How to Develop Self Esteem

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Our self esteem is instilled in us during our youth. Being constantly criticized by parents and family members tends to slowly strip us of our feelings of self worth. Our low self esteem strips us of our self confidence to make even the smallest of decisions. We think little of ourselves, and feel we do not deserve to be happy. Improving your self esteem increases your confidence and is a first step towards finding happiness and a better life. You gain this confidence by believing that you are unique, you are special, and that you deserve to have your dreams come true!

Steps

Take small steps and make small choices to gain confidence in your ability to make a decision. As you become secure in your ability to make good choices, you will gain confidence in yourself, and be more secure about your abilities in general.
- For example, if purchasing jeans makes you nervous because of having to decide on brands, colors, and styles, then just take the plunge. This is a minor decision that can always be rectified by exchanging the jeans if you really feel you made a wrong decision. However, try to stick to your original choice.
- Buy a shirt next, to go with the jeans. Take your time trying on different styles and colors. When you feel a bit of excitement inside of you, you will know you are making a good decision, so buy it. It is that inner feeling that will help you build up your feeling of self worth. You will begin to think, 'if I can do this well, I can do other things.' Your confidence grows, and so does your self esteem. Confidence and self worth go hand in hand.
- Wear your jeans and shirt the next time you go to meet friends. Show off your outfit. You will know by the compliments you get that you did indeed make a good decision. Smile and be proud of yourself because you took the first step of many in gaining confidence in yourself via your ability to make decisions. The newfound confidence comes from your willingness to assert yourself and make a simple decision.
Reward yourself when you succeed. You deserve to have your dreams, and to make them come true. Believe in yourself completely, and others will also believe and trust you.
Improve your self confidence
Face your fears and forget all your failures. Get up and try again. It is not important that you failed, but that you tried to succeed.
Don't always try to please others. It is considerate to care about others' feelings but your needs are important also. Do not try to be like someone else either. You will be at your best when you are being yourself because of your uniqueness. Strive to be your best, do not criticize yourself if you fall short of your expectations.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons or persons who have a negative attitude which may rub off on you. Do not compare yourself to others. Just be the best that you can be.
Do something to impress yourself. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or vet's office. Be a Big Brother or Sister. Help someone else. Nothing makes you feel better about yourself than seeing how your help made someone else's load a little lighter. Take a class, study hard, and pass - learn something useful or interesting. It could be photography, oil painting, a literature appreciation class, or beginning guitar. Being accomplished raises self-esteem.
Try not to be perfect. Aiming for perfection in life is a lost cause because there is no such thing. Nobody is perfect in the eyes of everyone else, so by trying to be perfect you may just be setting yourself up for disappointment. Instead, seek to achieve goals. In example, take a class of arts; study hard, and pass with flying color.They are much more realistic, much easier to reach, and can do wonders for your self-esteem.
stop the negative thoughts that you have in yourself. The term “self-fulfilling prophecy” in relation to self-esteem basically states that whatever you believe about you, whether it be perfect or totally off base, becomes true. If you constantly tell yourself you are stupid or that you will never achieve success, you will in turn act as such. So, make a habit out of saying positive things about yourself and use the self-fulfilling prophecy to your advantage.
Learn to appreciate yourself. Everyone has strengths, weaknesses, habits, and principles that define who you are and can make you distinctive. Spend more time focusing on the qualities about yourself that you like and less on the ones that you dislike. You can better accomplish this by taking up hobbies and projects that you can do that will make use of your strengths. Additionally, by starting on some projects that emphasize your good traits, it will keep you busy so you will end up spending less time thinking about your weaknesses.

Tips

Watch the movie "Annie." It is about an orphaned girl who always seems to see the bright side in life. It will help you raise your self-esteem and not be so negative all the time.
Your inner strength will enable you to reach your goals in life. If you fall down, pick yourself up and try again.
As your self confidence builds, you will feel better about yourself, and your self esteem will grow from the inside out.
Not all decisions may turn out to be right ones. Just keep in mind that right or wrong, you are the one who makes the decisions in your life. Because you are responsible for your choices, you have the power to change your situation. Do not let your confidence disappear because you made one wrong choice. Do not let the feeling of self worth that you have built up crumble and fall. There are other choices to be made; believe you can make them, and you will! Remember that most people will tell you that they would rather regret things they did do than things they didn't do. Be bold! And comfort yourself, if something doesn't quite work as well as hoped, that at least you tried something.
Choices are made by individuals and their ability look deeply into themselves and say 'I can do that' or 'I would like that'.
Decisions will not be only about what to buy or wear. We have to make decisions all of our lives about many details, circumstances, and people. It can be where to live, what type of person to marry, a choice of a job or career, where to go to school, or whether or not to go on to College. It could be if you move to another State, or to another country.
Every day look at yourself in the mirror. Try to find something to admire about yourself, and try to say some positive things about yourself and your accomplishments and achievements.
Make sure your self talk is positive at all times. Tell yourself how great you are, or how good you look today, anything positive about yourself to help you feel confident. Make being positive your natural state of being.
Visualize yourself being surrounded by people, who are patting you on the back or shaking your hand, or standing clapping you. Visualization is a very powerful tool to use.
The most important thing of all is that you have to believe in yourself. If you believe you can, then you will be able to.
Once you convince your subconscious the way you want to be, you will find that you will start to become far more confident and life will be the way you want it.
Be aggressive. Boosting your self-esteem is all about getting what you need/want. So do things for your own sake. Remember, you must help yourself first before you can help others. You can't lose or give away what you don't have so be selfish and when you come to a higher level to yourself you can start helping others with lower self-esteem. And at the end only you will recollect what you have done and define who you are and what you're about.
Listen to a song that suits your mood. There is a song for almost everything! When you jam to a favorite tune that you can relate to, it gives you confidence.

Warnings

Some decisions will involve another person, a medical decision, or where to live if you marry. Therefore, some decisions may have to be made jointly. You might have to compromise, but once your self confidence becomes something that you can rely upon, that inner feeling of self worth will guide you through tough decisions.
The opposite feeling of self-esteem is anxiety. But don't immediately dismiss this feeling. Feeling anxious is not a good nor a bad feeling. It's just a mechanism of yourself of telling you that there's something wrong and you need to act upon it. Anxiety is the fuel to responding to what is wrong and thus developing self esteem.
Be careful not to overdo your esteem-building, as it could lead to conceit and arrogance if not done in moderation.
Everyone goes through the phases of feeling low or high i.e. low or high self esteem. This happens especially; if you judge yourself by your successes or failures (as others do). If you learn to estimate yourself by the nature of actions (e.g. their benefit to the society), then you are likely to develop high self esteem (respect yourself) without any disrespect or bitterness about others.

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