If someone pays you a compliment, do you smile and accept it graciously or do you shy away, wanting the ground to swallow you up? Do you tirelessly overthink your appearance, trying endless outfits on but finding fault in every one, so you’d rather not go out? Do you have trouble following through with things, often giving up after a short time because you lack belief in your ability or you think others will judge you?
These are just some signs of low self-esteem and that was me right up until my mid-30’s. It’s a huge problem, encountered by so many and yet, we’re still not educated at school. We grow up thinking it’s normal to feel this way and we accept our life for what it is, but having low self-esteem and low confidence can seriously impact our lives and the choices we make, unless we seek help and do something about it.
Fortunately today, we have the internet and countless suggestions on ways to build self-esteem, confidence and self-worth. But I know it’s not that easy. It’s hard to know where to start and if you’re not confident in your ability anyway, why should any of this work, right? You’re completely stuck.
The problem is, if you don’t try and address it, because low self-esteem is an actual thing and not something you should consider normal, it can lead to anxiety and depression. And, no one needs to be stuck in the mindset of not being good enough.
Rather than look at all the ways to help this issue, let’s look at how not helping it can affect your future life and maybe that may be just enough of a push for you to seek advice.
Firstly, What Is Self-Esteem?
Self-esteem is your subjective sense of overall personal worth or value or as I like to say ‘self-wealth’. It’s your confidence within, your self-belief. Similar to self-respect, it describes your level of confidence in your abilities and characteristics and can therefore heavily influence the choices and decisions you make.
Signs of low self-esteem include:
- Saying negative things about yourself and being overly critical
- Pleasing everyone else except for yourself
- Feeling unworthy and undeserved of love
- Focusing on your shortfalls and ignoring your achievements
- Blaming yourself when anything goes wrong
- Thinking that everyone else is better than you
- Thinking that you don’t deserve to have fun
- Feeling small and insignificant
Can you feel how sad and negative all of that is? There’s no wonder that low self-esteem and low self-worth can have a huge impact on our lives. Here’s some of the reasons how low self-esteem can hold you back:
#1 You Are Unable To Make Decisions
Low confidence, self-belief, worth and esteem all have an impact on your ability to make decisions as you don’t have the right perspective to see all of the options and to understand what is right for you. And, if you do make a decision, it’s possible you may make the wrong one as you cannot see the situation clearly.
#2 You Don’t Go For The Promotion Or Job You Deserve
To go for any promotion or interview you need to believe in your abilities and have confidence in yourself. Often, even though completely capable, people with low self-esteem will stay where they are because they don’t believe they deserve a promotion or that they can do it, plus they don’t want to risk being rejected or failing. No one enjoys failing or being turned down but people with greater self-confidence and self-worth would rather give it a go knowing they had tried and failed over living with what if? If you don’t put yourself forward there’s every chance you’ll watch your peers successfully climb the career ladder and you’ll be left stuck on the bottom rung.
#3 You Decline Opportunities
For example, speaking at an event, being on a panel, writing an article etc. These are all excellent opportunities to get ahead in your career and to make a name for yourself and there’s a reason why you’ve been asked – others see your talent. Events will show your experience, knowledge and professionalism, introduce you to others in your field and ultimately get you noticed. From here comes opportunities that would never normally come your way. But, it takes a lot to put yourself in the spotlight like this and it can feel too much for those with low self-confidence, so they will pass up the opportunity and hand it to someone else instead.
#4 You Avoid Or Miss Parties And Other Social Gatherings
Maybe you can’t find the right outfit as you find fault in everything you try on or maybe you think you’ll be intimidated. Maybe it’s safer and easier to stay at home. But turning down parties or other social events, leads to an unhappy night alone at home, missing out on meeting new people and turns down having fun. You may have missed meeting your life partner :(
#5 You Let Jealousy And Insecurity Ruin Your Relationships
Unfortunately, low self-esteem often results in feeling insecure in relationships. Over time this may lead to questioning your partner’s whereabouts, who they have been with, what they have been doing and so on. When you feel unloveable, you may also question your worthiness to your partner and believe that it’s a fluke they are with you. As such, anyone with low self-esteem will likely think their partner is attracted to someone else and will live in fear they will leave them. No relationship will last without trust so eventually they will leave and then this pattern is repeated. Sadly, people with low self-worth and confidence can end up alone or in toxic relationships.
#6 You Don’t Try New Things
Trying new things can be challenging for everyone but in particular, for those who lack confidence in their abilities and fear being judged by others. For example, someone may want to have a hobby but since they don’t believe they’ll be able to do it, they won’t even try. It’s far easier and safer that way. So again, low self-esteem affects how you spend your time and prevents you from living a fulfilled life.
#7 You Don’t Believe You Deserve To Have Fun
Everyone deserves to have fun but if you suffer with low self-worth you’ll believe that everyone else is better than you and that you don’t deserve happiness, and will do everything you can to avoid it. If this continues, imagine all of the amazing things and experiences you will miss out on in life.
#8 You Don’t Follow Your Dreams Or Vision
We all have a dream. Following your dreams can take guts, it often means facing fears and taking risks but if it’s what you want, surely those risks are worth taking? If you don’t take the risks, if you let your self-esteem hold you back, you’ll always be left yearning, knowing that there was more to life, wondering what could have been.
Overcoming Low Self-Esteem
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many ways in which you can overcome low self-esteem and low self-worth by doing confidence building exercises, expanding your thought processes and growing your mindset.
It wasn’t until I had my first coach in my mid-30’s that I even understood what low self-esteem was. I had always put everyone else first, worked too much, I felt small and insignificant and I accepted it because that was normal to me. Looking back I was a completely different person, a shadow of who I am today. It won’t happen overnight but we all have the power within us to change and a coach will help you to do this.
