Self-esteem: The Lazy Person’s Guide!

Improving your self-esteem isn’t about becoming selfish, loud, competitive and arrogant. It’s about taking care of yourself so that you have the strength and energy to help and give to others when appropriate.

The key now is identifying those areas of your life that you want to change. Not being confident in one area of your life can negatively affect all areas of your life. How do you feel about the way you look, the work that you do, the relationships that you have, the food you eat, the clothes you wear? What things drag you down? What things lift you up?
If you want to build your self-esteem, then you need to start with secret number 1: self-awareness. That means looking at the way you live your life, the way you think and the way you feel. As you get to know yourself better you will start to recognise patterns of behaviour, responses or attitudes that make you unhappy.
And once you start to recognise what makes you unhappy you can start making positive changes. And the first of those changes needs to be in the way you think.

Watching yourself can really help you separate what you think and feel from who you are. You will see that throughout your day thoughts and feelings constantly flow through you. You will see that as powerful as these feelings and thoughts are, they are separate from you. You are the one who allows yourself to experience them. You are the one in charge.

you start asking them. In the chapters that follow you will be asked time and time again to reflect on why you think and feel the way you do. There is a reason for this. Each time you pause a little to think about who you are, why you do the things you do and why you feel the way you do, you will be getting to know yourself a little better.

first secret is about getting to know yourself better. It’s time to start thinking about your life. How did your upbringing affect you? What is important to you? Are you doing what you want to do with your life?

You can choose now to respond to life without your old self-doubt, hesitation and confusion.
Even if you feel that you were born a self-doubter, you can change. You can’t change other people, but you can change yourself. I’ll repeat that. You can change. Once you choose to improve your self-image you will feel happier and more fulfilled. If you want to change your life for the better, improving self-esteem is the first and onl

reflect on your past, never lose sight of your goal, which is to change your life for the better. Self-esteem will not improve if you can’t free yourself from the past. If you keep going back to the time your mum forgot to collect you from school or the fact that you were always the last choice for your form’s sports team, it is time to take a deep breath and deal with the present. The past, however traumatic, can help you understand why you may feel a certain way but it can’t explain why you choose to remain that way. Countless people have survived the most terrible ordeals and faced the greatest adversity with courage, optimism and a positive sense of who they are.

Depression and other mood disorders damage self-esteem, as can addiction to drink or drugs, eating disorders, and compulsions, such as a compulsion to exercise, have sex, gamble or clean. Depression is an illness that can be treated, but there is still great debate about whether or not mood disorders cause low self-esteem or low self-esteem causes mood disorders. If self-esteem is low, depression is more likely, but sometimes depression strikes for no apparent reason. If you are suffering from depression or any kind of compulsive behaviour, the advice in this book will help, but it is important that you also seek professional help.

foundations of low self-esteem are often laid in childhood, but as we grow up stressful life events and adult responsibilities can also cause self-esteem to plummet. Intimate relationships that don’t work out, set-backs, knocks, poor health, accidents, the loss of a loved one, financial struggles and so on can all be damaging.

generally thought that women suffer from low self-esteem more than men, because of the conscious and unconscious indoctrination that men are somehow superior to women.