4 Quick Fixes to Boost Your Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem is at the root of many mental health and performance challenges. It can have many causes such as childhood trauma, abuse, being bullied or feeling you don’t belong. In later life, stressors such as financial strain, illness and injury can also impact your self-esteem. Following are 4 techniques that can effectively boost your self-esteem:

1. Getting Out of Thinking Traps

In cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), cognitive restructuring is a popular technique for treating low self-esteem. This involves noting your unhelpful thinking patterns and replacing them with more balanced, evidence-based, and realistic thoughts. Are you “Mind-reading”, “fortune-telling”, using “black-and-white thinking”, “ignoring the positives” of what you’ve done, or “catastrophizing” your mistakes? These thinking traps and negative thoughts aren’t necessarily reflections of reality, but are instead unconscious mental habits formed over time. By understanding that thoughts aren’t facts, we can see how they cause inaccurate assumptions to be made about who we truly are, and our self-worth.

You can come up with a more balanced alternative thoughts like: “People do like me; my friends say I’m a really good listener”, or “I’m good enough to apply for this job; look at my CV!” This allows us to reduce the intensity and negativity of the thought, which makes us feel better emotionally. While our environment may be a key factor in our emotions, our interpretation is key.

2. Maintaining a Positive Qualities Log

Have you ever tried creating a positive qualities record on which you write down your strengths, qualities, achievements and abilities? This can help counter negative self-evaluations. The idea of “the positive you” is that we can better respond to self-critical thoughts with kindness, compassion, and care. It becomes easy to build acceptance and improve our sense of self-worth. We can also grow from the pain and burden of low self-esteem.

Why not ask friends and family to write down what they have noticed about your abilities, achievements, personal qualities, and positive aspects of your personality, values, and so on? It’s a wonderful surprise to see a list of qualities that we were blind to in ourselves. We don’t need to drown in our own self-critical thoughts; we can try to see ourselves in the positive light in which the special people in our lives see us. These are the people who add meaning to our lives, truly value us, and see our true self-worth.

If you judge yourself through the eyes of a person who does not love, care, for or value you, however, it could reinforce your negative underlying self-criticism and perpetuate negative and toxic relationships with people who simply don’t deserve us.

3. Behavioural Experiments and Activation

Another helpful technique for boosting self-esteem is to test out some of our self-critical thoughts with a behavioural experiment. For example, if we were 80% sure that we wouldn’t get an invitation to a party, or get a job interview because we weren’t a good enough, we probably wouldn’t try and we would lose hope. It’s still worth trying and testing out the belief. If you do get an invitation or you do get called for an interview, then that experiment has worked and proven your negative belief wrong. Hopefully, this will give you a lift in mood and boost your self-esteem.

Behaviour activation is similar: It’s increasing activities that improve our well-being. These are tightly linked to activities that give us a sense of achievement, closeness with others, and enjoyment (ACE). When we feel low, our natural instinct is to withdraw and in some case we even neglect our health. Consistently engaging in activities, regardless of how big or small, is very important. The goal is action first, emotion later.

Rather than waiting for a spark of motivation, we can build motivation by experiencing these small moments of victory. Making your bed in the morning: a small win. Putting on your shoes on to go to the gym: a small win. A series of small wins, when combined, can help reduce avoidance and increase resilience. It will also help increase your sense of achievement.

4. Social Comparison vs. Self-Comparison

Sometimes we feel a lot worse about ourselves when we compare ourselves to others who we feel have achieved more, or perceive to have better lives than ourselves.

What about the opportunity to compare yourself to where you were a year ago, five years ago, or 10 years ago? Self-comparison strategies help people track personal growth by comparing themselves to their past rather than to others and therefore practising gratitude for the progress in your life. It’s also important to clarify what you value most in life, because comparing yourself to others who have very different values, or care about very different things, will mean your sense of self may be distorted.

Values clarification encourages individuals to reflect on what truly matters to them so they can make choices that align with their priorities and create a more purposeful life for themselves, no matter what others may be doing. Stop comparing yourself to others and boost your self-esteem today.