Five Important Steps to Building Self Esteem

Self esteem is an experience. An experience that can be defined as experiencing one’s self; how one copes with life’s basic challenges and whether they view themselves as being worthy of happiness, and let’s face it, how many people do you know who you could honestly say feel that they are worthy of happiness?

Luckily for everyone, there are five ways to build up self esteem; methods which, if put into practice on a daily basis, will show you your true worth.

1.Being Present in the Moment: If being ‘present in the moment’ is a little too ‘out there’ of a concept, try to think of it this way; if you can be alert to what you are doing while you are doing it and be actively seeking new information and knowledge that explains what is going on in the world around you, than you can be said to be present in the moment; aware of all the opportunities that are available right here and now. These aren’t dependent on your achieving a certain status or level or having a certain possession, but merely on your being aware that the opportunities exist, and then taking advantage of them.

2.Accept Yourself: In spite of what you might think, this is not as hard as it may seem. In order to be able to accept yourself you need to be willing to take responsibility for every thought you think, every feeling that you feel and every action that you take without trying to deny your responsibility or put the blame for them on anyone other than yourself. Accepting yourself also means that you can’t pass judgment on any of your thoughts, emotions or actions, simply acknowledge that you think them, feel them or did them without trying to label them as good or bad.

3. Be Self Assertive: You’re cringing, aren’t you? That’s okay; the concept of assertiveness has developed a negative connotation over the last decade or so, but think of it more as being authentic in how you deal with other people and a refusal to pretend to be something other than what you are. In this context you can see that being self assertive isn’t so much a process of forcing ourselves and personalities on someone else so much as refusing to be anything other than what we are; there is a difference.

4.Live Purposefully: Without goals our lives tend to stagnate. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the way we’re built, so having short term and long term goals; being able to identify the steps we need to take to achieve these goals; can go a long way towards our ability to live purposefully, and a continual re-evaluation of where we are and how much further we have to go will serve us well.

5.Practice Personal Integrity: This concept is a bit more difficult, for it is harder to pin down. Think of personal integrity as the ability to bring what your thoughts and words into alignment with your actions and continually strive to be the very best version of ourselves. The specifics will vary from person to person, but the idea is still the same. Openness and honesty goes a long way to helping you to feel good about how what you do and say is in alignment with what you think or profess to believe about a thing.

And so, now you can see the five steps that will lead you to a higher respect for yourself and appreciation for your worth as an individual; an individual worthy of every happiness; but beware, for just as there are steps to building self worth, there are also pitfalls that one must avoid on the road to building self esteem.