How to Build Self Esteem

Discover how to build self-esteem - both your own and others - so that you can fast-track your success. Only leaders with high self-esteem can create high-performing teams.
Let's start with a couple of definitions:

Building self-esteem is an internal job. It is you, telling you, how good you are ... with pride and not conceit.

However, ego is you telling everyone else how good you are ... and generally accompanies someone with low self-esteem!

Before we jump into how to build self-esteem, let's first take a look at the characteristics of someone with high self-esteem.

Characteristics of someone with high self-esteem

One more sidetrack before we learn how to build self-esteem.

Let's take a quick look at the characteristics of a person with a low sense of self. Because sometimes it can be tricky to identify them. People sometimes provide an illusion of self-confidence when, in fact, they aren't convinced of their value or competence. Do you know anyone who:

Characteristics of someone with low self-esteem

If you know someone who displays a lot of these behaviors and traits, you are probably dealing with someone with some self-esteem issues.

Here's How To Build Self Esteem

There are many ways you can build self-esteem. These are four that I particularly like:

So let's take a look at each of them in more detail.

Action One: Building Self-Efficacy

Psychologists use the term self-efficacy to describe the beliefs you hold about what you are capable of achieving in life. People with high self-efficacy generally have high self-esteem. Having positive expectations helps build self-efficacy.

Here's a brilliant way to start your day with positive expectations.

Take a minute, first thing in the morning, and recall a few of your life successes. It can be something small or something big. It can be from a week ago, or it can be from 20 years ago!

Some examples are: getting your drivers license, a badge at girl guides, getting your current job, climbing a mountain, raising money for charity, leading your team successfully through a challenging time.

As you think about your successes, try to relive the feelings you felt then. Relish those feeling for a few moments. Now you'll be able to take those feelings with you through the day.

If you hit a hurdle at some point in the day and begin to doubt your capability, flick back to these feelings.

Feel your successful moment again. 

Sit up straight, dwell on that past success and those feelings for a few moments.

Fill yourself with this new vibe

Then turn back and look at your challenge with fresh eyes.

You'll be amazed at how a few seconds can change your thinking, your posture, your mind.

You will have switched on different neurons in your brain, and cells in your body, that will help you to be at your creative best.

Read more about Self Efficacy. It is a vital component of how to build self-esteem.

Action Two: Be Mindful of How You go to Sleep - Program your subconscious for success

The last half hour before you go to bed is critical. You are more receptive to messages than at any other time during the day. When we go to sleep, our conscious mind clicks off, and our subconscious mind clicks on and entertains itself for the rest of the evening.

There are numerous studies that show that what you do before you go to sleep has an influence over your dreams.

Unfortunately, 95% of people watch t.v before they go to bed. What are the images they are bringing into their sub-conscious each night? More often than not they are images of rape and mayhem from the latest episode of NCIS and such.

How are you spending your last half hour at night? Affirmations, prayer, reading uplifting works, journaling, meditating. Create a positive experience before you go to bed. Because your subconscious drives so much of your actions and reactions to our world.

Action Three: Loving and Accepting Yourself

This exercise will probably feel very uncomfortable, and if you have a partner, you will probably need to tell them what you are doing and why.

Go to your mirror and look yourself in the eye now hold eye contact. No looking away. Acknowledge everything you did well or are glad that you did that day. 

For example: got up on time, ate a healthy breakfast, played with the kids, loved my wife, lead that meeting well, and so on.

Then, and this is important: say to yourself, "I just wanted to let you know that I love you."

The first few times that you do this, you may feel silly, numb, giggle, cry, go blank. This is because you are doing something against traditional conditioning. Everything you've been taught about being humble is being challenged. But being overly humble is a negative self-esteem act. Permit yourself to love yourself!

Try it for 3-4 days, and you will drop to another level within yourself. It is kind of a weird feeling it is almost like you have developed a crush on yourself.

Self-acceptance is an essential component of high self-esteem.

Accept your faults and experience the truth of whom you are without feeling shame or guilt.

When you love yourself, you will become more productive, creative, playful, and joyful.

Read about improving your self-talk (that constant chatter that goes on in your head). The diagram on the self-talk page shows how that chatter impacts on your self-worth and consequently your performance.

Action Four: (Building Belonging and Acceptance)

This tip is mainly for parents ... but you can do it for yourself as well!

For parents who want an easy tool to build their children's self-esteem ... Have two photos right beside your child's bed that are the last things they see at night and the first thing in the morning.

One photo is of them doing something that makes them happy, where they are laughing and being successful. this photo intends to deliver the message to the child: "I am accomplished." The other photo is of their family; this image is to give them a sense of belonging. Both are important elements in building self-esteem.

In fact, when you walk into people's offices/cubicles, you can tell an awful lot about their self-esteem from the photos they have displayed!

Read more about why acceptance and belonging are an important part of creating a high-performance workplace.