Learning how to overcome low self esteem, like nearly every other stumbling block in life, is easy to do when you change your mindset. Just how can a low self esteem be controlled by the mind? I’ll elaborate on this below.
How To Overcome Low Self Esteem: You Can Control Your Confidence!
1. The way you react to your failures and shortcomings defines you just as much as your successes.
You have the choice to beat yourself up over them, or to see them as a necessary stepping stone to improvement.
How you can turn it around:
Accept what you can’t change, learn from what you can, and commit to making those changes right now. This is, by far, one of the most important steps for learning how to overcome low self esteem. It’s especially important in the embarrassing event that someone else has to show you the mirror… yikes.
2. Your reaction to rejection will greatly impact your future.
Failures are a common reason for a person’s self-esteem to suffer. One reason that may be even more common is the fear of rejection.
Rejection is a difficult thing to swallow when it feels like it’s a sharp stab at who we are to the core. Even as much as it seems to be about us, rejection itself can have so little to do with us and so much to do with the other person. That’s why you need to re-frame it in your mind.
Have you been judged for doing something that brings you joy? No other person is entitled to deciding what you can and can’t enjoy. Their short-term comfort when they’re around you is not as important than your long-term joy and happiness!
Anyone who tries to influence that is not worth your time anyway. To put it bluntly; you do you, and be glad that you’ve gotten rid of someone so petty anyway.
How you can turn it around:
- Learn to look at rejection as a filter to find your real friends.
If you feel that you were rejected for being your authentic self, you should continue to embrace that part of yourself. Begin to pursue friends who also embrace that aspect of you, rather than reject it. A friend you’ve made as someone you pretended to be will never be as enjoyable as a friend you’ve made by being who you really are. - Rejection can be a necessary kick in the pants to improve things about ourselves that need it.
If you were rejected for something that is damaging to your own life, you may have been rejected because they care enough about you to be deeply affected by watching you stumble. They may be judging you for making a conscious choice to fail. Either way, this hurts, and preventing it from happening again can be just another “why” to motivate you to make a change.
3. You do need to have some “wins”.
The easiest way to quickly increase your self-confidence is to do something worth being proud of.
Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Achievements that only bring short-term gratification and recognition from other people are nice to have, but they should not be your primary focus.
How to get started: Ask yourself this question.
“What can I do that will make me proud of myself when nobody else is watching?”
Through working with my clients, I’ve gotten some great suggestions. They’ve inspired me to think of my own, too. Some of my favorites have been to learn a second language, or an instrument.
Even an education that you may or may not need is enough of a boost in confidence, purely because you get to say, “I did it!” Programs, like the CLEP (College-Level Examination Program) are out there to make this faster, easier, and more affordable for all ages.
Someone else’s pride in you is fragile, and often temporary. Worse yet, it’s not always in alignment with what would make you proud of yourself. Understanding this is the key to using accomplishments as another method for how to overcome low self esteem.
Imagine how rewarding it would be to chase your own dream, succeed, and prove everyone else wrong. Far more rewarding than to pursuing something they want for you that doesn’t even bring you long term satisfaction.
Recommended for further reading on how to overcome low self esteem…
“I Suck!” – How “Playful” Sarcasm is Destroying Your Confidence
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