Kanva's World

The following suggestions may be helpful for a person who finds that they are struggling with low self-esteem:

1. It starts with a decision to be your own person. Don’t live your life to please, or to impress, someone else.

2. Try and grasp the fact we’re different and have different goals and values … And don’t be swayed by other people who criticise your dreams.

3. Don’t compare your path or journey to someone else’s journey as we start from different places and face different challenges.

4. Be kind, understanding and patient with yourself. Accept that failures and mistakes are part of everybody’s life. Also, choose to frame mistakes as learning opportunities.

5. You need to root for yourself, and seek to be your own best friend. Don’t denigrate yourself – in public, or when you’re alone.

6. Remind yourself a weakness can become a strength, in time. It takes patience effort – but, eventually, things change!

7. Make a list of what you’re good at, and keep adding to the list. Also, note the strengths that others see, and comment on, as well.

8. Treat yourself with respect and praise the things that you do well. Don’t write them off as “nothing”, or as being “no big deal”. 9. Find ways to dissipate and channel negative emotions. Don’t allow them to dictate the way you start to see yourself.

10. Spend time with those who like you, and can see your worth and value … And, ignore those who attack you, and would like to see you fail.

11. Choose to stand up for yourself, and value being more assertive. Also, decide to start to set and then enforce appropriate, healthy boundaries.

1. Talk to someone: Sharing how we feel helps to reduce the inner tension (but make sure it is someone who cares about your feelings).

2. Work on improving your self-esteem: Self-esteem is the way you see and feel about yourself … and there are lots of lots of things that undermine our self esteem. For example, experiencing a break up, putting on unwanted weight, doing badly on a test or being excluded by our friends. It’s important that we keep on working on our self-esteem by treating ourselves well and noticing when we succeed (instead of noticing the negatives).

3. Manage your stress levels: If we’re always feelings stressed then it’s hard to cope with life. We tend to over react and have a negative mind set … which drains us of our energy and saps our will to fight. So take a look at your lifestyle and see what you can drop. You may be doing too much, and don’t have time to relax.

4. Make the time and effort to enjoy yourself: Doing things that we enjoy helps to improve the way we feel. So build in little things like having coffee with a friend, or going to a game, or taking time to watch some sports.

5. Choose a healthy life style: Pay attention to your diet and how much you exercise; try to limit alcohol, and don’t deprive yourself of sleep.