If life seems boring and depressing, perhaps a big dose of daily self esteem help is just the spark you need for a happier life. The self esteem activities suggested here take just a few minutes each day and research studies indicate high self esteem is beneficial to your health.
Research Studies
Self esteem correlates with happiness and life satisfaction according to psychological researcher Christopher Peterson, author of A Primer in Positive Psychology. The higher your self esteem, the greater your reported happiness and satisfaction with life. The converse is also true, lower self esteem correlates with low life satisfaction and happiness. It behooves us to be aware of our own feeling of self esteem, taking steps to improve it when we're feeling down.
Improving Relationships
Researcher David Schmitt, PhD, associate professor of Bradley University's Psychology Department, reports that high self esteem also correlates with relationships. When we have strong relationships we feel better about ourselves than when our relationships are troublesome. Strong relationships, strong self esteem.
Start with Compassion
A good building block for improving self esteem is to first work to grant self-compassion. Research studies suggest "it should be easier to teach people with low self-esteem to be self-compassionate than to teach them to have higher self-esteem," reports WebMD Medical News reviewer Brunilda Nazario, MD, August 22, 2005.
Try These Daily Self Esteem Building Activities
- Reinforce your close relationships with high quality contact each day. Give something of yourself to people you care about. A few sincere words of appreciation, a few minutes of compassionate listening, or an earnest offer of help to an elderly or shut-in friend or relative will pay big dividends to both parties.
- Give yourself a break. We're often much harder on ourselves than we are on others. Don't expect perfection of yourself. Be forgiving of your human errors and treat them with humor rather than disdain or anger. Refrain from demeaning self talk. Instead, remind yourself that you normally make very few mistakes.
- Savor your good memories. Keep a mental or literal file of good memories and visit them often. Naturally nostalgic people have high self-esteem and are less prone to depression. Thinking of good memories for just 20 minutes a day can make people more cheerful than they were the week before, and happier than if they think of their current lives, report researchers from Loyola University (WebMD Feature from "Psychology Today" Magazine, Marina Krakovsky: WebMD's depression help center).
- Snap back from negative events. Bad things will happen; that's part of life. Foster an attitude of resilience and positive thinking to help you snap back from negative thinking just as quickly as you can. Positive thinking yields positive life events, and vice-versa.
In just a few minutes each day you can build your self esteem and reap the rewards of greater happiness and life satisfaction. Be your own best friend not your worst enemy.
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