Have you ever woken up on some days and you feel like you are not there yet? You wake up with the feeling of inadequacy, and your inner voice wakes up with you to say: “another day of failure and mistakes await you.”
The mere thought of that can crush spirit for that day and dash your hopes of having anything close to a good day. If this is you on some days and or any other day, then you need to read this.
The Impact of Low Self-Esteem On Everyday Life
Self-esteem is just how we feel about ourselves and how we value ourselves in every situation.
It’s that feeling of self-capability at all times, which gives you the strength to face daily challenges. It is either with your head raised high knowing that even when you have no idea of what to do, you can tackle it, or lowering your head in defeat and resigning to fate, thinking you can’t make it even before you have started anything.
The truth is that everyone at some point in life suffers or has suffered from low self-esteem—a downside and judgmental reaction of our minds to our failures and inadequacies.
Low self-esteem, most times, can be debilitating and incapacitating. You find yourself expecting the worst from anything about yourself and keep feeling that others have it better than you do.
Generally, it brings:
- Constant self-doubt
- Negative beliefs and thoughts about one’s self and one’s capability
- Reduced performance as the individual believes he/she can never do better
- Difficulty in moving on and tackling obstacles in life
- Constant sadness, anxiety, and an immense feeling of being undeserving of anything good or fun.
Causes of Low Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem causes are not a one-time thing like something doesn’t just happen once and boom, you develop low self-esteem. It is as a result of build-ups in your life.
It’s like growing up; you don’t just grow up all at once. No, it is growing over the years with the influence of many factors like food, collective experiences, genetics, external factors like physical exercises, and so on.
Some of the causes of low self-esteem include:
- Growing up in a very judgmental environment: many people grew up with judgmental families or in a toxic environment. Always living in fear of being themselves. For a kid that gets poorly criticized at every turn, such a child will grow up thinking less of himself at the end of the day.
- Strong Negative Criticisms: Individuals exposed to harsh negative criticisms regularly end up succumbing to what they hear and perceive themselves as what they are called eventually—a failure.
- Some inadequacies and incapabilities like physical inadequacies in terms of height, weight, and even mental defects can cause low self-esteem.
- Another common cause of low self-esteem is unpleasant experiences that scar individuals over time and become a trauma remembered at specific points in time.
- Finally, a negative perception of one’s self, built over time from different factors, can lead to it, but you can always overcome low self-esteem.
The Small Changes That Make A Huge Impact On Your Self-Esteem
Luckily, you don’t need to deal with low self-esteem forever. It is a condition that you can change by taking small steps.
Although it’s not easy to do, you can start small, so you don’t get overwhelmed in your journey of building self-esteem. You can start with:
- Changing your negative self-notion; identify positive things about yourself, your strengths and achievements, your good qualities, and start to focus on them.
- Once you can identify your positive side and see that you are capable of doing things, you then need to adjust your beliefs and thoughts about yourself; encourage yourself to do more and achieve more.
- Learn to let things go and forget mistakes because holding unto them will cause you to fall back.
- From some dental facts it is known that 37% of adults have skipped two days of teeth brushing. Are you sure you are not one of them? Because enhancing your positive smile, give yourself a change of looks, dress, going to shopping for some new clothes with bright colors to boost yourself.
- You can keep a journal to write out things that affect you and find ways to tackle them.
- Stand up for yourself; create a positive mantra to get you by like, “always remember that you can do anything you wish.”
- Spend time with people that appreciate you, and make you happy, avoid negative environments.
- Don’t forget to see a professional if need be for more in-depth counseling.
Conclusion
Having low self-esteem is a common thing, and many have confined themselves to living with it rather than breaking from it. But if you wish to find your way out, there are small and simple things you can do like smiling and thinking positive about yourself to change how you feel about yourself and ultimately boost your self-esteem.