How to Build Self Worth

Understand the power of your attitude toward yourself. How you perceive yourself, how you talk about yourself, and how you represent yourself eventually becomes the reality for you. And if it happens that you're putting yourself down, belittling your worth, and making light of your talents in the face of others, then you will come across as self-effacing, low in self-esteem, and almost a part of the wallpaper. This isn't humility -- it's self-denial and an attempt to lessen your presence.

• On the other hand, if you exaggerate your qualities, talents, and skills, you'll come across as egotistical and arrogant. Oddly enough, this is not about over-estimating your self-worth but about deceiving yourself through insecurity. There is a middle pathway and it is the one in which you recognize and celebrate the fact that you are a valuable person, equal to everyone else, and that your talents and thoughts are unique and worthy. Getting to this belief can be difficult if you have spent years underestimating your worth but it is always possible to change your thoughts and to learn to value yourself.

Learn to overcome a fear of self-love. Self-love is often equated with narcissism, egotism, and some kind of one-way trip to a negative form of introversion. This is probably partly because the English language has a hard time dealing with the word "love" – it has to cover a lot of territory for the many different types of love out there. It is also mired in the confusion people feel about the message to do good unto others, to always be charitable, and to give, give, give, of oneself. While these are noble intentions, they can often be taken out of proportion and used to downplay putting one's own needs and wants beneath those of others out of a fear of being perceived as selfish or inward-looking. Again, this is about getting the balance right.

• Healthy self love is about being your own best friend. Self love is expressed not through preening oneself all day and constantly announcing how great you are (those are signs of intense insecurity); rather, self love is about treating yourself with the same care, tolerance, generosity, and compassion as you would treat a special friend.
• Avoid overlaying how you think other people see you. How does it help you to cater your personality to their idea of you? Only you can give yourself the esteem boost you need.

• Self love falters when we fall into the realm of addiction. Alcoholism, drug addiction, Internet addiction, and all similar addictions are a sign that you're hurting deeply but also that you don't want to face up to the opportunities presented by working through your pain. 

Trust your own feelings. Self-worth requires that you learn to listen to and rely on your own feelings and not automatically respond to the feelings of other people. Once those around you establish that you'll respond to what they want, they'll lack any incentive to not make use of your responsiveness, and that sets a bind for you that can be hard to break (but break it you must). When you trust your own feelings, you will realize that when demands are placed upon you, you don't feel great and you will want to respond with what works better for you, or for both of you, rather than what works better for everyone else except you.

• Self-worth plummets when we let others make decisions for us. Initially this may seem like the easy route and one that allows you to avoid hard choices. Ultimately though, it turns into the hard route because you will always find yourself boxed in by what other people decide for you. And then suddenly, if the people who make decisions for you disappear from your life, you are left alone and indecisive. That is an earth-shattering place to end up in and it's more likely than not to happen if you're not prepared to make decisions for yourself.
• Analyze yourself. Many of us live in a culture that is very fond of going to see someone else to analyze us. Unless you've got a serious disorder, garden-variety uncertainty and lack of purpose does not need analysis by someone else. It needs self-analysis so that you can clearly recognize where you're underestimating yourself and short-changing yourself. Here are some questions for your self-analysis:

  • What experience have I had? How has this experience informed my growth?
  • What are my talents? List at least five.
  • What are my skills? Remember that talents are innate, skills need to be worked on to perfect them.
  • What are my strengths? Stop focusing on your weaknesses; you've probably done that long enough. Start looking at what your strengths are and start thinking about how you can make the most of them in the things you choose to do.
  • What do I want to be doing with my life? Am I doing it? If not, why not?
  • Am I happy with my health? If not, why not? And what can I do to move into wellness instead of living in sickness?
  • What makes me feel fulfilled? Am I working on that or am I busy working on other people's fulfillment?
   
  Stop making your self-worth conditional on other people. Once you try to live up to an image of what you think others want to you to be, you lose your self-worth. Instead, you are following a compass set by other people's expectations, whether or not those expectations are clearly defined or implied. Unfortunately, many people live this way, making such choices as what to study, what career to choose, where to live, and how many children to have -- all based on expectations from parents, spouses, friends, and the media. This comes from being afraid of standing up for their own preferences and respecting their self-worth. It's a real shame to live your life for someone else.

  • Be very wary of listening too much to people who regret the choices that they made in life and who actively inflict their distress or anger at this regret upon others (especially upon the next generation). Such people won't enlighten you as to the path of acting on your self-worth at all. Instead, they'll try to either live out what they didn't get through you or, what's worse, expect you to have the same rotten experiences they had. To be sure of this, they'll give you poor information, incorrect details, or simply omit to inform you at all.

  • People with healthy self-worth will share their insights and learning with you, and will be willing to guide you around life's many traps. Look for those people to mentor you rather than being misguided by the unhappy people who are too miserable to help .

  
  
  
  Source:  https://www.wikihow.com