Self-worth is something many people struggle with. For one reason or another, at some point in your life, you decide that you’re less valuable than others. In most cases, you may not even be aware of this. Nonetheless, you start accepting less than what you deserve in life. Sometimes, lack of self-worth can creep in during childhood, long before you understand the concept of it. In this article, we look a how to improve self-worth.

How Can You Tell If You’ve Got Low Self Worth?

Before looking at how to improve self-worth, you need to know the tell-tale signs. There a many signs of low self-worth. For starters, you allow others to treat you with disrespect. Furthermore, you put yourself at the bottom of the list at every opportunity. What’s more, you often put yourself down and engage in negative self-talk. Behavioural patterns arise that soon become part of your makeup. Not only do you allow it to continue, but others subtly learn to respond to your low self-worth. This means they think it is acceptable to treat you less well than others.

Nobody may be conscious of these patterns, but they continually gnaw at the little self-worth you’ve got. Because you’re not demanding the treatment you deserve, the people around you don’t make an effort. They believe you’re alright and don’t recognize your suffering.

Quietly, you feel down. Perhaps you’re conscious of your problem, perhaps you haven’t thought about your self-worth. In most cases, things come to a head at some point in your life. An incident in your life highlights your self-worth issues and makes you reassess how you feel about yourself and what kind of treatment you expect from those around you.

Some people who have self-worth issues do so because they feel they need to put other people first – all the time. It’s well and good being kind and endeavouring not to be selfish, however, not at your own expense. This is probably one of the most important how to improve self-worth tips. Don’t be kind to others at your own expense. Be kind to others AND yourself.

How to Improve Self Worth

If you’re reading this, chances are, you struggle with self-worth. So, how do you tackle low self-worth? Having struggled with it myself, I’ve learned that a few simple techniques can work wonders, so here are my how to improve self-worth tips:

• Swap negative self-talk with positive self-talk, even if it sounds stupid at first: Watch out for negative thoughts about yourself. Stop those patterns and replace them with encouraging thoughts. At first, you may feel that this is stupid but after a while, you’ll see the positive thoughts making an impact.
• Put yourself on an equal footing with others: People with low self-worth often consider themselves less worthy than others. Become aware of this and keep telling yourself that everyone is equal.
• Remind yourself of what you deserve: Keep reminding yourself that you deserve love and respect, even from people who don’t like you.
• Demand what you deserve: If someone is treating you disdainfully, put a stop to it immediately. This means not letting people get away with treating you badly. Calmly raise the issue and explain your feelings. Though this may seem a little daunting at first, people usually respond well to others standing up for themselves. If you’ve come across someone who is really unkind, face your fears and demand respect anyway.
• Find a place in your heart for yourself: Self-worth and self-love go hand in hand. If you open your heart and give yourself a little love, you’ll feel much better and your self-worth will shoot up.
• Embrace your imperfections: Many people link self-worth to achievements and looks. Keep telling yourself that no one is perfect and that you’re entitled to make mistakes. You’re worthy of love and respect, even if you never amount to anything.
• Do something nice for yourself, at least once a day: Endeavour to do something nice for yourself each day. This can be anything like allowing yourself a break, buying yourself a treat, or whatever else cheers you up.
• Embrace your uniqueness: There’s no one like you, and no one can make your important, unique contribution. Remember that!

These are some simple tips on how to improve self-worth. Do you use any techniques or have you got any self-worth hacks? Please let me know in the comments below.