If you are like most people then you may be having negative messages about yourself. You must tackle these thoughts if you want to Build Self Esteem. Many of these negative thoughts will be triggered by your subconscious, and often you might not be aware that you are doing it. These messages will have been ingrained in you when you were young. Things that you may have picked up from your parents, teachers, friends and even the media will have shaped the way you think about life and the way you think about yourself.

Once these negative messages have been planted, your subconscious mind will return to them and you will have repeated them to yourself again and again in times of trouble. As such you will have come to believe them totally. These messages will be having a major impact on the way your view yourself and will be the cause of low self esteem.

An example of a negative message that many people have is to think that they always mess up. For example when you start a new project a thought like ‘I don’t know why I am starting this, I always mess up in the end’ might well pass through your mind. This thought probably comes from a situation when you were a child when something went wrong, and either your classmates laughed at you, or a bad teacher made fun of you or something similar.

Once a thought like this is implanted in your mind then it can start a vicious circle. Because you are thinking like this you are less likely to be successful with the next thing you try. You negative thoughts lead you to failure again, thereby reinforcing the negative thoughts you had about yourself.

And so it goes on until you break the cycle.

The first step in breaking the cycle, is to understand this process. If you have read and understood what I have said so far then you have taken that first step.

So what next?

First off, get into the habit of carrying a small notebook with you so that you can make a note of whenever you have a negative thought about yourself. Make a note of the time, what the negative thought was, and what you were doing at the time (i.e. where you relaxed, busy, under stress etc).

After a few days or a week or so of note taking, take some time out when you are in a good mood and not under stress, to sit down and examine your notes. Look for common themes  in the negative thoughts and then ask yourself the following question about each;

• Is the negative message really true?
• Would you say this to another person? If not why are you saying it to yourself?
• What is the effect of this thought on me? If it is making you feel badly or is effecting what you achieve in life, why not decide that you won’t think that thought again.

Finally ask yourself what alternative positive statements you can say to yourself to replace each of the negative thought every time you realise you are about to start thinking negatively. Over time you will find that your subconscious mind automatically thinks the positive thoughts in times of stress, rather than those debilitating negative thoughts. As a result your self esteem will grow noticeably.

If you find it almost impossible to bring positive thoughts into your mind and your negative thoughts continue to grow you might want to seek further help and advice. Very low self esteem and depression are often linked. If you feel that you might be suffering from depression, that please seek help as it can be tackled.