How do you strengthen your self-esteem?
Self-esteem increases when we take our own will seriously.
You can increase it quite quickly when you understand how it works.
I usually describe how by separating self-esteem and self-confidence.
Self-confidence within a particular context increases when we succeed. Self-confidence is our best assessment of the likelihood of success within whatever we aim to achieve based on our experience: Every time you win a tennis match, you assess the likelihood of winning higher next time around.
Self-esteem doesn’t work in the same way and cannot be raised with achievements and successes.
The clearest evidence of this is so many people suffering from performance-based self-esteem: “If I don’t perform/succeed/win, I’m not valuable.”
A big win does not change self-esteem—instead, the bar for high performance is raised and self-esteem remains low—even if self-confidence is high!
Our self-esteem increases when we do things that are important to us. Self-esteem is our own assessment of our own value, based on how much we take our own will seriously: Every time you speak up at work when you think something is wrong, take a walk because you want to or cancel a party because you don’t want to, you signal to yourself that your will is worth taking seriously and therefore that you find yourself valuable.
Low self-esteem often arises as a result of fear of being excluded from communities.
“I can’t just be myself, can I?”
No matter how we turn and twist ourselves, we always risk criticism from others.
I usually ask clients who seem to put others before themselves in order to avoid criticism:
Would you rather be criticized for something you do or say that you don’t believe in but that is expected of you—or be criticized for something you believe in that is really important to you?
It may seem safer trying to adapt and live up to others’ expectations most the time—but it’s not the safe route, in the long run it is just the opposite. The real risk here, is loosing touch with who we really are.
Bruce Springsteen sings: “We get used to anything, sooner or later it just becomes our life.”
When we get used to suppressing all our inconvenient, small and seemingly insignificant, impulses and wills, they become increasingly difficult to hear. Eventually, we lose touch with what we really want and who we really are.
The more we live up to our own ideals, the stronger our self-esteem becomes.
It is important to dare to be ourselves and to dare to be honest with ourselves and others about what we really want and feel.
It is not easy, but it is worth it.
