Overcoming Low Self Esteem

Overcoming low self esteem is critical in order to develop and sustain long term self motivation. Low self esteem saps your energy and your will power, and makes it hard to clarify what it is you really want out of life.

If you feel like you don't deserve success in life, it will be hard to sustain your energy and will power to accomplish success. Low self esteem will really sabotage your efforts to move forward in life and can quickly dissipate your motivation to keep going.

An important part of self motivation is having a sense of purpose, a good reason to take action. Having low self esteem may result in feeling without purpose, a sense of not really knowing what to do with your life.

With low self esteem it can be hard to get started on goals, and once you get started your efforts can easily be derailed with negative feedback. This can lead to a downward spiral where each time you fail to complete a goal, you take another hit on your self esteem, which makes it harder for you to get motivated to start a goal, and so on.

In overcoming low self esteem, you will find renewed focus and clarity in what you want and really feel a sense of purpose in your life.

Causes of Low Self Esteem

Self esteem is based on deep rooted beliefs about self worth and your innate potential. With low self esteem you may not feel like you deserve very much, you may believe that your efforts will most likely meet with failure, and you may think that you don't have much potential for improvement. Beliefs like these will make a high level self motivation very difficult to attain, you may have a hard time accomplishing goals. Overcoming low self esteem requires changing some of your deep seated beliefs about yourself.

Steps in Overcoming Low Self Esteem

Take Responsibility

The first step in overcoming low self esteem is to realize that it is not your fault. It is not an inherent flaw or permanent disability. It is the result of environmental factors that influenced you to create negative beliefs about yourself and your potential. These causes of low self esteem may be factors outside of yourself, but the power to change lies completely within. Only you have the power to change things, and you must take the responsibility to do so.

Examine your Beliefs

Start paying attention to your self talk, the internal dialogue in your head. It can be helpful to start keeping a journal, and keep track of the reoccurring negative themes in your thinking. These themes may point to the negative beliefs you hold about yourself. In your journal, take each of the negative themes and rebut them, make an argument as to how they are incorrect and develop an opposite positive belief to replace it. As you find a theme occurring in your self talk remember the argument against it, remind yourself why the belief is wrong and what new belief you have created in its place.

Work on developing your strengths

Nothing helps build self esteem as succeeding with a goal or activity. Think about what you are already good at, or could be without a lot of work. Develop your strengths first to build up your confidence and start overcoming your low self esteem. Start off small, find ways to create small victories, then build from there.

Eliminate Negative Influences

Negative people and environments can make it hard to overcome low self esteem. As much as possible, eliminate the negative influences, avoid people and places that tend to reinforce your negative beliefs, and try to find more positive influences that can help reinforce the positive beliefs you are trying to create.

Overcoming low self esteem will greatly help your level of self motivation, help you feel better about yourself, and enhance your ability to accomplish more in your life.

Here is more detail for learning how to build self esteem.

For more help on overcoming low self esteem, take a look at these self esteem exercises.

These are some common low self esteem signs that can help you evaluate if you have low self esteem.

Understanding some common causes of low self esteem is a good first step in changing your self esteem levels.

Here are some additional symptoms of low self esteem that can help you evaluate if you or someone you know might have low self esteem.

Try these self esteem boosters the next time you are feeling a bit low and need a spark to get you going again.

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