When it comes to maintaining your mental health, your self-esteem plays a very important role. How you feel about yourself affects how you see the world, so if you’re not loving yourself it’s often hard to see the love, affection, and approval in others.
That’s why as a Long Island psychologist, one of the first goals of all forms of therapy is to assess and address your self-esteem. But self-esteem is not something that can be completed only in the clinical environment. You’ll also want to make sure you’re actively trying to improve your self-esteem every day.
How to Improve Self Esteem
Improving self-esteem is a process, and sometimes it’s not an easy one. But it’s also very important for your own mental health and wellness. The following are very important strategies for boosting your self-esteem:
- Have Experiences – Interestingly it’s memories and experience, not necessarily praise, that can have a major impact on self-esteem. Try to do new things, create goals, and expand your horizons. You’ll often find that new experiences give you confidence and help you enjoy life more.
- Create Achievable Goals – Those with low self-esteem often struggle with one of two issues. Either they have no goals, or they create unrealistic goals that they cannot reach. Goal setting and achievement is one of the best ways to improve your feelings of self-worth. Set more realistic goals, actively go after them, and you’ll be able to enjoy your successes more.
- Become Closer to Your Friends and Family – Those that are well connected to their friends and family are more likely to have higher self esteem. That is because self-esteem is often rooted in social support. If you’re feeling troubled, try getting closer to your best friends and family members, and you’ll often see a boost of self-esteem as a result.
- Remove Those that Put You Down – You’ll sometimes find yourself surrounded by those that don’t necessarily pick you up. If you have people in your life that put you down, even if they do so in good spirits, it may be time to cut ties. Self-esteem can be fragile, and while someday you will be able to take a few good jokes at your expense, when you have low self-esteem those that try to bring you down too often end up hurting you more than helping.
- Stop Comparing Yourself to Others – Above all else, try to learn how not to compare yourself with others. This is especially problematic with social media, where it often seems like everyone has this great, amazing life but you. Remember that they’re choosing what to post of themselves and ignoring all of their own problems. You have your own strengths, and you should appreciate those rather than focus on the things you can’t compare with.
Self-esteem can be improved with time and effort. If you’d like help with self esteem in Long Island, contact me today.
