3 Powerful Practices to Build Self Esteem

Recognize that you deserve respect and you deserve good things in life and that you deserve love from yourself and other people. Hey there and welcome to let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. A space to talk honestly and get real about mental health, therapy and all things wellness. I'm Lori, licensed therapist, speaker and your host, here to bring you insights, tools and information you can actually use. Whether you're navigating anxiety, healing your relationship with food, or trying to figure out which techniques will work for your life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in and let's talk about it. Welcome back to another episode of let's Talk About It. I'm Laurie Streeter and I'm so excited to be back. It has been a while. I know I haven't recorded an episode in honestly a few years at this point, but a lot has happened. We moved across the country, I started my own practice and things just got a little crazy and busy and the podcast honestly sadly goes took a back seat. But I am rocking and rolling, super pumped to be back and ready to start recording again, bringing on guests and really diving into what's been going on in the world of mental health because so much has changed. There's so much going on with AI, there's things I've learned along the way and we're just in this ever evolving world and I want to continue to bring tools to you and advocates and information and people and my experience to help you figure out what's going to work for you and figure out what resonates for your life. And I'm just really, really excited to be back. So not gonna get too much more in depth. There's really not a ton to say. I'm just really excited and grateful that you're here. I'm excited to be recording again and I want to dive in today about self esteem because this is always a concept that comes up in sessions. I see it in my personal life, I see people talk about it on social media. I mean it is one of those ever present issues and struggles that people have, especially women and it's this constant conversation. I feel like that's just always going on. So you know, when we think about self esteem, a lot of times we use the terms self esteem and confidence interchangeably and that's totally fine. I'm not going to get too in the weeds about it, but when I explain it to my clients, I try to help them understand that I look at confidence as more skill based and self esteem more so as how we feel about ourselves as a human. So someone could be super confident on stage, they could talk front of thousands of people, command a room, light up the stage, and then you talk to them and they feel terrible about themselves. I mean, it's self esteem is like the crux of everything. Even when someone is super confident about what they're doing. If you asked me to do your taxes, I'm not great at math, I'm not super confident that I would be able to do that. So there are always going to be areas in our life that we're confident or less confident in, and that's okay. The issue comes in when you are struggling with how you feel about yourself as a human, how you feel about your self worth, how you feel about the value you bring to the world, how you feel when you're with other people, if you feel like they take advantage of you, if you feel like your opinions don't matter. I mean, all of these things roll into self esteem. And it is such a significant part of mental health. How we feel about ourselves and how we present ourselves to the world and honestly, how much live up to our own potential. I can't tell you how many times I hear from my clients. I feel like I have this untapped potential and if I could just feel better about myself, I would do more or I would pursue my goals or I would, you know, care less about what other people think and do more. That makes me happy. So feeling really good is awesome. Having a healthy self esteem is super, super important. When self esteem is unhealthy, it looks like apologizing for things that aren't your fault because you feel like everything's your fault, it's saying yes when you'd rather say no. Constantly feeling you're not good enough, constantly feeling you can't measure up, constantly feeling like, oh, why should I post that thing on social media or start that business or go to that event or start dating. Because what are people going to think of me? Or why would they like me? I mean, it's just constantly feeling like you're not good enough. And even when you're making your best efforts, if your self esteem is unhealthy, it doesn't matter how good your efforts are, you will not feel like you measure up. You will not feel good enough. And you kind of stay in this chronic state of feeling like everybody around you is better, better than you, has more, you know, in their life put together, just whatever that sounds like in your head. So an unhealthy self esteem can really Create a lot of issues. And again, when my clients come in and they're like, oh, I have low confidence or I'm struggling at work, self esteem is very often tied into this. So digging into it and figuring out what it looks like for them is super important. So thinking about, is your self esteem unhealthy? Is that something that you think you're struggling with and what does that look like again? Are you apologizing for, you know, everything when it's not even your fault, or taking responsibility for things that you don't need to take responsibility, responsibility for, but you're just not necessarily trying to get people to like you, but you're trying to get people to value you. And in the process, you're devaluing yourself because you're worth more than just trying to make everyone happy, but trying to please everyone in the process devalues yourself. So an unhealthy self esteem, a low self esteem really can impact, I mean, significantly impact someone's life and kind of what things look like to them. So I want to give you like three things today that you can pretty much start doing immediately to start to efficiently and intentionally work on your self esteem. If you feel like this is an area in your life where you struggle and think about it like this, this isn't about liking yourself. We're not always going to be like, ooh, I'm the greatest, I love myself, I'm beautiful, let me go kick some ass today, like, get it? That's not always what we're thinking in our heads. Even though that would be amazing, right? But this is about knowing that you deserve respect and good things from life and love from yourself and others. Even when you're not perfect, even when your weight isn't exactly where you want it to be, that you feel like a worthy human being. Even when you've made a mistake, you feel like, yeah, I still deserve love and I can still love myself. Even when you've missed an email at work or dropped the ball with something, you still know you deserve respect. It's very realistic to recognize and admit that we're not always going to like ourselves. It is important to realize that this is again, I want to drive this home about knowing that you deserve respect, you deserve good things and you deserve love from yourself and other people even when you are not perfect. Because we're not perfect, we're not robots. We're not going to be, and we're not trying to be. Now let's focus on what we can do to improve our self esteem. And get it to a little bit of a healthier place so that you can pursue the goals you want to pursue, do the things you want to do and feel, feel day to day like you are a worthy human being. Number one is what I like to call a worthy journal. And this is whether you literally write it down in a journal, you type it out in the notes in your phone, or you say it to yourself or out loud. Some form of intentional acknowledgement. I am a fan of writing things down. There is something powerful when you put pen to paper and that motor skill of writing your thoughts and being able to get them out if at all possible, if you can write, do it. If not, again, I gave you some other options. Each night, not right before you go to bed, but sometime in the evening, kind of after the day has wound down. Focus on one, two, maybe three things you did well, something that you valued, something that you did well, a moment of courage. And this doesn't have to be anything crazy. It can be. It can be, oh my God, I reached XYZ goal today. Fantastic. Or it can be I made it to work on time, right? If you're really struggling to make it to work on time lately and you made it on time, fantastic. Give yourself credit for that. Focus on things that create value in your life. Again, a moment of courage or something that you did well that you can give yourself credit for. This works because it starts to train your brain to focus on internal validation and focus on what you did well versus I got a praise at work because I did great on the presentation. Not that you can't give yourself credit, but let's focus again on how you feel about you. Not the validation that came from the world around you or your boss or your partner or a friend or social media. So I really want you to think about if you can only come up with one thing, fine. But I really want you to think about a couple things where you acknowledged like hey, hell yeah, I did that or heck yeah, I accomplished that or go me. I've been working on that forever and I finally did xyz. Something where you can really give yourself that internal validation. That is why this works. We constantly look for external validation to validate that we did something well, that we're worthy. But it will never be enough if you don't love yourself. If you don't have a healthy self esteem, that external validation, it's not going to cut it. So use the worthy journal again. Writing it down or saying it out loud or to yourself, however you want to do it, whatever method you want to take, but use that as a way to start to train your brain to focus on the internal validation. Number two is small social efforts. Our self esteem comes again from internally, but it comes in terms of values, right? Kind of like what we just talked about. It comes from our social world and it comes from how we feel about our bodies. So I'm gonna kind of attack all three of these areas. So the first one we did, the second one, the small social efforts. So this is where I want to encourage you to text someone first. Just say, hey, smile, make eye contact when you're out. So often our heads are down, our heads are in our phones, we're looking down at the ground, or we don't even want to make eye contact anymore for whatever reason that is. Try to smile at the cashier at Target who's checking you out, hey, how are you today? Or something that feels natural but maybe pushes you a little outside your comfort zone. Keep your head up, hold your head high, smile, make eye contact. And even with texting, text someone first. Hey, I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate you and there's no need to respond right away. I know you're busy. Just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. Those things, when we make those social efforts, those are connection points. It works because it's like exposure. With repetition and practice, you start to feel better socially. You start to feel like, I can take up space in this world. I'm worthy of, you know, someone talking to me, someone loving me, someone liking me, someone thinking I'm a good person, right? And I'm worthy of that. So even if you hold the door for someone and you smile and you say, have a great day and they look at you like you're crazy or they don't say thank you, I get that a lot and it drives me nuts. I'll hold the door and someone will walk through. And honestly, I look at them and I'm like, you're welcome. And they look at me and they're like, oh, thanks. Like, people just forget common decency these days. But that's beside the point. Doing things like that in social settings helps repetition and it helps us show up differently in life and it just helps us present friendly and open. And if social things is something that you struggle with, you being able to practice this in smaller stakes environments will help you in the bigger settings like going to events or dating or making friends. The other thing you can think about in regards to social efforts is expressing your preferences or an opinion. When you're with people, hey, what do you want to eat? I don't know, I don't care. But you really want tacos? Say, hey, I'd like tacos. Anybody up for that? And even if when you express a preference or an opinion, it's disagreed with or you guys end up going somewhere else to eat, it's okay. But so often when people struggle with their self esteem, they will not share what they really want. They'll just go with the flow because they don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to create waves. So they'll just be like, oh, I'll just go wherever they want to go. Or I won't really give my opinion on this topic because I don't want to get into it. You're not looking to go like pick a fight with people, but you need to practice and get the reps in of expressing your preferences and expressing your opinion and starting to again, take up space in the world. People want to know what you think, and if they don't, I'm not really sure why we're forcing those relationships anyway. But again, beside the point. Start to practice these small social efforts. Use it as almost a type of exposure therapy. And as you practice, it might feel a little uncomfortable. But these are those things that really help create upticks in our self esteem. These are literal assignments I sometimes give my clients if the social aspect is something that they're struggling with. And the third one I kind of mentioned is like body image and how we feel about ourselves physically. Because so much of our self esteem is wrapped up in our physical bodies, it is very important that we can learn body neutrality. There's the body positivity movement. So many of us don't think positively about our body. So to go from negative to positive is a huge leap of faith. But learning neutrality, focusing on function over appearance, thinking about things like my legs helped me walk today, My hands made this meal tonight. My body and mind have gotten me through some of the toughest moments in my life. If self esteem is something that you struggle with and your body image is wrapped up in your self esteem, and rightfully so. But this is something I really encourage you to focus on because body image is a significant aspect in how we feel about ourselves as people. And while that's unfortunate, it is a part of it. So instead of trying to convince yourself that you love yourself when you maybe don't love yourself, or to convince yourself that you're beautiful when you don't think you're beautiful. If we can move it into a more neutral place now, we can move the needle now. We can start to take some pressure off and really again know that even though you're not perfect, even though you might not love what you see in the mirror, you deserve good things. You deserve love again from yourself and other people. The reason that the body neutrality piece of this works and is a part of self esteem and improving self esteem and making it healthier is that it shifts to function and value. It's I have a body versus I hate my body. You're not trying to say to yourself I love my body. You're just saying, hey, I have a body instead of focusing on I hate my body. When you have thoughts about your physical body and they're negative, instead of trying to convince yourself otherwise or swing the pendulum completely in the other direction, think to yourself, how can I be more neutral about this? What's the function over appearance? What's my function and value? I have a body versus I hate my body. These three things, the worthy journal, the small social efforts, the body neutrality, these specific ways will attack all three of those separate areas and start to help you feel better about who you are as a human, how you show up in the world and honestly, how you show up for yourself. Because if you're struggling, you don't even feel good about your own efforts, much less, you know, keeping everybody else happy and you know, doing a great job at work and with your family and stuff like that. If your self esteem is not healthy and no matter how much effort you make, if you don't feel like you're worthy, we gotta work on that. We have to focus on these areas and do things like this that will help you be able to recognize that you deserve respect and you deserve good things in life and that you deserve love from yourself and other people. And I know I have said that several times during this podcast, but I'm gonna drive it home because that is what this is all about. Remember, your self esteem is how you see yourself. It's your tone of voice when you talk to yourself. These are these internal dialogues we're having. It's even when things aren't perfect, how do you feel about yourself and starting to pay attention to what this looks like in your life? Are you apologizing for things that aren't your fault? Constantly. Are you trying to get other people to value you based on what you can do? Not that you are a human and you're a good person, but what you can do for them? Think about what self esteem looks like for you and start to practice one of these three or two or all of them techniques so that you can start to make small upticks in your self esteem and start to feel a little better because you are wonderful, you're unique, you have things to bring to this world and I bet you that there is potential that you have and your thoughts and how you feel about yourself maybe holding you back. We want to feel better about who we are as people and be able to show up as our best selves and you're going to be able to do that if you feel good about who you are as a person. Get out there, get the reps, practice, put this into play, be consistent and let me know how it works because self esteem is a huge piece of it. I see this in my office constantly. This is something I've worked on personally and I want you to know that you are deserving and worthy and you can learn to love yourself and it doesn't have to feel so foreign all the time, even if in the beginning it feels a little weird. We can work on that. Thanks for hanging out with me today on let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. If this episode resonated with you, it would mean so much if you'd leave a five star review, share it with a friend, or come say hi on Instagram. Laurie Streeter, your support will help this podcast grow and I so appreciate you being here today. I want to help people just like you feel like they're not alone and gain the tools they need to grow. Until next time, take care.