5 Things I Did to Overcome Low Self Esteem

Image Source: Paul the Counsellor

While in secondary school, I battled with low self esteem. I struggled to make people like me. Hell! I was obsessed with making people like me. Also, I always let every insult or bad joke about me get to me. I was constantly looking for people's approval. Honestly, I didn't really know what I wanted from life. However, as I got ready to commence life in the university, I decided within me that things were going to change. From that little fella who suffered from low self esteem and the constant threat from others, I have been able to grow and become a better, more confident (sometimes nearly arrogant) young man and I want to share with you FIVE important things I did. I hope they can help you too:

1. I made a conscious effort to find out the root of my low self esteem. I discovered that I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin. I'm a skinny person. I felt bad about that. At that time, I was both skinny and short. My peers taunted me a lot actually. The times when they didn't taunt me, I was doing the taunting to myself. It got so bad that I forced myself to fall in love with beans so I could grow taller (and now I love beans a lot). As time went on, I realized I was only hurting myself. So for a time, I sat down to assess my life and when I discovered my problem, I decided to start working towards loving myself. And in order to love myself, I first had to do something strategic.
2. This leads to the next point, which is that I set out to find out what my purpose in life really was. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, really. I didn't know what my person was made of. I had no definite personality. No guidelines for life, no philosophies and values to live by. How then could I love myself when I didn't know myself? I thought I was going to be a novelist at some point. Another time, I thought I was going to be a counselor and a psychologist. I was too unsure where my life was headed. Until I made up my mind to discover my purpose in life (which, thankfully is now clear to me), I wasn't able to work on loving myself.
3. After I discovered my purpose in life, the next thing I did was to start building a personality around my purpose. I gave myself new challenges and tasked myself with finding the right resources to help me with this. I read a lot of books and listened to a lot of audio materials- sermons and audio books. Some of the authors that helped me include John C. Maxwell, Brian Tracy and Dale Carnegie. I also read some faith-themed books. It was in the course of learning that I discovered myself fully and started to build my personality. I realized I was designed to be a leader. Throughout my university days, I served on several leadership platforms as a way to challenge myself and help people become better. It's one of the reasons I opened this blog (smiles).
4. In the process of personality building and self-development, I finally started to love with myself. So, the next thing I did was to love myself. My eyes where now opened to my potentials and uniqueness. Loving oneself is more important than almost any other thing in living a good life. You can't successfully love others and be loved by others if you do not first love yourself as you are. Learning this lesson was a vital turning point in my life. Of course, I'm not there yet, but everyday I am making progress and life is getting better for me.
5. The final thing I did to overcome self-esteem was to keep learning. Like they say, "you start dying the moment you stop learning." Like I said, I'm not there yet; I'm not yet as confident as I would love to be. But everyday, from different experiences and from learning new lessons, I'm getting more confident in who God has created me to be.

Have you ever had to battle with low self-esteem or personality issues? Tell me your experiences and how you've been able to deal with these issues by leaving a comment below.

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