How to increase self-esteem (step by step)

You want to find out how to increase self-esteem one step at a time? I present to you the APP guide.

APP - Self-esteem step by step, GetPersonalGrowth's guide to believing in yourself again, is available for download (go to the presentation page> click here).

And what are you still doing around here ?! Oh well, I take advantage of this post to explain what self-esteem to me is and what they are 5 basic steps to win her back.

Come with me: let's start this "staircase" together.

Do we still need to talk about self-esteem?

"Believe in yourself. The only ones who appreciate a doormat are those with dirty shoes. "

L. Buscaglia.

A reader in a recent comment wrote:

“Well… I think the topic esteem is very inflated and for this reason (the more we discuss something, the more we move away from its true essence) we end up generating only chaos. "

How to blame him? For years they have sold us theesteem as the ultimate solution for our personal growth:

• Do you want to be successful in the professional field? Daje of self-esteem.
• Do you want to conquer the man / woman of your dreams? How do you do without self-esteem ?!
• Constipated bowel? Take 2 self-esteem pills.

The point is that believing in yourself really plays a fundamental role in our success and well-being (constipation excluded), but we certainly don't need fast-food solutions that transform us into inflated balloons.

No, I personally despise this distorted and simplistic form of self-esteem.

Don't get me wrong, believing in yourself is important, please, also because otherwise you wouldn't get very far in life, but it's not a grimoire that will save your life… and personal… and professional.

There are, yes, some tips I can give you that can help you to improve the way you perceive yourself and thereby increase your self-esteem.

 

Here are some of the most important:

• Stop thinking you won't make it, it won't help you, so you're just sabotaging yourself;
• Small steps every day: don't think about making big leaps, but start with small things and set yourself the goal of completing them;
• When you make a commitment, communicate it to someone, it will be a stimulus to avoid disappointing you;
• Take a pet, it will teach you to take care of someone besides you and it will confirm you every day that you are able to carry on your life;
• Learn to breathe, oxygenate your brain;
• Make yourself useful to others.

Stop thinking you won't make it, it won't help you, so you're just sabotaging yourself

It seems strange to say, but the number one enemy of your life is you. Exactly, because most of the time you blame your neighbor for not achieving a goal, that's not quite true.

Answer yourself this question: how many times, in the day, in the month, in the year did you think that you would not make it?

Do you know what happens when you think so? You begin to act subconsciously, of course, to prove to yourself that you are unable to do something and, when your thought becomes reality, you confirm your hypothetical ineptitude. Except it's not a positive confirmation, but one that lowers your self-esteem a lot.

Small steps every day: don't think about making big leaps, but start with small things and set yourself the goal of completing them

Rome wasn't built in a day: don't think about going from 0 to 100 in two seconds.

And yes, the biggest problem today is precisely that of wanting everything immediately, realizing, then, that perhaps something was missing.

Start small, don't think about building Rome in one day, but think about how to build the first building. Make it solid and then think about designing the next one, perhaps with a few more details.

Doing this will remind you that you are closer to your goal every day, that you are making it.

When you make a commitment, communicate it to someone, it will be an incentive to avoid disappointing you

Publicly stating your goal won't make you give up, even when everything looks black to you.

Publicly state your goal. The other person, eventually you fail, will care little that you didn't make it, but it will matter very much to you that you appear to him as the one who didn't make it and, therefore, you will carry out the commitment.

Completing a commitment, in everyone's eyes, helps you feel powerful, so it's important to say it out loud.

Take a pet, it will teach you to take care of someone other than you and it will confirm you, every day, that you are able to carry on your life

Adopting a cat or a dog is challenging, I know, but it will help you a lot. There is another life that depends on you, that waits for you when you don't want to go home, that waits for you to get out of bed every morning to feed it.

Taking care of another life helps you remember that you don't always have to think about yourself all the time.

Realizing that you are able to take care of another living being, making sure that he remains healthy, that he is happy, will make you understand that you can carry on your life. And your self-esteem will improve.

Learn to breathe, oxygenate your brain

We all think we can breathe, but in reality we don't. We know how to snort, but we don't necessarily know how to breathe correctly and, therefore, give oxygen to the brain.

Breathing for us is an automatic thing, we don't think about it. Instead we should. Learning to breathe correctly helps us to give oxygen to the brain and thus to better manage anxiety and related problems.

And we all know that if we think well, we will have great results. When you are in trouble, when you feel that something is not right, stand up and take 3 deep breaths. Stop and then start over.

This will help you manage your emotions better and this will boost your self-esteem.

Make yourself useful to others

Do good. There is no need to donate large amounts of money to others. But learn to do good.

Doing a good deed, helping others, even with small gestures, gives you the opportunity to remember that you are useful in this world.

I know it may seem selfish, because doing good is ultimately something that works to your advantage, but in the meantime you help yourself, you are also helping others. And thus you make yourself useful.

For years, here on GetPersonalGrowth I have been trying to talk about personal development in a different way, in an original way: I wanted to do the same with APP - Self-esteem step by step.

Yes, well André, bravo: do you want the applause ?! Answer me a simple simple question: what is self-esteem for you? No, because your reader is right: it's a big mess here!

In the guide I provide a simple and essential definition of self-esteem.

A definition that has guided my personal development path over the past 14 years.

Here she is:

“Self-esteem is what I think about myself. What I think about myself is determined by my daily practice. "

Nothing pompous or superfluous: self-esteem is the way we see each other, and this "lens" can be changed through the actions we perform day to day.

This "philosophy" pervades every page of APP and when I manage to honor it, it is an integral part of my days.

If you share it, I would like to explain to you through which gradual path you can put it into practice.

How to increase self-esteem through the 5 "A's"

According to the definition I just gave you, self-esteem is not an innate gift and certainly cannot be magically infused into us by someone or something.

Of course there are events and people who give us the famous "bottarella of self-esteem“, But these peaks are ephemeral and fragile.

True self-esteem is solid and once it has solidified within us it cannot be scratched by anything or anyone.

To mold this within us unshakable confidence in our abilities we therefore need to undertake a gradual path, a path that I wanted to symbolize with a white staircase.

Each step of this staircase in turn represents a well-defined area of ​​our self-esteem on which we must intervene. Here are the 5 "A's" of self-esteem:

Of course, every self-respecting staircase has its own "landing", but I want to focus immediately on the steps, because they are the ones that, faced one at a time, will allow you to truly believe in yourself again:

• Step # 1 - Listen. Returning to my reader's comment, Pier Paolo says: “I began to understand something when I realized that the wisest thing I could do for myself was simply to listen to myself“. The first step to regain our self-esteem consists precisely in becoming aware of that little voice that buzzes in our head: understand when it tells us lies, silence it or transform it into our ally.
• Step # 2 - Accept. The term "accept" immediately makes us think of a passive submission: none of this, accepting and accepting oneself requires a great deal of courage and is the necessary condition to restart.

"Only after accepting our limits are we able to overcome them."

Brendan Francis.

• Step # 3 - Face it. When we accept ourselves we must then take responsibility for what we are experiencing, but also and above all the responsibility for change.
• Step # 4 - Affirm. To increase our self-esteem we must undoubtedly do important inner work, but we certainly cannot stop there. The next step is to affirm ourselves in the world, or to live authentically, letting our aspirations breathe and expressing ourselves without false masks.
• Step # 5 - Take action. Action is the essential ingredient of any path of personal development, but it is not enough to act so much to… it is necessary to act in a constant (ie with self-discipline) and consistent (ie with self-efficacy) way.

I have worked a lot on this path and have cured every single step In the smallest detail.

This with the aim of accompanying you in the gradual rediscovery of superhero that dwells inside you ;-)

It is now up to you to decide whether to look for some palliative to simulate an apparent security or take the staircase that stands out in front of you with determination.

Click on the staircase to take your first step and discover the presentation page of APP - Self-esteem step by step.

Photo by Alexander Rentsch

Improving your self-esteem is certainly not an easy job that starts from nothing, for this reason I recommend that you deepen the subject by reading the following articles that I list here: