How to Know if You Have Low Self Esteem and How to Start Changing It

I got a question from somebody recently and it's about low self-esteem and the person was basically saying that they're not really sure if they have low self-esteem and that's a really interesting thing to bring up here I wanted to make a video on it it's not always easy to know if you have low self-esteem because very often we don't have this sort of negativity Voice or a critical voice um that we're aware of all the time that's not to say it's not there in fact very often it is there and usually it's the case that if we're asking the question I wonder if I do have low self-esteem the answer is yes usually and the reason for this is because you know to get out of bed in the morning and go about our day to-day life with that voice constantly there and for some people it is there they're more aware of it that's not necessarily a bad thing but most of the time what we do is we repress it we put it out of awareness because it's incredibly difficult to stay functional when we have that voice you know if it was following you around like a friend and you could hear well like a not a good not a good friend but following you around and you can hear it all the time so usually we have it held out of awareness in our shadow and what we will experience it as is not feeling good about ourselves certainly we'll be able to be aware usually that I don't really feel particularly good about myself I don't have strong convictions around my own value or or another way of putting it is people will often have a sense of sort of being indifferent as regards to their their selfworth or they'll feel sort of ambiguous about themselves like I don't have any strong feelings on it one way or the other and that's never true that is never true we're never ambiguous about our own sense of identity we always have there's only two ways you can really feel about yourself okay doesn't apply fine doesn't apply those types of language you know those words don't work here we either feel like we are valuable or we feel like we're worthless those are the two options we have believe it or not and that might come as a shock to you but that is the truth so usually it's this sort of vague sense of not really being able to acknowledge our value not knowing how valuable we are but what do we do about this well one of the concepts is there there's no neutral thoughts right you so being where that I if I don't feel really really good about myself I probably have a self-esteem thing that I could work on okay and what we got to do is go in and find a lot of those injections that we inherited from childhood I'm not good enough there's something wrong with me I'm weird I'm uniquely weird um I'll never be accepted etc etc I can't do it is a big one or I'm incapable of doing things or I'm powerless in my life those types of injects and the first thing we do is we start to deeply question where that came from is that even my own voice is there any Merit to it right now invariably you'll find that there isn't but you you can't start off with that assumption you have to go in open-minded and say well okay I'm I'm not going to accept this or reject it what I'm going to do is just look at it we have to be willing to look at it first okay so you follow some of those emotions in the body and it will reveal these types of things and then what we have to do is we have to question it and we have to get in touch with the truth and the truth is that you are you are capable of liking yourself and it's really nothing more than a decision to start liking yourself because once you make that decision to I'm done carrying this negativity I'm done carrying this self-criticism I'm done attacking myself like this my whole life once you make the and it's just a choice really you start see the the futility in it and how it actually doesn't help you to do that to yourself because believe it or not we do have there's a an algorithm in the mind that says this self-criticism stuff that you're subjecting yourself to you need to hear this this is actually helpful for you this is going to prepare you for life this is going to prepare you for those people out there that you can't trust and who are inevitably going to attack you so do it yourself first and then you'll be prepared and of course we realize that yeah okay well that's an interesting Theory but the reality is I'm having to live with this and it's actually not moving me forward in my life and emotionally I'm feeling either flat or I'm feeling unworthiness now we do other things too with self-esteem it's not just about questioning injections it's about doing things like here's a way we can start off with it what would it look like if I did like myself if I really cared about myself if I treated myself as if I was my own best friend and what that often looks like is giving yourself permission very often after a long long time of denying yourself things right not allowing yourself to go and have fun not allowing yourself to play not taking care of yourself right not not in a sort of a like go to the gym and get super fit and to achieve something I'm going to talk about that in a minute I'm talking more about as a symbolic way to say I value myself right giving myself the things that I've maybe put off or denied in my life so just play play in my opinion is a very big one we do other things we start to examine our life and look at the ways in which we have been seeking external approval or a sense of belonging or achievement in the world in order to compensate for the underlying low self-esteem and we start to realize okay I I'm still going to engage with life I'm still going to do things but I'm going to do it now with an awareness of I'm not doing it to get any of those things I thought I was I needed to to prove to myself that I'm worthy I I'm not going to go to university in order to get respect and then people will see that I'm valuable I'm not going to try and get into a relationship to convince myself that I am worthy okay we we continue to engage with life but we started questioning a lot of the the the things we think we're going to get on the other side of these things we're seeking and that's a big part of it because the more we are seeking externally for these things we're actually reinforcing all the time that there is something missing there's something wrong with us so we do all those things those are three things I mentioned there we start we start to question we start to get in touch with the truth of actually I'm perfectly okay there's nothing wrong with me and we we once we start to get in touch with that truth we must focus focus focus on it more and more and more we start to give ourselves things we've been denying ourselves it's like boring words like self-care guilt-free play we stop chasing things externally in order to get approval or love or validation we still engage with life bug just for different motives and another thing I would suggest and I talk about it a lot here is that we start to see the value in having boundaries boundaries with ourselves in terms of what we're requiring of ourselves to do in terms of it achieving all these goals okay no goal now once you have really good self-esteem no goal is seen as more important than you the goals are still fine you can still go after things but they're done with boundaries right there's there's no like um pushing yourself to Extremes in order to get something you engage with things to a healthy way in a healthy way with boundaries around them and that actually also reinforces this idea that oh I'm valuable I have to take care of myself I can do all these things and that's where the interjections the truth about the interjections come in I am capable I can do it I am valuable but I'm going to do it in a way that's respectful of myself so a few thoughts there on self-esteem and hope that's useful if you want to work with me I am a psychotherapist so the link to get in touch with me is below you can book a session or if you want you can check out one of my books they're also available on my website and I have courses available too hit like on this video if you found it useful and subscribe to the channel or share it with a friend it really helps the channel grow and to everyone who watches these videos and comments on them I really appreciate it it's so so helpful have a great day and I will talk again soon bye-bye [Music] [Applause]