Ten quick tips to help improve your self esteem and self confidence

By Sherri Russell

Striving to improve our self esteem is on everybody’s mind - with both women and men. It doesn’t matter if you actively pursue this goal or you subconsciously working on improving your self esteem. The problem with this is that you really don’t know exactly what you want to improve. You’re acting intuitively on external signals.

Do you know how to improve your self esteem? Probably not. To make it a little bit easier for you and to achieve your goals quicker, I put together 10 tips from other websites that you can utilize right away.

1. Do what you love.
Everyone loves to do something or is interested in learning something.   When you indulge yourself in your love you improve the way you feel about yourself, and in turn, you improve your self esteem.

As an example, for myself, it has been my interest in learning to fly fish and my passion for creating art.

2. Help others out.
Nothing makes you feel a warm glow than when you unselfishly help others. of course you can argue that this in itself is selfish, but if you take that line of thought you must think that existence is selfish. Forget that. Just do a good deed, help someone out, doesn’t have to be big and it doesn’t have to cost any money.   

For example, I volunteer my time to post articles on this blog in efforts to motivate and educate others to get out and enjoy the great outdoors and respect what mother nature has given us.

3. Acknowledge your strengths
There is no one who has no strengths. Everyone is good at something, know what your good at and give yourself a pat on the back. Do things that bring this quality out into the open. Exercise it, make it stronger.

Write down a list of things you are good at: sports, friendship, cooking, parenting, crafts, etc. - you may be surprised at how long the list may get...

4. Don’t put up with crap.
There is no reason you should tolerate other people being rude to you. Even if they say they are doing it with love. Make sure people know they should be nice to you and if they refuse or don't understand you, walk away from them and don't hanging around them anymore.

I have discovered over the years that not everyone is going to like you - that does not mean that there is something wrong with you - don't sweat it and move on to more positive people that will appreciate the person you are.


5. Drop your negative friends.
Hang out with people who are positive and support you. It may be fun to bitch and moan but if you hang out with these types of people you will eventually become one of them - misery loves company. You may have noticed that people who bitch and moan are never happy.  Life is too short and there are many more polite and positive people you can meet if you make an effort to do so.

I strongly believe that you are who you choose to hang around - so choose your friends wisely.

6. Do your research
A lot of self help books are a waste of time in the sense that the only person who can change you is you. Reading even this blog post will not change you unless you get emotionally involved with the information. Which is really hard as it’s really dry and boring.

Go read biographies of people you respect, people who do positive things and attain huge success. Learn from the master not the self help guru who is always in debt.

7. Learn to accept compliments.
It’s hard to accept a compliment and not to dismiss it as being ridiculous. Someone has an opinion and it should be respected, even if you do not agree with it. If people think good about you then maybe you should too.

There is something good in all of us - we seem to be our own worst critics.

8. Include positivity in your life.
I’m not talking an airy fairy chant in the mirror while naked. I mean take a positive slant on everything automatically. The meat pie you just bit in to may contain maggots, but maggots contain a lot of protein. OK that’s a bit extreme but you get the point.

There is always someone who has it worse than you do...

9. Compare yourself against yourself.
If you look at how you were yesterday and how you are today and there is an improvement then that is great. If there is no improvement then you know you need to improve your efforts. Don’t start comparing your self to other people. Saying you are poor compared to D. Trump is just going to make you miserable.

Set some small obtainable goals for yourself - once you feel the success in obtaining these smaller goals it will give you more positive fuel to set more goals - and before you know it, you will be feeling better about yourself and build more self confidence.

10. There is no need for you to put yourself down.
Seeing yourself in a negative light you are only reinforcing your low self esteem. If you want to improve your self esteem. Ask yourself, how can I improve my self esteem. The answer will always be, find one positive thing about yourself and that will do it.

Look in the mirror every morning and say something good about yourself and eventually you will believe it and so will others.

In fact, tip no. 10 reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago but continue to remember because of the impact it made on me (please read about it below):

A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"

Everyone started raising their hands. He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this." Then he proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up. Then he asked, "Ok, who still wants it?" Still the hands went up in the air. Nest he dropped it on the ground and ground it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now it was all crumpled and dirty. He asked again, "Does anyone still want it?" Still the hands went into the air.

He concluded the session with a valuable lesson. No matter what he did to the money, the people watching him still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. Our struggles—whether it be with our weight, or relationships, or finances—or whatever make us feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value in God's eyes. To Him, dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless.