How to Feel Better About Yourself

Feeling bad about yourself can take a serious toll on your health and on your personal and professional life as well. Even if you have been feeling negatively about yourself since childhood, there is still good news. It is never too late to change your opinion of yourself. Here are 4 steps to improving your self-esteem.

Step 1: Recognizing Stressful Events

Identify the events which make you feel bad about yourself. Some typically stressful situations may include:

• Public Speaking
• Unresolved Conflicts
• A Financial Crisis
• A Sudden Change in Lifestyle

Step 2: Reexamine Your Belief System Concerning This Stress

Once you have recognized the causes of your stress, focus on your thoughts and beliefs about these situations. Pay attention to the put downs, negative feelings and irrational thoughts you use on yourself during hard times.

Step 3: Defy Your Own Pessimistic Thinking

It can be tough to overcome ingrained negative thoughts about yourself. In fact, it may even feel perfectly normal to feel bad about yourself. Remember that there is more than one way to view a situation or event. When your opinion of yourself dips to a low point, use logic and reason to put things back into perspective. Negative self-thought patterns like the listed examples below are extremely common during times of stress:

Self put-downs –  You undervalue yourself, put yourself down or use self-deprecating humor. This can result from overreacting to a stressful situation, i.e., Making a mistake.

All-or-nothing thinking -  You see things as either all good or all bad.

Converting positives into negatives – You reject your achievements and other positive experiences by insisting that they do not count.

Mental filtering – You see only negatives and dwell on them, distorting your view of a person or situation.

Converting positives into negatives -  You reject your achievements and other positive experiences by insisting they do not matter.

Mistaking emotions for facts – You confuse feelings or beliefs with facts.

Jumping to negative conclusions -  You reach a negative conclusion when little or no evidence supports it.

Step 4: Adjust your Thoughts and Beliefs

Forgive yourself – Everyone makes mistakes and mistakes are not permanent reflections on you as a person. They are isolated moments in time.

Use hopeful statements – Treat yourself with kindness and encouragement. Pessimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focus on the positive – Think about the good parts of your life. Remind yourself of things that have gone well recently. Reflect on the skills you have used to cope with challenging situations.

Avoid ‘should’ and ‘must’ declarations – If you find that your thoughts are full of these words, you might be putting unreasonable demands on yourself or on others. Removing these words from your thoughts can lead to more realistic expectations.

Encourage yourself - Give yourself credit for making positive changes.

Use distressing thoughts as a signal – You do not need to react negatively to negative thoughts. Instead, think of negative thoughts as signals to try new and healthy patterns.