9 Reflections To Feel Good About Yourself
Most people love to feel good about themselves but often find it hard to actualise it. And the reason is easy to understand.
You are the only person who knows yourself completely — with your set of strengths and weaknesses, pluses and minuses and that’s where the trouble begins.
We tend to overlook the positive aspect and get caught up in your negatives, feeling bad about our flaws and worrying how others will judge us, which is unfortunately socially inflicted process. However, if this thought process lingers on, it not only impacts on the sense well-being but also results in low self esteem and depression.
How to feel good about yourself
As a conscious person you can take charge of your own thoughts and how you feel about yourself.
Although external factors, your surroundings and environment, if it’s happen to be negative, may play a part in judging, criticising and making you feel less about yourself, but their role is negligible since it depends solely on you if you select your surroundings, subscribe to their opinion about you or dismiss it and move on with your life.
Here are 9 ways to empower yourself to feel good about yourself and boost your self worth.
1. Develop a healthy sense of self-awareness.
Many people are so busy engrossed in watching what’s going on in other people’s lives that they have little time and attention to watch their own.
It is worthwhile to spend time gaining insight into your own self — your beliefs, perceptions, emotions, and also understanding your positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses.
This process of self-reflection and self-awareness is both enlightening and empowering since it enables you to identify the space where your thoughts and behaviour are coming from and where your actions are leading you.
It helps you to know the real person that you are and affect your decisions, choices, general standards, values and principles.
Self-awareness makes you feel good about yourself since it gives you a sense of control over your life. Guided by a deeper understanding of self, you are able to alter your behaviour and actions in order to gain maximum from the situations that you find yourself in.
2. Change the inner dialogue.
Most times, it’s not the people outside but the negative self talk within, that makes you feel bad about yourself.
The perpetually nagging voice degrades you by pointing out only your mistakes and highlighting the failures. It makes you feel small and worthless.
To tame the inner critic and stop being your own worst enemy, change the stories you tell yourself. You may not be perfect but you are good enough and better than a lot of other people. The simple solution to this complex problem is to distance yourself from people who pull you down by bringing out only your negatives.
Appreciate your positive qualities, your big dreams and your commitment to achieve your goals. Although you’ve not reached where you aspire to be yet and have experienced some setbacks but you are determined to accomplish your goals — and that’s a big thing.
Feel good about yourself that you’re a work in progress and are inching towards your destination — slowly but surely. This will help build your confidence and boost your self worth.
3. Shift the focus from outside to inside.
Your looks don’t define you. It’s what you are inside and how you feel about yourself which is important.
Stop bothering about your body shape, colour, size – it just doesn’t make a difference. Learn to be comfortable in your skin by shifting focus from the outward appearance to the strength within.
It is your core strength, confidence and belief in yourself that makes you attractive and desirable. Feel good about yourself because others reach out to you and seek your help irrespective of your looks.
Start building yourself up from within by consciously reminding yourself of your strengths and abilities. By changing the attitude towards yourself and appreciating who you are, your external appearance will also start to adjust.
4. Follow your vision.
We all are surrounded by people who have their opinions. The more the people, the more varied will be their viewpoints.
There will always be negative people who will doubt you, dismiss your goals, laugh at your dreams and criticise the good work done by you. Don’t let their opinion bother you.
Live your life guided by your inner compass and passion. Know clearly what you want to accomplish and where you want to reach. If your goals resonate with your vision and if something feels right to you, go ahead and do it anyway.
Others are entitled to their opinions but you have to remain true to yourself. Don’t be a people pleaser, do what feels good to you.
It’s your life, live it by your rules and march on your chosen path. You have absolutely no obligation to live your life the way others expect you to or pursue goals that something else has set for you.
5. Respect yourself.
You are the most important person in your life – the centre of your Universe. You’re special, unique and one of a kind. And most importantly, ‘you matter.’
If you want to feel good about yourself and boost your self worth, start valuing you and treat yourself with respect.
Irrespective of how others look at you or think of you, you have to make a beginning and take the first step.
Draw your boundaries and never accept disrespectful behavior from anyone. This will send a message across and people will change their attitude towards you.
Holding yourself in high esteem will give you immense boost to your self worth and make you feel good about yourself.
6. Set yourself worthwhile goals.
Goals render meaning to your life and make it purposeful. Goals also signify growth, a positive direction, progress, a journey towards betterment.
You have something to look forward to each day, and it’s a great feeling to see that you are bringing your aspirations to fruition.
It doesn’t matter what goals you set for yourself. The only thing that matters is your goals should ring true to you and their pursuit should make you feel good that they are worth the effort and hard work you are putting in.
7. Don’t compare yourself with others.
Comparisons, in theory, are good. They let you know where you stand vis-a-vis others so that you can better yourself and outperform them.
In other words, comparisons are supposed to make you compete with others in a healthy way. But in reality, that’s not the case.
Using others as a benchmark for measuring your worthiness proves counterproductive as most have a tendency to look towards and compare themselves with those who are better than them. It makes them feel small, inadequate and under confident and steals their happiness.
Comparisons are useless because you are you, they are they. You cannot compare your life with others.
Everyone is different with unique personalities, talents, qualities, special gifts and opportunities.
We all experience different circumstances, have been through different situations and experienced different challenges. Our worlds and realities are entirely different. More so, we’re walking on different life paths. It is neither rational nor justified to strike comparisons between unequals.
If others are better than you or more successful than you, you can only see them as your inspiration on a certain subject.
So if you desire to feel good about yourself and have a higher sense of self worth, pay less attention to what others are doing.
Instead, focus on your priorities, goals and measure up to your personal high standards without bothering about others.
8. Forgive yourself for the mistakes.
Everyone has made mistakes that they regret and feel bad about. But, there’s nothing you can do about it. Mistakes happen; they’re a part of life.
Every time you take an action or try to do something, there’s a possibility that things will go wrong.
And when things do go wrong – and you know you’re responsible, it’s difficult to forgive yourself. But beating yourself and feeling miserable will only destroy your confidence and lower your sense of self.
Instead of hating yourself for the blunders you made, the wrong decisions you took or the poor choices you made, try to see yourself in a positive light. There outcome could’ve been event worse than it is. So it’s never a disaster. You didn’t mess up things deliberately, nor you erred purposely.
Forgive yourself for the mistakes and failings. You did what you did to the best of your ability and what you thought was the right thing to do at that point in time.
The good thing is you realized your mistake, accepted it and learnt the lesson. What’s more is now that you know what went wrong and where, you’ll never make the same mistake again.
A small change in your standpoint and thinking can make a world of difference how you feel about yourself.
9. See things in perspective.
Life doesn’t go linear. You have your victories — the ups that make you feel on the top of the world. And then, you experience the lows — when things don’t go as you want them to. Plans fail, you face setbacks, encounter obstacles, suffer a detour or hit rock bottom.
When life knocks you down, everything around you seems to be falling apart. You feel like a loser — defeated, demoralised, uninspired to do anything. In such trying times it is natural to feel dejected and helpless.
Although these moments are temporary, they can take a heavy toll on you, making you feel frustrated and depressed.
Therefore, it is essential to remind yourself that it’s just a passing phase and not a permanent occurrence.
Instead of feeling lost and miserable, train yourself to see things in perspective. One setback doesn’t connote the end of all opportunities. One failure doesn’t mean all doors are closed.
Failure doesn’t define you. You are stronger than your circumstances and tougher than your misfortunes. Never stop believing in yourself just because your journey was temporarily halted.
Stand tall and stay strong. No defeat can break you. You have the courage and the resilience to begin again. No matter how bad things look, it’s not over till you give up. Never let that option come to your mind.
Hold onto faith, be determined to bounce back each time life throws you off balance and you’ll always be happy, positive and feel good about yourself.
Keep it up! We look forward to seeing you at our classes! Xoxo
Source: drroopleen.com