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Respect.

A requisite to any relationship.

Even one with yourself.

Especially one with yourself.

So how do you explain it when you don’t respect yourself and refuse to give yourself the love and acceptance that you need most above every other necessity in the world?

This love and acceptance and self-care, this confidence in oneself and belief in one’s own strength—is commonly called self-esteem. And it’s very important to have self-esteem.

Many of us are naturally gifted with self-esteem, we develop it in childhood because of the positive and supporting environment we grow up in, but at the same time, some of us foster self-esteem issues within ourselves too.

In this post, we’ll talk briefly about how to help someone with low self-esteem, whether that someone being a friend, a family member, a distant classmate, or maybe even a stranger.

You do know the world becomes a better place by spreading kindness to strangers, right?

Here, I’ll provide you with actionable ways for building self-esteem in yourself, and for helping others with low self-esteem too. Self-esteem is hugely important for us, as busy, functioning human beings, to find basic motivation and energy to perform tasks. If we didn’t have self-esteem, we wouldn’t be confident in ourselves and it will in turn, effects many facets of our lives—whether they be professional work, personal relationships, health, finance, or social life.

Do I Have Low Self-Esteem Issues?

It’s really easy to find out if you have low self-esteem issues and need treatment for them.

All you have to do is observe.

We’ll come to the part on how to help someone with low self-esteem shortly, but before that we’ll identify these common signs of low self-esteem issues.

Low self-esteem is lack of confidence in oneself.

It’s not about how others see you. It’s pretty exclusively about how you see yourself. It’s about the level of trust you’re willing to put in yourself.

It’s about how much you respect yourself, how often you stand up for yourself, even in face of daunting situations.

Low self-esteem, is basically, putting low trust in who you are, and what you can achieve. Regardless to say, it’s one of the main factors of self-sabotaging behavior.

Are you sabotaging yourself? Who knows, you might be, even subconsciously. Look for these 11 warning Signs of Self-Sabotaging Behavior and How to Fix Them.

#1.2 Common signs of low self-esteem

1. Underestimating your abilities.

Have you ever backed down from a project because you were unsure you could implement it correctly? Have you ever shied away from a new relationship because you were scared you wouldn’t do it justice?

This signifies lack of confidence in yourself and what you could do when you were given an opportunity. This also signifies the fear of failure, because you think you’re protecting yourself from failure and criticism by withdrawing from responsibilities and work.

2. Joking about yourself negatively.

This is so common that people with self-esteem issues almost do it subconsciously.

To match the social and group norms they move in, we almost see it as normal to speak bad about ourselves to gain sympathy and a sense of belongingness within the group.

This kind of self-criticism is indirectly building others’ and our own conception regarding ourselves. If we’re always putting ourselves down, it might just end up giving the people around us a green signal to put us down too.

Whenever we’re in a group, we have to make it a rule to never talk bad about ourselves and only say the good, positive things. If we don’t have any good, positive things to say about ourselves, then we should keep quiet.

And read this blog post further.

3. Perfectionism

Chasing perfection and then beating ourselves up for it is a really great way to hide a substantial lack of self-esteem. Feeling the need to be always perfect in everything just shows how we are afraid of not living up to the mark because if, God forbid, we fail, then others will stop seeing us as smart, talented and beautiful people.

As I said before, it’s not about how others see us. It’s about how we see ourselves.

It gives off the signal that we are nothing until we are perfect, and this is a complete false and destructive belief to foster. This also finds its close roots with Black and White Thinking, which is a psychological phenomenon about perceiving things as either good or bad.

To find out more about it, you can read this article that I originally wrote for my bestie and then decided to publish here: How to Battle Black And White Thinking?

If you, by any chance, deal with the problem of perfection, know that it is another sign of self-sabotaging behavior.

Good thing I’ve got just the right thing for you: How to Forgive Yourself for Not Being Perfect?

4. Social withdrawal.

Withdrawing from social groups and keeping away from making friends, being excessively shy in front of others is also a sign of low self-esteem issues that is very common.

If we feel that we are not enough or that others would not like us as we are, then we all have a tendency to build shells around ourselves and stay within them for the sense of security.

# Impact of Having A Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem affects almost all the areas of an individual’s life, and indulging in this behavious for a prolonged period of time intently, is also kinda similar to digging your own grave. Mentally, of course.

The impact that low self-esteem can have in a person’s life is:

• Unhealthy relationships (that won’t work corrently, until a thread finally snaps.)

• Minimal to no self growth or development

• Staying in the same job and position your whole life without any scope of increment or promotion.
• Mental stress and worries because you know what you’re doing is wrong and harmful to yourself, but you can’t seem to stop.

Kindness is helping others.

Kindness is important in changing the world.

It is also important if you need to pull up someone’s self-esteem to high set bars, so that they also realise their own role in changing the world and helping others. One act of kindness can make a huge difference.

We studied cumulative effect when we were younger. Cumulative effect builds up to huge, epic things. If somewhere you see someone with low self-confidence, lacking self-esteem, do your absolute best to help them find the solution.

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We should embrace who we are without judgements, embrace our strengths and strengthen them, embrace our weaknesses and improve them.

• Self care
• Speak up when it feels right
• Forgive yourself even if you’re not perfect. Yet. You’ll get better.
• Feel comfortable in your own skin: accept the way you are
• Respect yourself like you’d respect a mentor or a family member
• Positive affirmations. Positive self-talk. You are significant. You are loved. You are beautiful and smart and pretty and really kind.
• Train yourself so that no challenge scares you
• Look for opportunities and grab them
• Set SMART goals and nail them.
• Never ignore your weaknesses. Strengthen them too.
• Seek professional help
• Be kind to yourself

Discuss the role of self-acceptance and self-love in building confidence.

If we feel like we are proud of who we are, of what we’ve accomplished, of how we act, it boosts our confidence in ourselves.

No matter how others see us, we only have to focus on how we see ourselves. If we feel comfortable in our own skin, we will help others feel comfortable too. This will lead to an overall positive mood wherever we go, and people will look for our presence.

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• Make them feel important
• Praise them for their achievement
• Be patient. I feel the need to elaborate on this one. If you’re dealing with a person with very low self-esteem issues then it is probably that they will deny all the good, positive compliments you’ll give to them in the beginning. They’ll feel like they don’t deserve it, that it isn’t true. And you might end up losing your patience during that, especially if youll have to repeat every single fricking things just to make then believe you.
• Help them strengthen the areas they feel insecure it. Whether it be job, relationship, or their own image of their body.
• Involved them with all your friends and groups so that they feel included Try to include them in things you feel they might like.
• Share laughs and positivity
• Befriend them! Like,this is actually the most obvious and should’ve been the first.
• Listen to them if they speak. For all you know, thus might be a big leap of courage for them.
• Make them feel like their opinions matters and if you feel the need to absolutely point out some flaws, do it ever so gently and casually.
• Don’t make a big deal out of it if they start improving. People with low self-esteem hate to be the centre of focus. That’s the whole point of having low self-esteem issues. If you see some changes in them, or see them taking the first step forward without anyone prompting them, just feel happy that you’re succeeding, but don’t make a big deal out of it. Especially don’t put them in a negative spotlight.

So these were the few tips and tricks that I felt are important to improve your own self-esteem, or to help someone else with low self-esteem. If you are close to someone who has low self-esteem, or if you yourself suffer with this self-conscious dilemma, it’s time to stop pulling back and staying low.

Every day, millions of opportunities pass by without our notice because we don’t seem to be able to overcome our fear. In that time, it’s necessary to understand what is holding us back, and then stepping in the game so that we let ourselves leave it behind.

That’s how you change the world, after all.