5 Things You Can Do to Start Recognizing Your Self Worth Today

Do you struggle with being confident? Do you think others may not see you as a worthwhile addition in their lives? Do you believe you just aren’t good enough?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are not alone. A lot of us deal with those beliefs in our lives. There is a way to start changing those thoughts and feelings, however, and it all begins with you. With these five steps, you can start building your confidence today!

1. Write down 3 things you did well today. When the evening is winding down, make it a point to write down three things you feel like you did very well. They don’t have to be monumental events — it can be something as simple as deciding to take a shower. The purpose of this exercise to help you start changing your focus from things you believe you did poorly to things you did well on in any given day. There are always things that you did well in a day — make it a habit to start looking for them.
2. Write down 2 things you felt confident doing today. In the evening, sit back and let your mind review your day. Find 2 things that you have absolute confidence that you did well today. Again, these can be small things, it doesn’t particularly matter. If you believe you brushed your teeth well and spent the appropriate amount of time on the task, write it down. Let your body feel that you know you did a task well. Take a moment and check in with your body to see how you feel when you are writing down something you did confidently. Acknowledge that being able to write anything down means you do have confidence living in your body. You may not feel like a confident person overall, but there are parts of your life where you do feel confidence.
3. Forgive yourself for your mistakes daily. Do you think you made a faux pas today? Do you feel like you made a mistake at your job at some point today? Maybe in your parenting, or your interaction with your spouse? You probably did make a mistake today. Guess what — we all do, each and every day. No one is perfect, and that includes you. Making mistakes is part of living. It is much easier to recognize our mistakes as soon as possible, take any action that may be needed to correct them if possible, forgive ourselves, and move on. Spending time beating yourself up for a mistake is wasted time. There is nothing to be gained from doing that.
4. Accept a compliment for what it is. How do you handle compliments in your life? There is a good chance if you lack self-confidence, when you hear a compliment, you dismiss it as having any chance of being true. You might believe the person who gave you the compliment is simply confused, or worse, they are giving you a compliment because they feel sorry for you. A better approach to a compliment is to just accept it as fact, and enjoy that you were complimented. Since you are unable to know exactly what anyone else is thinking, and you are unable to know why they gave you a compliment in the first place, just believe that they naturally wanted to compliment you. You did something well, and they are recognizing you for that. Enjoy that feeling, believe in it, and let it live in your heart — the feeling that you did well at something.
5. Tell yourself you did the best you could today. Give yourself the recognition you deserve. You did the absolute best you could today, no matter what you did in any given day. Could you have done your day a bit better? Yes, and any person who is honest with themselves would answer yes to that question. Both things are true: you are doing the best you can, and you can do better. It is important to respect yourself and give yourself kudos for just showing up at all — regardless of what that showing up looks like.

If you start doing these five things today, your confidence and self-worth will begin to grow. As a society, we have programmed ourselves to focus on the things that aren’t going well in our lives — drama and fear sell, so society has put them in the spotlight. By practicing the 5 steps listed above daily, you begin to change to focus in your life to things you are doing well.

If you are still feeling fearful of putting this exercise into practice today because you think you may have nothing to list, well then, what is the harm in at least trying? You don’t know what you don’t know — so while you believe this may not work for you, you haven’t even given it a try. So, start today — put your best foot forward when you practice these steps and keep thinking until you are able practice all the things in these 5 steps. I bet you will end up surprising yourself!

Originally published at http://mastermindpersonalcoaching.com on January 12, 2021.