In this post, I’ll show you one extremely simple, yet highly effective exercise (when making it a habit) to get you started on treating yourself with the kindness and love you deserve.
Before I started working on myself, I had the belief that I somehow became a better person if I were harsh on myself. I believed that If I just criticized myself, there was a chance that I’d be able to perceive all the errors before other people saw them. But nothing could be further from the truth.
When we are harsh on ourselves, we rob ourselves from happiness and energy. This means that we have less to give to the world around us. Furthermore, it actually diminishes our ability to feel joyful, motivated and achieve what we want in life. Therefore, it is crucial to learn how to build our self-esteem and be kind to ourselves.
Simple Confidence Building Exercise
A way you can gradually improve the way you look and treat yourself is through making a daily list with things you acknowledge yourself for.
It may be difficult or just feel unnatural at first, but it’s an important habit to build. The brain tends to amplify what we focus on, so try to train your brain into focusing on what you appreciate about yourself rather than focusing on what you think is wrong with you.
Nothing is too big or small for this list and it’s totally okay to start out with small things.
Better Confidence= Better Results
Besides, another side effect of this is that the more confidence we build, the more we are able to achieve in our life because we are not constantly stopping ourselves with self-criticism.
How negative self talk affects us.
On the YouTube channel “Therapy in a nutshell” Emma McAdam, a licensed family and relationship therapist, explains this brilliantly. She explains that dopamine is the chemical in the brain that is associated with motivation because it gives us a feeling of reward. This feeling makes us feel like it is worth it to stick with something or to do something challenging.
When we talk negatively to ourselves, we are basically ruining the sense of reward in our brain. This will over time make us feel less motivated. A natural consequence of this will be that we don’t achieve as many things as we could have done if we were more motivated. This can reinforce our negative self-talk that, again, ruins our motivation. You see the negative spiral going on here?
Punishment leading to lack of motivation
Even though a lot of us are conditioned to believe that being harsh towards ourselves or others is the way to achieve what we want, this is not true. Research shows that punishment is a short-term way of getting motivated. In the long run, it will lead to people being very demotivated.
You can watch the whole YouTube video on motivation here. I would definitely recommend you to follow the “Therapy in a Nutshell” YouTube channel. It’s a goldmine of amazing information about therapy and mental health:
Try the exercise!
So, try it out. Write a list of things you appreciate about yourself for once a day for 30 days if possible and try to note any difference in the way you look at yourself afterwards.
Appreciation is an especially important component in having good relationships. Just as it’s important to appreciate other people, it’s also important to be able to appreciate ourselves.
Conclusion:
I hope this exercise will get you started in training yourself in focusing on all the things that are amazing about you. Because trust me, you are amazing.
For me, the first step in treating myself with more kindness was just start to see that there was no point in criticizing myself all the time.
I consider building self-esteem and learning kindness towards ourselves as an ongoing and complex process that has many components.
But no matter if you choose to do the exercise or not, I hope you will take the teaching with you from this post, which is that you are not doing anyone a favor by diminishing yourself. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you have a lot of unique qualities and resources. You might as well start paying attention to them and exploit them to the fullest.
If you feel up for it, you can start now by telling me one thing you appreciate about yourself in the comments below.