Boosting Self-Esteem By Changing Your Values

Low self-esteem tends to grow from the values we feel we've failed to live up to. So the starting point is unusual: figure out what those values actually are. What do you beat yourself up about? Where do you keep deciding you've come up short? Most self-development advice pushes you in the opposite direction, telling you to name your strengths and spotlight your talents, which means we rarely sit with the real source of the bad feeling.

Try listing the things about yourself you don't like. It feels backwards, but stay with it. When you're finished you'll have two columns. The first is the dislikes. The second is the value sitting behind each one.

For instance, the dislike column might read: my looks, my weight, how little progress I've made in my career, my inability to hold a marriage together, the sound of my own voice. Translate each of those into the value it implies: I value good looks, I value a healthy weight, I value a successful career, I value a good marriage, I value a pleasant speaking voice.

Now study the values list. Every item on it is a daily source of negative feeling for you. Ask which ones earn that much distress. Which genuinely matter to the life you want, and which don't? Cross out the ones that aren't worth the misery.

Whatever survives, start sketching steps toward improvement. If no solutions come to mind, go back to the dislike list and dig deeper. Take "I can't hold a marriage together." List every related dislike underneath it: I lose my temper fast, I avoid intimacy because of how I feel about my body, I say cruel things during arguments that I regret afterward.

Then convert those into values of their own. I value keeping my anger in check. I value being close to my husband. I value holding my tongue so I don't have regrets later.

After that, the actions follow almost by themselves. I'll find strategies for managing my temper. I'll treat losing weight as a priority so I can feel comfortable being intimate. I'll practice self-control around what comes out of my mouth. The low self-esteem has become a short list of things you can actually do.

Once the plan exists, your self-critical thoughts have somewhere useful to go. When the old feeling surfaces, you can return to your values and the goals you've set.

But what about the values you struck off? The insecurities behind them don't vanish just because you've decided they shouldn't count. They can still drain you. One thing that helps: write down exactly why you crossed each one out. Why isn't it worth suffering over? Why isn't it worth the pain? Then, whenever that insecurity flares up, go back and read your reasons. Rereading them is itself the work of rearranging your values and pointing them where you want to go.

Inside most low self-esteem you'll find a blend of two things: real areas that are ready to grow, and values that are simply hurting you. Telling them apart isn't always obvious at first. Plenty of women, for example, carry the belief that feeling good about themselves depends on looking a particular way. They pour time, money, energy, and anxiety into their appearance and still end up dissatisfied, their self-esteem no higher than when they started. That's a value doing damage, not a genuine opportunity for growth.

Chasing deep emotional needs and the hunger for self-actualization through the surface of how we look or how our surroundings are arranged doesn't deliver. You might still decide to make those changes, but you come to see they leave your emotional life largely untouched. Lasting satisfaction comes from naming the values that live at the center of you and working on those parts of your life instead.

- Iman Mohiki