1. Get your hope back about recovery being possible by watching some of the movies on this website. Just knowing that there is an answer can help people to have faith and start getting improvements.
2. People with low self-esteem are excellent at noticing all the things that they’re not good at and not noticing all the things they are good at. Spend at least five minutes working on each of the following lists and make sure that you have at least ten items (hopefully more!) on each list before you stop:
a. What do other people like about you?
b. What do you like about yourself?
c. What are you are good at?
d. What achievements have you made in your life?
e. Which good qualities are part of your personality?
f. Which aspects of your looks and your body do you think are attractive?
g. Why should someone want you as a friend?
h. Why should someone want you as a partner?
i. Why should someone want you as an employee?
j. Why should someone want you as a mother/father/daughter/sister… (whichever roles you have)?
3. Every time you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts about yourself, immediately make yourself think about positive things from your lists. If you re-route your brain often enough, you can start creating changes to those faulty neural pathways.
4. People with low self-esteem are often really bad at receiving compliments. They promptly negate a compliment or don’t believe that the person meant it. Choose to trust that someone only said something nice to you because they genuinely believe it. You wouldn’t throw a gift back at someone – you’d open it and say thank you. Treat compliments as a gift also – smile and say thank you. Then allow yourself to fully register that this person genuinely thinks this way about you. It might be another good thing to add to your list of things that are great about you!
If these suggestions fix your low self-esteem – FANTASTIC!
If these very simple interventions are not enough for you, that’s OK. We have a lot of far more comprehensive techniques and education available at The Switch that will allow you to make bigger transformations.
