5 easy ways to improve your self-esteem, boost your confidence - and love yourself

What five words would you use if you were asked to describe yourself? Would you choose positive, uplifting terms, or would they be critical and harsh? Your answer reflects your own opinion of yourself; how we think about ourselves, and the value we place on ourselves, forms our self-esteem.

Self-esteem can be influenced by others in our lives. Comments about our character made by parents, teachers, friends or siblings can affect the way we see ourselves. Someone who is heavily criticised by others may form a low self-esteem, as their opinion of themselves has been heavily influenced by negative comments. Bullying, moving school, glamorous images in the media, and traumatic events can also affect self-esteem negatively.

While it’s natural to sometimes be critical of ourselves, if criticism and harsh judgments often outweigh any positive self-assessment, this may indicate a low self-esteem. Low self-esteem  can cause people to constantly compare themselves with others; it can impair confidence, and create thinking errors such as catastrophising and all-or-nothing thinking (more on this in the Thinking article).

Case study

Self-esteem is often built up over long periods of time, but can also be affected suddenly, often by an upsetting event such as abuse, parental separation or loss. When Steven* was dumped by his boyfriend, his self-esteem took a large hit.

Steven said he thought his boyfriend had broken up with him because he wasn’t clever enough, and not attractive enough. He put a lot of time, energy and thought into the things he didn’t like about himself, and attributed his own flaws to his boyfriend’s decision to end the relationship.

The way Steven was thinking started to affect his behaviour. He began avoiding social situations, not wanting to be - as he assumed was happening - judged by others based on his looks. He found he was doubting himself, asking for others’ opinions and never really trusting his own ideas. He stopped standing up for himself, acting passively and not speaking up when he disagreed with someone.

Steven wanted things to change, but wasn’t sure how. I challenged him to imagine what things might be like for him if his self-esteem were to improve, and be more positive. Steven replied that he could see how things would be better if he could think better of himself, but felt so far away from reaching this goal.
*name has been changed