUTHENTIC SELF.

The real reason for low self-esteem is that aspects of your life and your behaviour are not in agreement with your Authentic Self. You are living life to the best of your ability, making the best decisions you can make, and so on. But if you are feeling low about yourself, somehow you have become compromised. Part of this is that you may have taken on board goals, attitudes, opinions, beliefs and even entire philosophical systems that are not true for you.

The secret to life, as has been expressed by writers and philosophers for thousands of years, is to ‘be yourself’. In other words, to be your Authentic Self. The ancient texts of the Yogis express this truth. They said that whatever your problems in life may be, such as struggling to make enough money for your needs, struggling to find a life partner, fearing what might happen to you, and the whole array of human problems, can be totally solved with this one action. Be Yourself. Be your Authentic Self.

There are ways to quickly re-establish your sense of your true self.
(1) Clarify your Values and bring them into your life more fully.
(2) Clarify your Goals and Purposes, and begin pursuing them, to any degree possible, no matter how small your effort may seem to be.
(3) Reappraise your environment and your behaviour, and ask yourself if you are happy with them, and if not, begin to modify and upgrade them.

CLARIFY AND LIVE YOUR VALUES

This is in line with the ‘positive psychology’ movement that is becoming more prevalent these days, which basically suggests that it can be far more beneficial to people to accentuate the positives in their lives and personalities, rather than focus on, and try to correct, the negatives.

Values are the qualities of life that we are motivated towards. Values are different to needs. Needs certainly take up a lot of our energy and attention. We need food, shelter and beyond our basic requirements we need friendships, support, and some kind of social network. We can also have within us an unconscious striving for significance or importance.

Whereas needs tend to be largely unconscious, values are those best parts of ourselves that we can assert and impose on our life. Values are a fast way to get in touch with our Authentic Self. This concept of the Authentic Self is vital to understand, in order to remedy low self-esteem. Everyone has some sense of what they value in life. What we call ‘conscience’ is merely the tip of this awareness. We know what we are truly capable of in life, we know the qualities that we really want to assert. These qualities are our Values. And if we fail to bring them fully into our life, our sense of self corrodes and suffers.

Values are an essential part of your creation of a Vision for your life. Values that people commonly experience include Contribution, Kindness, Productivity, Awareness, Adaptability, Connection, Sharing, Perserverance, Transcendence, Learning, Insight….these are the kinds of intentions and aspirations that we carry around inside us. Becoming more aware of our Values, and bringing them thoughtfully into our lives, not only boosts our own self-esteem very quickly, but also elevates the quality of life for those around us.

Reconnection with our Authentic Self is achieved by living a life in which our Goals, Purposes, Values and Ideals are united and carrying us towards a Vision for our life.

Many coaches are trained in the art of helping people to clarify and live their Values. In the psychological science known as NLP, there are some advanced techniques regarding clarifying and strengthening Values, and aligning an individual’s life towards them. The result can be a tremendous boost of energy, vitality and meaning in a person’s life.

If you want to experience this boost in your sense of wellbeing and wholeness, it may help you to get in touch with a coach and do a short program on this.

FIND AND FOLLOW A STRONG PURPOSE

A directionless life is an open invitation to a low sense of self-esteem and any depression that might come with it. Purposes are powerful ways of galvanizing our energies. We are made to solve problems. We are made to make progress in life, to move forwards as we gradually conquer problems and challenges. Trying to remain static or stationary leads to a dispersed mind and a sense of meaninglessness. Finding a purpose means finding one's place in the scheme of things.

This purpose does not need to be anything big, to begin with. It does not need to be what people refer to as a 'Life Purpose', and it does not need to be something that might change the world. The most useful purposes to anyone who has been drifting for a while are to overcome their current challenges, to improve their chances of survival and their quality of life in the present moment. But I have to say, having seen people who do trip off a big purpose, some kind of Life Purpose or Life Mission, experience a surge in self-esteem and wellbeing that is so strong, it is life-changing to be in the same room with them.

Purposes seem to be part of our 'soul's code'. They are an intrinsic part of who we are. So working to find them is exceptionally rewarding, because they lead us back to our Authentic Self.

Want help in clarifying your Values? I can get you started with some simple exercises. I can show you how to go it alone and work out that whole area of your life.

And how about Purpose? This is a big area, a potentially powerful area. I see many people block themselves from exploring their purposes, or they get very tired when they try to do so. I know ways through all of this, if you need some help.

Try a free coaching session to get you started.