05/16/2019 · Blog · No comments yet
Increasing self-esteem is one of the most pressing topics in the modern world, where social networks, likes and comments occupy a significant place in people's lives. Due to the constant focus on other people’s assessment of themselves, it becomes more and more difficult for a person to have adequate self-esteem. A person begins to compare himself with other people and, finding inconsistencies, criticizes himself, changes, but does not receive satisfaction from the new image. Let's try to figure out how to raise self-esteem.
What influences a person's self-esteem?
Adequate self-esteem allows a person to be self-confident, successful and effective. A person with low self-esteem is characterized by doubts about himself, his strengths and goals, which generally affects self-realization: such a person could achieve much more if he were more confident in himself.
Inflated self-esteem also negatively affects self-realization, since people with this type of self-esteem can be overly aggressive in defending their rightness and react painfully to criticism from others.
Achieving success and forgetting about failures
How can you achieve success if you are haunted by complexes and self-doubt? To begin, clearly decide what you need. Set yourself clear goals. Try to draw a clear picture in your mind. You must see yourself as you want to be. Think through everything down to the smallest detail. You will have something to strive for, and this will make the process much easier.
Love yourself and talk about it. Look in the mirror and try to comprehend the positive aspects of your appearance. She may differ from beauty standards, however, this does not mean that you should despair. You need to love your strengths and forget about your shortcomings.
Don't forget to record your progress. If you feel bad, re-read them. This will help you get into the right frame of mind. Even if you experience failure, do not despair. Every person can have ups and downs, you should take them as life lessons that you must go through in order to achieve success.
Signs of low self-esteem
A person with low self-esteem:
- focused on other people's opinions about himself, he daily compares himself with other people: his appearance, achievements, interests.
- Inside the head of such a person there is a swarm of thoughts about his low value: “I probably won’t succeed,” “what will they think of me,” “they definitely won’t accept me,” etc.
- often uses the words “not sure”, “impossible”, “hardly”, etc.
- doesn't know how to refuse people
- makes excuses in response to compliments
- constantly apologizes, even if the situation does not require it.
Online trainings. Is there any benefit?
On the Internet you can easily find many programs designed to independently develop confidence. These programs require money and time. But, in fact, no one will become more self-confident if they do not force themselves to leave the online office and face life’s adversities. The formation of self-esteem is not built while an individual is simply surfing the Internet. You need to communicate with people and be able to feel comfortable in any unfamiliar environment.
But there are undoubtedly benefits from online training. The program will help you understand a calm environment with some internal attitudes that you have not noticed before, discover and work through some internal contradictions. But not more.
Reasons for low self-esteem
Upbringing
Sometimes the origins of low self-esteem are found in childhood: when raising a child, parents introduce pathological attitudes into his worldview about his “worthlessness,” “insignificance,” or “ugliness”: “if you don’t lose weight, you won’t get married,” “look how Svetka studies well.” , and you’re stupid”, “don’t grab stars from the sky”, “this is too tough for you”, etc. Constant criticism of a child and comparison with others is the best soil for the formation of low self-esteem.
Failures
Often this picture of the world is reinforced by a series of failures, which reinforce the position “I am worse than others.” A failed exam, an unsuccessful date and “black streaks” happen to many people, but for a person with a picture of the world “I’m not capable of anything,” such events become a kind of confirmation of this attitude.
Social environment
The society into which a person finds himself plays a significant role. In a school class there is almost always a scapegoat, an outcast who is chosen by the team. But as they grow up, people find themselves in situations in which they become the object of criticism from the team or boss, which also affects their self-esteem.
Defects in appearance or health
People with physical disabilities or serious illnesses almost always have low self-esteem, this is due to ridicule from other children at school or the playground, and sometimes from their own family.
Other reasons
Sometimes low self-esteem is formed at a conscious age: with prolonged communication with manipulators, with perfectionism, with unexpected loneliness, developing chronic or mental illness, etc.
How to increase self-esteem?
From a psychological point of view
The most effective in working with low self-esteem is cognitive psychotherapy . This is justified by the fact that self-assessment is primarily a thought process. A person has established in his head the thoughts that he is worse than others, a loser, will not achieve anything in life, is not capable of anything and is not attractive at all. Therefore, if desired, he can change these thoughts to more adaptive ones that correspond to reality. To do this, you need to check every thought.
For a person with low self-esteem, the most common thoughts are something like: “These guys look at me and laugh, that means there’s something wrong with me,” “I’m not as successful as my friend,” “I never do anything well.” , “They thought I was a loser now.” These examples clearly reflect the types of cognitive distortions characteristic of a person with low self-esteem: personalization, comparison, overgeneralization, mind reading.
What can you do with your thoughts on your own?
- make lists of pros and cons for every thought you have about yourself
- make a list of alternative thoughts
- make lists of achievements and merits
- analyze the received lists
- introduce work with affirmations (positive statements) into your life practice to increase self-confidence: say it to yourself several times a day, hang stickers at home, set reminders in your phone.
The fight against low self-esteem is more effective and faster if a psychologist or psychotherapist helps you with this.
How to raise a woman's self-esteem
To raise a woman’s self-esteem, first of all, she needs to be in her place in life and do what brings pleasure. Secondly , limit communication with people who criticize or exert emotional or physical violence. Thirdly , stop constantly comparing yourself to others.
When three conditions are met, you can begin working with thoughts and beliefs to increase self-confidence: searching for alternative thoughts, eliminating self-devaluing remarks from speech, working with affirmations, etc.
Psychologist's advice: To understand how to raise self-esteem and become self-confident, you must first stop asking others to evaluate yourself. Try to track how many times a day you ask others about yourself: “How do I look?”, “Does this hairstyle suit me?”, “Is this my lipstick color or not?” Write down such questions and try to reduce them to a minimum every day.
How to increase a man's self-esteem
For men, the algorithm of actions proposed above to increase self-esteem will also be effective. However, a number of other recommendations can be offered:
- reach out to successful people, communicate with them to gain a positive attitude and thinking style from them;
- experiment with your appearance, dress as if you have high self-esteem. This way out of your comfort zone can help enhance your internal transformation.
- read books that raise self-esteem (Philip Zimbardo “Shyness. What is it and how to deal with it”, Vladimir Levi “The Art of Being Yourself”, Alice Muir “Self-Confidence”, etc.).
- watch films that boost self-esteem, for example: “The Incredible Life of Walter Mitty”, “A Good Year”, “Big Fish”.
How to increase self-esteem for a teenager or child
If you are looking for an answer to the question of how to raise self-esteem for a teenager and child, know that you have a lot in your hands to help. Tips for raising your child’s self-esteem:
- help him overcome difficulties: do together with him his unloved algebra or chemistry;
- give compliments more often regarding all areas of life: appearance, mental abilities, strong-willed qualities;
- Spend unusual time together: go swimming or jogging, to the cinema, on a picnic, to a photo shoot or shopping. Often the friend of low self-esteem is a boring, unfulfilled, unpromising existence. Show by example that life is valuable and interesting, develop your personality with that of the child.
- solve problems with your own low self-esteem. If you don't love yourself, it is unlikely that you will teach this to your children.
If you praise only for school success, but criticize your appearance, or vice versa, the result will be equally low self-esteem.
You need to criticize carefully : preferably only unseemly actions. But you don’t have to be afraid to praise, especially in adolescence (when boys and girls constantly question their appearance and achievements).
Useful materials on the topic
In this block, I want to recommend you several useful courses and psychological simulators that will help you increase your self-esteem. The courses are conducted on the platforms of two different projects, all of them are of very high quality.
Vikium
I recommend Vikium to you first of all simply as a project for self-development. It is dedicated to the development of skills such as thinking, memory, attention, and recently materials have also appeared for the development of emotional intelligence and communication skills.
First, look at the simulators that are available here. They are all free. I provide a link to a general page with exercise equipment, where they are sorted into groups. Select the most interesting ones for yourself.
Now look at the general page with Wikium courses. There are only 18 of them so far, but the project is constantly creating something new, and the list of courses is growing.
To increase your self-esteem, I recommend these programs to you:
- Brain detoxification. This course allows you to remove all negativity, all bad memories from your head. You probably had periods in your life when you constantly thought about something bad, about the insult caused to you, about your failures, guilt before someone and could not get rid of these feelings. The techniques described in Detoxification will help you stop chewing the cud of negativity. Cost – 890 rubles.
- Emotional intellect. The course will teach you to better analyze your emotions and the emotions of those around you. It helps to cope with panic attacks and depression, to “grow” in your own eyes. Cost – 890 rubles.
- Brain fitness. This course is very expensive. But you have to pay not so much for the program itself, but for the “neural interface”. This is a small device that analyzes the electromagnetic waves coming from your brain. Based on the results of the analysis, the neural interface will create unique tips and recommendations for you. According to the developers, it helps with self-esteem, emotional stress, and even improves sleep quality. Cost – 17,990 rubles.
4Brain
There are also interesting materials on the 4Brain website:
- Human psychology. This is a general course in psychology, which also addresses issues of self-esteem and attitude towards oneself. I'm mentioning it here because it's completely free. You can familiarize yourself with the contents of the material only from your personal account. Therefore, register and study for your health.
- Mental self-regulation. A course on how to start liking yourself, how to stop focusing on the negative, how to grow in your own eyes and become happier. It includes 25 lessons, each lasting approximately 45 minutes. The total duration of the program is 6 weeks. The course can be taken from a mobile phone; it is well adapted for mobile phones and tablets.
Examples from the practice of a psychologist
A girl came to the reception who considered herself terribly unsuccessful: she didn’t like the profession she received, her life’s work had to be closed because she had a child, which is why she could no longer devote much time to work. But every day she reproached herself for being unsuccessful at thirty: she had achieved nothing, earned little. All this time, a hobby was present in her life, which brought her a little money, but she never attached much importance to it, did not try to develop in it, since she did not consider a hobby to be a serious activity.
We managed to change our outlook on life, work through our deepest beliefs, and change the concept of success instilled in our heads by our parents in childhood with our own understanding of success. Now her hobby has become a recognizable brand, brings a stable income, satisfaction, and allows her to spend enough time with her child. Don’t you think that this is exactly the success that this woman was looking for?
People turn to a psychologist with various problems in life, but the roots of these problems often grow from the conviction that other people are more successful, beautiful and better, the belief in their own failure, and self-blame. In these cases, the psychologist works through maladaptive dysfunctional thoughts of self-devaluation, and together with the client replaces them with adaptive ones, which he introduces into real life. It sounds simple and easy, but it is painstaking work, a new skill that a person needs to bring to automaticity so that new thoughts about himself fill his head.
Meditation “You are the bliss of God” (edited by G. Tomgorova)
You close your eyes, relax, inhale and as you exhale, you are transported to a place where you feel good. Perhaps you have already been there or just imagined it in your dreams. Look around, listen to the sounds, breathe in the aroma of this place. Feel how good and calm you are there.
A man in long clothes and with a huge bag is walking towards you. He takes a huge book out of his bag and begins to read:
“My dear creature, you are the bliss of God. You are perfect and unique, beautiful and wonderful. You have the right to your point of view, you have the right to be wrong as many times as you want. You have the right not to understand or know something, to be illogical in your actions, to have your own feelings and express them whenever you want. You can judge your own behavior and take responsibility when you want to. I give you the right to choose for yourself what to do, and I give this right to others. And finally, you have the right to do what you want, when you want it. You have the right to be who you are! Remember that you are on the planet for yourself."
The wanderer finishes reading, smiles at you, looks at you with loving eyes and puts the book in his bag. You thank him and bid him farewell. When he leaves, you take a breath and return to reality, opening your eyes.
“As a continuation of this meditation, you can do this practice at home before going to bed,” I added, looking at the girls’ relaxed and calm faces. “It’s called “I am the bliss of God.” It has several variations, but I like this one better. We start with the left hand. You wrap the fingers of your right hand around each finger at the base of your left and pull your fingers up, saying: “I am the bliss of God” - one word per finger. Repeat the phrase five times. Then we do the same with the fingers of the right hand.
Why is it important to work on low self-esteem?
A negative image of oneself can lead to a constantly depressed mood, to the appearance of physiological unpleasant reactions (increased heart rate, sweating, hand tremors, etc.), to a decrease in self-confidence and self-esteem, to a loss of hope that a person himself can change the situation and his life in in general. Low self-esteem is a maintaining factor in mental illness. Most often, low self-esteem is present in social phobia, body dysmorphic disorder, depressive disorder, eating disorders, etc.
conclusions
Most often, self-esteem is formed in childhood and consolidated during the formation of personality. Low self-esteem prevents a person from realizing his full potential in life, being confident in his uniqueness, and accepting his characteristics and shortcomings.
Remember: it is impossible to increase your self-esteem by complimenting others. Compliments are an assessment of others, even if people highly evaluate a person, he may have low self-esteem because he is not able to evaluate himself objectively. The most effective way to increase self-esteem is psychotherapeutic work with a person’s automatic thoughts and deep-seated beliefs.
Psychology, Self-esteem
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