Improve Your Self-esteem With Mindfulness

Defining self-esteem is not an easy task. We could say that it is the emotional part that derives from our self-concept, that is, from the emotions that arise from how we see ourselves. These emotions in turn generate thoughts, behaviors and emotions that tend to reinforce this self-concept. That is why improving our self-esteem is such an easy and difficult task at the same time.

On the other hand, mindfulness encompasses a set of proposals with a common objective: to recover full consciousness, mindfulness or attentive and reflective presence, which consists of being present in the here and now, being observers of what happens to us without judging . It is about our experimenting, about being open to experience with the least possible prejudices and filters.

The ladder of self-esteem

We are going to attend to self-esteem as a main element especially sensitive to five processes. They would be the following:

• Self-knowledge. Know ourselves, with our defects and our virtues. The positive or negative is part of our way of understanding life, it should not be confused with what is socially accepted. We can listen to what others think, but it is we who finally introduce each element in its drawer, forming our ethics and conditioning, therefore, our self-concept and our self-esteem.
• Self-acceptance. Accept what we cannot change now or that it is better not to change because trying for real would have a cost in resources that we cannot assume. In any case, far from the projection of the future, the present offers us the possibility of reconciling ourselves with the person we are now.

• Self-assessment.  It is the capacity that people have to value our virtues and abilities, both physically and intellectually. This step is one of the most important: some of us have a hard time separating those skills in which we are good from those in which we are not so good.
• Self respect. Many people think that they do not deserve what they have or can have. Respecting ourselves means giving way to an internal dialogue that does not destroy us, feeding negative valence emotions or initiating behaviors that harm us in order to punish or reprimand us.
• Self-improvement. Knowing ourselves is the first step to improve ourselves. If we manage to carry out the 4 previous stages, we will be able to enjoy a good self-perception and a healthy self-esteem.

Improve self-esteem with mindfulness, how to do it?

Once we know the five factors that greatly influence our self-esteem, we will see how we can work them through the meditative practice of mindfulness. It is about working them one by one, based on a plan and following an order

To improve self-esteem with mindfulness, we will perform a series of exercises and guided meditations, focused on each of the components of self-esteem that we have been detailing previously.

Self-knowledge

The practice could be introduced as follows:

We will adopt a comfortable, calm and relaxed posture, keeping our mind in the here and now, moment by moment. We take in air and we are observers of our breathing, becoming aware of how the air enters through our nose and widens our lungs from the abdomen. Finally we expel the air.

First we will try to focus on three defects, and then on three virtues. Once we are aware of our flaws and virtues, we will observe them as part of us. Let us remember that they are necessary and make us unique and special; thus, we are going to observe them without judging them, without judging ourselves.

Gently we open our eyes and we move slowly.

Duration: 10-15 min.

Self acceptance

The process of self-acceptance is, without a doubt, the most difficult step in self-improvement. Almost all people want to improve something about themselves because they are not happy with some content of their being, either in relation to their body, their personality or in reference to their way of acting.

As with self-knowledge, we are going to do a practice related to meditation, but now focusing on self-acceptance. Accepting the qualities that we do not like is not easy, but it is necessary to improve our self-esteem.

We proceed again to adopt a comfortable and relaxed posture. We take a breath and focus on our breathing. We leave behind our prejudices and external evaluations and we just accept them. We accept who we are with our positive and negative qualities, our strengths and weaknesses, our lights and our shadows.

We fix our attention on those defects that we have previously identified and we observe and accept them as part of us. Let’s repeat the following phrase when we observe the defect “I deeply and completely accept myself” or what is the same, “I deeply and completely love and respect myself.”

As for the virtues, we take another breath and focus on one of them, we observe it, we look at it and we let it go. We proceed to wake up from this meditative state of semi-consciousness and slowly open our eyes, move our hands, legs and other parts of our body. As we see, improving self-esteem with mindfulness is possible from self-acceptance.

Duration: 10-15 min.

Self-assessment

This phase is not a good time to be modest, quite the opposite. Take a notebook and write down any aspect in which you are good and rate it as it deserves.

Now don’t worry about trying to rank these aspects. Each one of us has different qualities and we should be proud of them. 

Self respect

Needs and desires are inherent to living and are part of any path to happiness. Let’s try to respect ourselves, look for our abilities and try to save space for positively valence emotions under any circumstance.

Let’s try not to blame ourselves for mistakes and not to calculate feelings of happiness in contrast to other people. If we believe that we are doing something right, there is nothing wrong with being happy about it.

Self-improvement

As the last point to improve self-esteem with mindfulness, after having seen the different degrees, we arrive at self-improvement. If the person knows himself, he can always improve himself in his personal life.

It is important, as we have already said, to know, accept, value and respect each other. Only in this way, we will be able to improve ourselves and improve our self-esteem, which will help us to make appropriate decisions and solve our daily actions or problems with solvency.

As we have seen, it is possible to improve self-esteem with mindfulness. To do this, we must know ourselves, accept ourselves, value ourselves and respect ourselves in order to improve ourselves later. It is important to follow the points that we have just made. It is impossible to become happy with ourselves and improve ourselves personally if we do not follow, consequently, the different steps.