Your self-esteem is how you feel about yourself, and what you believe you’re worth. You could think of it as your attitude towards yourself.

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Having self-confidence is about being able to trust your own abilities, and believe you can achieve your goals. Low self-confidence can often play a significant role in anxiety and depression. When you don’t believe in yourself you can struggle to muster up the courage or enthusiasm to take risks or complete tasks to the best of our ability or perform at your best. This means you won’t get the best results you can, and your lack of confidence in your abilities is reinforced.
 

There are a lot of different things that can influence your self-esteem and confidence including genetics, personality, life experiences, age and health.

 

Your self-esteem can also change depending on what’s going on in your life at the moment, so things like what you’re thinking, how other people react to you and your social circumstances and how others react to you can also change how you feel about yourself.

You can improve your self-esteem by:

 

• Focusing on the present, and not the past

• Not letting other people manipulate you 

• Understanding, and believing you are a valuable person who is equal to others

• Acting assertively, and without feeling guilty

• Recognising that things won’t always go your way – and that it’s alright to sometimes have negative feelings, and sharing them within your healthy relationships

• Remembering to share your successes and happiness as well

• Enjoying a healthy balance of school or work, play and relaxation 

• Learning to handle criticism without taking it personally, and using it to learn and grow

• Knowing your worth is not decided by others 

• Accepting challenges, and learning from mistakes when things don’t go the way you might have planned

• Placing value on yourself, and not being afraid to tell others about your likes, dislikes and feelings

• Valuing others and accepting them as they are without trying to change them

 

We understand that it can sometimes be a lot easier to read about these things than put them into action, so we’ve put together a list of resources and services that can help: