Many women have a distorted view of themselves or how they should be. Whether it is an emotional battle or a physical struggle, there are ways to feel better about yourself and modify your perception of self-worth.
Don’t expect things to change immediately. These are just some tools to get you started on your way to a better self-image on your own, without additional help.
1. Your Opinion is the Only One that Matters:
Self-esteem issues can date back to conflicts in childhood. If you were bullied or constantly told you are one thing then eventually the mind starts to believe it.
I’ve noticed that people who suffer self-esteem problems the most are the ones that were told negative things by their parents or older siblings. Whether it be that their parents told them they were fat or dumb or worthless, hearing insults from a young age by people you respect and look up to can be severely traumatizing.
Plus, people who say hurtful things on a regular basis put down others to either make themselves feel better or to deal with frustrations in their own life. Some people don’t even know that they are doing it. They leak their tension onto people they aren’t actually frustrated with without even realizing that they are being hurtful.
By clearing these established thoughts or beliefs from your mind, you can start fresh with a new outlook on life. Of course, they may be hard to get rid of, which is where the next steps come in.
2. Set Small, Realistic Goals
Goals have been a proven technique to feel accomplished in your life. The trick is to start out small, even miniscule if you have to. Just start by setting a couple simple goals for something you want finish in a day AND FINISHING THEM you can feel that your work was worth it.
Maybe even just set a goal for something that you do every day without fail, anyway. For example, set a goal to do a load of laundry from start to finish or eat a salad with a meal to get some extra vegetables in your diet. That way when you look at your list of your goals for the day you can see check marks of everything productive you completed. Because, instead of fulfilling your goals you could have stayed in bed and done nothing, but you completed them anyway and you should feel good about it.
Gradually increase the amount of goals or the difficulty. That way your accomplishments become greater and it gives you something more challenging to work towards and feel good about. By constantly completing and resetting goals your pride in your daily work alone will increase. Then you are able to improve other areas of your life, but you will have more confidence in yourself that you are able to improve and you can do what you set your mind to.
3. Stay Away from Negative Relationships
Low-self esteem attracts negative attention. Logically evaluate all of your relationships, even with your family members, and try to mostly spend your time on the positive ones. That doesn’t mean you need to completely cut yourself off from those people you have a negative relation with, maybe just spend less time with them until your self-esteem is high enough that negativity isn’t so detrimental to you.
Yet, you should definitely be aware of relationships that could become negative, and if you can, avoid them. They can inhibit or even prevent your rehabilitation if you let them. At this time you need all the support you can get, so surround yourself with those that will help you succeed in your goals.
One good way to form a support group is to find people that are working to achieve similar goals. It could be joining a workout class and finding friends to work out with while you try to lose weight. Or perhaps join a book club to help catch up on your reading. Or enroll in a cooking class to learn how to cook healthier meals instead of eating fast food. Whatever your goal may be there are usually other people that want to achieve a goal like that as well. This is also another way to form positive, supportive relationships, which is what you need.