If something has negatively affected your self-esteem, it’s important to remember that you have the right to feel good about who you are. Here are five tips to help change your mind-set and get you rebuilding how you think about yourself.
Be conscious of negative thinking
If you are continually thinking in the same negative patterns, they will start to become an automatic way of thinking. Becoming aware of this and acknowledging realistic expectations is important. Be aware when your brain starts to wander into self-deprecating thoughts and instead try to allow yourself to think how you can grow and change..
Limit the time you spend with people who make you have self-doubt
Are there some people who you spend time with that repeatedly make you feel like you are not good enough and cause you to question yourself a lot? Be aware of this and limit the time you spend with them.
Break down your goals
Choose something that you want to achieve and break it down into easy achievable steps. Building self-esteem is a lot about proving to yourself that you can do it and trying to squash the negative thoughts that tell you that you can’t. Having your goals in small steps will be much more manageable, less overwhelming and your faith in your abilities will grow overtime!
Make time for self-care
Doing small acts of self-care is important in taking back some of the power from the intrusive thoughts that say you aren’t good enough. You are showing yourself that you are worthy of care, kindness and your own time.
Stop comparing yourself to others
With the help of social media, we now live in a world where it is very easy to compare ourselves to others. However, it is important to remember that we only ever show what we want others to see, it is the edited highlights of people’s life’s, you don’t see their everyday struggles or hard work.
Comparing ourselves to others is futile, if you already have low self-esteem it will almost always certainly leave you feeling inferior.
For help and advice whilst studying at NTU, take a look at the following for sources of support.
Mind: for more information and advice on Self-Esteem
Silvercloud: SilverCloud is our online system designed to help with a range of mental health issues.
Wellness in Mind: Advice and support for anyone in Nottingham experiencing issues with their mental wellbeing
Struggling at Uni? Go to Student Minds
We are always looking for NTU students to write for our blog so if you are interested please do get in touch at healthyntu.@ntu.ac.uk
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