Feeling good about ourselves is important to living a full and vibrant life. Maintaining a healthy self-image is a lifelong process. But, what can we do when our healthy self-perception gets bumped off course? Improving your self-esteem is a daily process.
Rare are the people who truthfully walk around life radiating what appears to be an inexhaustible supply of self-confidence. We all experience human emotions such as self-doubt.
There is a difference between individuals with what seems like mountains of self-confidence and those who appear to lack self-esteem. People with a healthy self-image don’t just magically become that way and stay there. Here are five steps to finding your self-worth and keeping it.
Develop a Morning Routine
Deep thinkers and self-motivation gurus have insisted for centuries that human beings are creatures of habit. It’s said that our routines become our habits. When it comes to self-worth, developing routines is healthy for our self-image.
Source: ShutterstockThere is a story about a Navy SEAL commander who insisted it was vital to make his bed every morning. It established a routine and immediately he could subconsciously feel he accomplished something.
When he came back to that bed, no matter how challenging the day, he could retire knowing he successfully completed that goal. There are other ways to set a healthy morning routine.
Strive to give yourself at least 10 minutes of personal time. During this time, self-reflect. Now, what you on reflect matters as well.
Negative Thoughts vs. Positive Reinforcement
If someone insists that they never experience negative self-thoughts, they’re probably not being 100-percent truthful. We all experience moments of self-doubt. There are branches of science that study the neuroscience behind self-esteem vs. self-criticism.
When we add this second step to step number one, we begin to establish a foundation for a more positive approach to each new day. As you enjoy your moments of self-reflection, practice throwing out negative thoughts and replacing them with positive reinforcement.
Change the Way You Think
You started your day with a successful mission, plus established a foundation for redirecting negative thoughts as they appear. These two initial steps help create a habit of changing the way you think.
Source: ShutterstockIf you’ve spent a lifetime embroiled in negative thinking and reinforcing self-doubt, you’re going to have to work at making changes. Don’t expect to flip a switch and suddenly become someone who appears to live on a pink cloud, thinking happy, pleasant, positive thoughts 24-7.
All positive thinkers and people of obvious strong self-confidence seem to have one common attribute. They all work at improving positive self-talk. When negative, self-doubting thoughts creep into your mind, practice replacing them something positive.
One practical suggestion is to target something about yourself that you can be grateful. This starts a process of improving the way you talk to yourself in your mind. Our spoken words are important.
However, what we say to ourselves in our minds can create a mountain of self-doubt. Practice changing the way you think and you’ll begin to build a mountain of self-worth.
Take Care of Your Physical Health
As part of changing the way you think inside your mind, you also should strive to change the way you feel about your appearance. We’re not suggesting that it takes an eye-startling physical appearance to support a healthy self-worth.
As with many tips for improving how we view ourselves internally, our physical health cannot be overlooked. There is science behind how well we take care of our physical selves and what our self-perception is.
We could spend pages explaining more neurological data about how even the act of walking around the block triggers healthy, feel-good processes in our bodies. The key to this step is to set a goal to take care of your physical health. It will help improve your self-worth.
Help Someone Else
Source: ShutterstockThe numbers of self-improvement and self-fulfillment ideologies are packed with a wealth of diverse knowledge. However, nearly everyone has an internal component that involves improving ourselves by giving to someone else.
It follows an ageless adage that we get back what we give out. When it comes to improving our self-worth, being helpful to someone else is another scientifically proven tool. Centuries of spiritual teachers have insisted that being helpful to others is one secret to happiness.
It makes us feel good to do something good for someone else. It’s quite the conundrum when we realize that to make us feel better about ourselves all we need to do is to try to do something nice for someone else.
These are five ways to help you improve your self-worth, or begin to rediscover it if you think you’ve started to lose sight of your importance. All of us have a role to play in this world. We can stay stuck in the mud of self-doubt, or change the way we view ourselves.
These five tips will help you develop better routines, alter your thinking about who you are as a person, and establish a set of practices that will make you feel good about yourself and more importantly help keep you there.
