Low self-esteem can make it nearly impossible to feel good about yourself, which is why it’s important to overcome low self-esteem. Many people do not manage to do this and instead continue to carry around demoralising and debilitating thoughts about their own self worth all their lives, revealing their beliefs about themselves through addictive and negative habits, such as drinking too much, eating unhealthily and taking drugs. They are all the actions of a person who doesn’t feel good about themselves. The essence of the human spirit is to feel good about ourselves – it is something we all deserve.

So, in order to boost your self-esteem, it is necessary to reprogram your negative thoughts and also your thoughts about fear and success, achievement and failure. The key is to replace your negative thoughts with positive ones and although this takes some practice, the effort is worth it. Our thoughts create our feelings, so it’s important to ensure that your thoughts are life affirming and enriching, encouraging and enlivening. Of course, negative things happen in our lives and events can arouse our fear, but it is how we react to those events – beginning first with our thoughts about them – that will ensure our success in dealing with them as well as overcoming our negative thoughts and achieving the feel good factor.

The feel good factor comes from thinking positively and is the result of raising your self-esteem. To help you achieve the feel good factor, there are ten tips you can follow:

1. Stop comparing yourself with other people and stop putting your self down with derogatory names and terms. Comparing yourself unfavourably to others is a sure-fire way to feel rotten about yourself. Focus on only yourself and your improvement and start being your best friend, thinking positive thoughts about yourself and your life.

2. Use affirmations to boost your self-esteem. Affirmations are positive phrases that are best said aloud and remember to use the present tense. The idea is to feel good about yourself NOW and not sometime in the future. Examples are: “I am a lucky person”, “I am lovable” and “I am becoming more confident every day”.

3. Socialise as much as you can with positive people and limit your time with negative people. This can be tricky as so many people in our life – family, friends and colleagues – can be negative influences, so it’s necessary to start to find a new group of people who are supportive of your goal to increase your self-esteem. You might consider joining online confidence building groups or attend evening classes and seminars.

4. Learn to be still and silent. We all need some quiet, reflective time. Our lives are often so busy that we don’t have adequate wind-down time. It is estimated that the average adult doesn’t spend even half an hour a month in total silence. Silence may feel strange at first, even unnerving so practice being still and silent for ten minutes at first and then lengthen the time each day.

5. Write a list of your positive qualities. Everyone has positive qualities. We often underestimate how many we have, so start to write down the first ten you can think of. Once you have reached ten, increase the number to 100. Seeing your qualities written down is a wonderful way to achieve the feel good factor.

6. Start exercising. We all need to exercise regularly, it makes us feel better and look better and being fit helps us also to deal better with any stressful periods in our lives.

7. Remember the good things people have said about you and write them down. Compliments from other people can help to boost our self-esteem, although you should not, of course, use this as the total means of boosting your confidence. However, when people show us appreciation, it’s a wonderful way to feel good.

8. Make any necessary changes that you think will help you feel better, such as changing your hair style, style of dress etc. Perhaps there are also aspects of your behaviour that you wish to focus on also, such as enrolling on an assertiveness training course or an anger management course or finding help about giving up smoking.

9. Eat healthily but don’t torture yourself with strict diets that are impossible to stick to and will therefore make you feel like a failure. Join a group to gain motivation and support and make lifestyle changes that are achievable.

10. Change your negative thoughts to positive thoughts by training yourself to focus on the positive ones. Remember that your mind can only think one thought at a time, so make it a positive one. Positive thinking is essential for your self-esteem and feeling good about yourself.

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