How To Boost Your Self-Esteem (Part One)

Welcome to the seventh episode hidden in The Vault: finally here to be discovered!

We’re going to look at something very important in personal transformation: how to develop and boost self-esteem. This is such a significant stepping stone to self-development that you’ll find two further episodes dedicated to this subject. Be sure to watch them all!

Dealing with low self-esteem can be tough. Without esteem, it’s hard to have fun and enjoyable conversations, and it’s almost impossible to accomplish anything unless you know effective ways of boosting your self-esteem. Hence, the aim of this video is to offer some great tips and, if need be, serve as a compass to get you out of any mental ruts you might be in.

Here’s the bottom line: the greater your self-esteem, the more you can free yourself when you interact with people. When people say just “be yourself” what they really mean is just be the most comfortable person you could possibly be. Funny enough, the higher our self-esteem, the more we can relax with ourselves.

A lot of people have been dealing with low self-esteem for a large part of their life, and they cope by protecting themselves with a sense of pride. Pride is where people create a mask they wear in order to stop themselves looking silly.

It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve realised that you don’t have to be like that. You can lose your pride – and the way to do this is by boosting self-esteem!

So without further ado here’s a breakdown of the video…

  • Boosting Self Esteem
  • Face Fears
  • Reach Goals
  • Amuse Yourself
  • Develop Vitality
  • Nurture Wisdom
  • Self-Esteem Building Activities

1) Face Fears

The first thing we need to do in order to boost self-esteem is to face our fears. When you confront fears, you really find out about yourself as a person. One thing I want to stress here is that all fear exists in the future; fear doesn’t exist in the present. If I set you on fire, you would no longer be ‘fearful’. You’d be rolling around on the ground trying to deal with the fact that you’re on fire. The moment you get scared is when you think to yourself, “now what’s going to happen to me?”

So find something that really scares you, and do it!

2) Reach Goals

The second thing you can do to boost self-esteem is set yourself goals and hit them. Goals should be both realistic and achievable, and when setting a goal, you should set them high enough that in order for you to achieve them, you’ll have to put in a lot of hard work and persistence.

In this video, you’ll see that one of my big goals was to bench press 100kg. This goal had just been eating at me for ages. And just so you know, I’d failed at this goal six times in the 3 weeks leading up to recording the video!… and guess what, I did it! As as you can tell, I was ecstatic, and it’s only because I’d made it an ambition of mine.

Reaching these kinds of goals will really boost your self-esteem.

3) Amuse Yourself

Another thing I like to do is amuse myself. Being playful is something that we neglect as adults – even though it’s fun and enjoyable. Instead of following the usual trend, seek out things in your daily life that will make you laugh and smile.

You might be playing a practical joke on somebody, or staging an inside joke – the important thing is just that it makes you smile. If doing the crazy, wacky stuff seems a bit too much for you, you can start off small just by telling people funny jokes. But remember why you’re doing it: because it makes you smile and not the other person.

4) Develop Vitality

Keep yourself fit. At school, I hated doing ‘PE’ and found ‘team sports’ utterly pointless and uninspiring (I even used to get my mum to write me notes saying I was ill, just so I could bunk off!). But now I love keeping fit and have a sense of vitality because of it.

Admittedly, we all like days where we laze about the house, sleeping in, eating ice cream and watching movies. The trouble is, these lazy days are comfortable and addictive. Also as I’m sure you know, prolonged comfort saps your mental energy and focus.

“Feel fit or feel shit.”

In contrast, when you’re doing something that’s making you sweat a little and gets your endorphins flowing, it makes you feel good and puts you in the mood for talking to people.

Aim to do some fun exercise at least 3 times a week. If you lack motivation or discipline (as I often did), make sure you exercise with a friend as it’ll help a lot. Your diet is also massively important. Eat ‘whole foods’ (foods that are unprocessed and unrefined) as much as possible. Fresh meat, eggs, fish, poultry, vegetables, fruits, and nuts are all great examples.

That way, you can eat the odd junk meal guilt free – and you’ll actually enjoy it all the more too!

5) Nurture Wisdom

The final thing to cover in this video is the pursuit of knowledge. Really investigate and pursue anything that interests you. Now it doesn’t really matter what it is, but find out more about anything that peaks your curiosity. The reason that you want to do this is because any time you’re alone, your mind tends to listen to itself. Our mind is always trying to grow through mental stimulation and the more we read, the more we learn, and the more we learn, the better we feel.

For some bizarre reason, I was really interested in how to build a pond. So I went away and researched how to build a pond… and now I have one in my back-garden! And it’s worth mentioning, as well as acquiring a new pond, I also have a new hobby: wildlife gardening.

So just read about anything that interests you. If you choose to study what you love, you’ll find the growth of your mind occurs with ease.

Hopefully, I’ve given you some ideas for positive changes you can make in your life. Don’t worry about trying everything at once. Focus on one of the five aspects and you’ll find a bigger change in your life, as opposed to trying to incorporate all five changes at once.

You’ll find that once you build momentum, you’ll start focusing on more than one a week anyway. So in the next five weeks, I want you to aim to focus on each of the five things on this list, and you’ll find that your self-esteem will be on a whole other level.

But just to make sure your esteem skyrockets, you have episode eight and nine to plunder from the depths of The Vault, go watch them now!

Further Reading

“The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem” by Nathaniel Branden

 

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