5 Ways to Improve Your Self-Esteem

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

1. Try mirror work

This is a popular technique I picked up from Louise Hay, it is used to boost self-love and practice mindfulness. Start by simply gazing at yourself in the mirror. Look deeply into your eyes, almost connect with yourself. As you do this, try not to dwell on your "imperfections". Notice the aspects of your face that you think are beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, bring all of your attention and awareness to these parts. If at any time you begin to have any negative thoughts or emotions, let them pass through, acknoweledge them, and release them. When you feel as though you are done and satisfied with your experience, look back into your eyes and say out loud, "I love you". It may seem weird at first, but make a habit of saying "I love you" everytime you walk by a mirror or do your mirror work. This is an essential step towards bettering your self-esteem and self-compassion.

2. Pick up a hobby

If you've always wanted to paint, take a cooking class, or play the drums, now's the time to start. When you develop and practice a hobby, you will feel accomplished, occupied, and happy. This is a great way to boost your self-esteem. Doing the things you love also gives you a chance to learn more about yourself and expand as a person.

3. Create an uplifting, joyful environment for yourself.

Decorate your workspace or bedroom with bright colors, images/photos that invoke positive emotions, pretty flowers or anything else that makes you feel at ease and content. A nice environment = a happy you.

4. Start a gratitude journal.

Buy yourself a nice notebook or journal and write at least 10 things that you are grateful for everyday and why. Really try to acknoweledge all of the gifts, talents, and things you possess. Make this a ritual and you will see how positive you will feel afterwards. When you write only positive things in your journal, you slowly but surely start to notice only the positive things in your daily life.

5. Focus on your inner-beauty.

The media constantly dictates to us that we are not truly beautiful if we do not have the "perfect body". This leads us to feeling inadequate and our self-worth begins to crumble. In that moment we need to disconnect and focus on ourselves and who we are on the inside.

You need to realize that you are not an airbrushed model or a celebrity, you are YOU. You are more than your dress size, you are more than your acne and you are more than the media's ideal image of beauty. You have an inner beauty and character that shines, that is what makes you special. Redirect your focus and stop dwelling on your appearance. True beauty comes from being yourself, living fully in the moment, and experiencing all the beautiful things this world has to offer. When you are comfortable and at ease with yourself, you are instantly 100x more attractive.

I wish you luck on your self-love journey! xo

[Remonster]

This is good, though I never really believed in 4. 1, 2 and 5 are really important though.

1. Because it will bring you down if you focus only on what doesn't look good about you. I have stretch marks, I don't have a full smile, I have pimples, I have a nose that points up too much and the skin around my eyes is shiny and dark. Yet, I don't let it bother me as much as I once did.

2. Because hobbies not only entertain you, they also define you more as your own individual. You like what YOU like and you shouldn't be discouraged if others don't share your interests. Go out there and get in touch with people who do!

5. Because at the end of a day, a gorgeous looking jackass is still a jackass.

Good take. I'd like to add a few things more:

1. Try to smile more - It's harder to feel bad if you smile and people are more receptive to you if you appear friendly
2. Dress nice - Even when you don't feel good, don't let it spill over to your wardrobe. If you look sharp, people will see you as sharp. If you dress like a rat, people will be less eager to be around you
3. If everything fails and you can't stop feeling down on yourself, maybe it's time to talk it out with someone. Professionals can help you with this, they will work with you and offer you new perspectives about why you cannot accept yourself. There is nothing shameful about visiting a therapist. It's 2015.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I agree! Thanks for your comment :D <3

[Kaylove96]

Thank you. I think this is really good and I think I could use this. I've always wanted to get better with my self love/self esteem but I never knew how exactly. And you mentioned hobby: I've always LOVED SINGING and music. And today I tried writing lyrics for a song. My first song without the beat and notes to sing right now but I feel so amazed by it. Awww. Even as I was writing the lyrics, I was like "wow!" So impressed and amazed and I just can't believe it seems like I did so great with that part done. Now I'm thinking of that and I feel so happy, amazed, impressed,

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I'm glad you feel better! Thanks for reading <3

[Kaylove96]

Your welcome

[WorthlessVirgin]

I got no confidence because I failed at everything. I literally got F's in high school and college. I got kicked out of pharmacy school, rofl. I never hit on a girl because I was too afraid to be open about my sexuality. I never kissed a girl. I never hugged a girl sexually. I'm so angry all the time now, but I keep my anger inside my mind. When I was a kid I was told that sex was evil. Only bad people have sex. Only bad people think about sex. It was only around the age of 19 when I really started questioning if sex was evil. At age 19, I realized that I never really had good friends. They all took advantage of my stupidity and weakness. I got cockblocked by everyone. I never talked with girls unless they were girlfriends with my friends. I feel so retarded. I've been deceived by Islam my entire life, I started praying less and less until I left Islam when I reached 21. Islam destroyed my life. I realize now that because I blindly followed Islam, I lost my chance to communicate with girls for 21 years. My friends were garbage. Every fucking guy in the mosque was a fucking liar. They are all hypocrites. They pretend to be devout Muslims. In reality, as soon as they were on their own, they were constantly hitting on girls and getting laid. I've been deceived not only by my religion, but by my own people. I've missed out on the coolest things on this planet which are girls and sex. After I hit the age of 21, I started hating everything. I thought everything was a scam. Everything felt like deception. So, I took the time to analyze every religion on this planet and realized they were all man-made. I also realized I was very gullible. Everyone had secret sex lives, while I remained a virgin. I'm 26 now, have extreme social anxiety, have deep hatred for this world because of living a life of lies and deceit. The colleges in this planet are all scams to keep the new generation of humans in eternal debt that extend beyond death. College education was never meant to be useful for anything. I didn't realize until I the age of 25, way after I finished college, that I missed out on 4 and half years of free sexual fun while I was in college. What a dumbfuck I was. I'm seriously so stupid, holy fuck. How can someone be so dumb? Damn. I got so mad after I finished college that I decided not to get a job. I fucking played League of Legends for 3 years straight. I ended up reaching Diamond II, which is the top 0.20% of ranked players out of about 1,400,000 ranked players.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Now that I think about it, my friends all had girls in their lives while they all claimed to be devout Muslims. I fucking hate my useless friends. That's why I haven't talked with any of them for the past year. I barely hanged out with them after I became 21. Anyway, the past 6 months, I've transformed my body from almost reaching obesity to a healthy weight. I lost 40 pounds. I started reading some useful books on the history of mankind. UBUNTU Contributionism is a book that explains how the Knights Templar still survive today, their lineage continues through the global banking elite and freemasons. The decendants of the Knights Templar control the entire planet by enslaving humans into a monetary system. There is no true freedom until humans realize that we must remove money from the world. It creates an illusion of scarcity when in reality every resource on this planet is abundant. Slave Species of god is a book that attempts to connect our human history with extraterrestrials.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Slave species of god explains how all the religions in this world were mostly actual events that occurred. But these events were the actions of God. These events were caused by extraterrestrials who claimed to be gods. Humans came into existence around 443,000 years ago through genetic manipulation not evolution. That's why no direct species has been found to completely connect the evolution of apes to humans. The Lost Book of Enki was a very interesting fictional book on the planet Nibiru and its impact on planet Earth. It provides a mind opening glimpse of how extraterrestrials had deep impact with the course of events on planet Earth. Overall, I would say the best book would be UBUNTU Contributionism because if offers a blueprint on what humans should do in order to transition into a moneyless world. That being said, I still have no idea how to build up my self-confidence. I have such low self-esteem, I could never really explain what I typed here verbally. One more thing.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Pharmaceutical industries is another group of criminals of humanity. They perpetually pretend to heal people of their illnesses but in return disable them in another way. No doctor is this planet works without the pharmaceutical industries affecting their decisions. The pharmaceutical industries control doctors. I've used a ton of medications, but I had to counter the side-effects with vitamins and minerals. That's what many people forget to do. No medications exist without side-effects. You must find ways to counter the side-effects if you want a medication to work properly. The future of medicine depends on genetics, though. You see the mind is separate from the body. Our human genome is supposed to serve the mind. The human genome is capable of overriding the mind sometimes, that's why disease is still prevalent. An unlocked genome will give us unhindered access to becoming superhuman. I personally would not want to eternally live in a body. Our mind (our spirit) is the real us.

[WorthlessVirgin]

In my third post I made a mistake in the second sentence. It's supposed to say But these events were NOT the actions of God.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I think you need to work on your overall happiness. Do what makes you happy and release all of the painful experiences you had. You can do it! <3

[WorthlessVirgin]

You're right. I really got to work on my happiness. Thank you! <3

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

You're welcome. I believe you can do it. You might feel lost or alone, but I've got faith in you. <3 :D

[WorthlessVirgin]

You're really awesome. <3 :)

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I just want you to succeed and be happy with your life. Everyone deserves to feel happy and feel like their life has purpose. :D

[BumbleSuperBee]

Wow... dude.. no offence, but you're a retard. It's because of close-minded people like you, that make others believe this crap and stupidity about religion and Islam.
Sorry to break it to uu buddy, but your parents or whatever people you talked to in the mosque are full of crap and are not actual Muslims because that is so not how Islam works. I'm actually really sorry you couldn't learn about Islam the right way. And I'm sorry you think that of religions.
Islam is a beautiful, peaceful and fair religion once you understand it. But I guess it's too late for u to change ur opinion about it.
And no - Islam doesn't say sex is evil. How the f*ck do Muslims reproduce if it's evil? It just says that you can't have Sex unless you're married.
So yea, please don't judge religions or Islam or Muslims by those you've known.
Thanks for understanding.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Have you taken the time to read the translations of the Qur'an? Ancient Arabic isn't my native language. So, I've read the translations of the Qur'an over four times. It's a book of evil. It's a book of division. Islam forces humans to divide themselves and be in constant competition against each other. The good things that you proclaim that Islam advocates are nothing more than your imagination. You believe in the lies of goodness without truly understanding their origins. The Qur'an was meant to break humanity apart so that they would kill each other off. Don't you see the Qur'an is not from God? Why would God want to send people to hell for every tiny sin that they've committed? The true God doesn't want humans to hurt each other and to kill each other. Countless people follow Islam without ever understanding that the Qur'an is a book of evil. I implore you to cast aside your emotions and use your mind to analyze the Qur'an without bias. Is this what God would really send to humans?

[WorthlessVirgin]

The Qur'an is a book of deception meant to keep humans in control. Those gullible enough to fall for this trap are still blindly following Islam. You need to let go of your fears and seek the truth. These books of guidance from every religion are false books designed to control humans and divide humans. These books were designed to keep humans in a perpetual state of war if humans are gullible enough to think that these books are the truth. Please open your mind and see the real truth. You need to know the real truth. Every human deserves to know the real truth. Humans weren't designed to be destructive. The true nature of humans is to become the pinnacle of goodness and the ultimate creators of the universe. There are many planets in this universe that are already connected to God. Earth has not completely connected with God because humans continue to fight over lies created by deceivers while rejecting the truth. These deceivers are malevolent extraterrestrials pretending to be God.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Your definition of Muslim is not true. In the name of Allah, a true Muslim would never hesitate to kill someone from another belief system. A true Muslim shows no mercy to his or her enemies. A true Muslim is constantly in competition with his or her brothers and sisters in order to gain the approval of a fictitious God. The Muslim you are is an evolution of the mind. You yourself are not a true Muslim nor should you strive to be a true Muslim. Please understand that Islam is not the path to truth. The Qur'an is not the word of God. The Qur'an was a product of a malevolent extraterrestrial. Please don't talk crap about my parents. You don't know who they are. They are good people. If you want to insult anyone, just insult me. I've handled the worst kinds of garbage from living in this world for 26 years. Insults from you have no effect on me, but I won't let you attack people who depend on me. You can attack my uncle and cousin, those guys are the worst kind of garbage this planet has.

[WorthlessVirgin]

It's true my parents treated me like dirt, lied to me about many things and still do. But the only reason they act like that is because they were taught by their parents and peers to be like that when they were younger. I know they hate me and want me to move out, but they still allow me to live with them. Because deep down inside I know that they need me, too. I just don't like it when people attack my parents. Despite how much they despise me, my parents were the only ones who looked out for me when no one else wanted to help me in life. My parents are very respectful to everyone and I would consider them to be models of goodness. There only hatred in this world is for me because I was never able to become anything useful and seem like a burden to everyone. I was never able to live up to there dreams. I was never able to live up to their high expectations. Nothing feels worse than being hated by my own parents. Everyone else hating me doesn't bother me.

[WorthlessVirgin]

Their*

[James19]

Sorry for you

[steveguitar]

I am starting to believe that having bad self esteem would almost completely go away if you could get a career you want, and you get at least half of the things you want in life. and having a hobby that is easy to get into is great.

basically failure leads to low self esteem. failure in social situations usually stems from not being similar to those around you or having nothing interesting to talk about.

And self esteem issues usually start when you are a kid, and you have to go back and revisit issues and conquer them somehow.

Very good take though

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Thank you :)

[Battooot]

This is helpful But doesn't tackle all the problems. I have a more indepth and detailed way to increase your self-esteem, it all stems down to the root problems which are causing you to have lower self-esteem. I made a Take about it just recently
www.girlsaskguys.com/.../a10788-how-to-increase-your-confidence-once-for-all

Warning: it's pretty Long. But you will not regret it.

[thecd1979]

Very well though and said. It’s just sad to see that so many women today have no self esteem and are constantly comparing themselves to likes of the airbrushed models they see in cosmo and glamour magazines, the Victoria’s secret angels and whatever other models out there are saying that a women has to look this way or else there is something wrong with them. I always thought the most beautiful women where the one that are confident and comfortable i their own skin.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I agree. Thanks for being a great human being <3

[Anonymous]

I guess another one would be is to not let bad events ruin you.

I remember when I got rebounded by a girl I dated that I felt was closest to a relationship for me absolutely ruined me for awhile. Not that I was ever suicidal but I would let that overshadow all the good shit in my life and it did affect my social skills and overall self esteem for awhile. It definitely was shitty but I realize that I'm not the first person it's happened to nor will I be the last.

Bottom line is life is too short to be negative all the time.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I agree 100%! I hope you feel better <3

[peachblossomluck]

Too many people develop low self esteem from never giving themselves space to improve themselves and really think about what makes them tick. I thought all of these tips were great by the way. Sometimes selfishness is needed in a healthy respect. We put love into others and then don't have anything left for ourselves. We expect them to make up the difference but they can't. We are individually responsible for our own self esteem.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Thanks so much! I agree with you :)

[FrenzyP0W3R]

I just can't understand how couldn't you list that wearing cool clothes which you like and are new , in most cases this gives a self-esteem but I guess you partly cover it in the last point. The gym helps too.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

I was trying to focus more on a person's inner-beauty more than their appearance. Of course having a good personal style and taking care of yourself can boost your self-esteem.

Thanks for your comment! :)

[FrenzyP0W3R]

@GreenEyesOpenSoul You welcome and by the way nic take too.

[Anonymous]

This stuff works for girls who are fine, and they have just had a bad day and they are calling themselves ugly and acting like attention whores.
But if you are genuinly unnatractive, simple doing this shit will not fix that, and will not work.
But, at least your take cheered up the stupid bitches. Nice.

[noneoftheabove]

The longer you continue you with the negative attitude the longer you will stay in that negative place.

[jofherylle]

These tips are really good but i hope you included Bible tips too. Well i know many are not Christians but its good to read the Bible too.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Thanks for your opinion! :)

[aamy811]

I'm still not good at the looking in a mirror thing. Sometimes I put sheets over my mirror so I don't have to look at myself, but that's just me.

[MattAyyy]

I agree with everything except for the last one.. Inner beauty sounds like something from a fairy tail,

[SilenRose]

I like this. A lot of the users on here need to read this.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Thanks so much! :D

[prettygirly91]

I need to try these and see if they will bring me out of my depression...

[scrap422]

Yes you should try them

[prettygirly91]

Yeah :( I don't know if the first one on the list will work for me though...

[nerdybirdy42]

I am going to share this

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Thank you! :)

[Anonymous]

I just can't do the mirror thing, i can't find anything attractive of my face, i just hate it , so i really don't know how can you end up loving yourself in this case.

[Secret22]

I love this, truly made me feel happier just reading it. Thank you! :)

[Supermosh1990]

So very true , what an amazing mytake! You did an amazing job on this. Every young girl on this site should read this!

[Ashely_Princess]

Thanks so much for this take. It helped me to be a better me now :) <3

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

Your welcome :) <3

[sp33d]

Write in the diary you are grateful to have a roof on your head and bread on the table.

[GreenEyesOpenSoul]

That is important to remember. Thanks ! :)

[Touglyforfemales]

Just don't be the following
1) Ugly
2) Ugly
3) Ugly
4) Ugly
5) Ugly
That's it unfortunately I am