Often when we talk about the importance of confidence, we neglect to address its foundation: self-esteem. Self-esteem is, to put it simply, trust and self-assurance in your own judgment and abilities, along with a positive sense of your own worth. There are a number of ways to build self esteem and confidence, and your path might vary depending on your personal situation and life goals. If you're looking for guidance and options, we've got a few tips and some excellent audiobook recommendations to help you in your journey.
Practice Positive Affirmations
It's all too easy to get down on yourself when you're not feeling your best, but it's important to remember that you should speak as kindly to yourself as you would to someone you love. Practicing self-affirmations also calls attention to all of your good qualities, naturally lifting your mood so you can appreciate your strengths. We recommend You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living An Awesome Life by Jen Sincero if you need a little help reminding yourself how awesome you are. Along with plenty of positive affirmations, Sincero delivers some blunt, no-nonsense advice to help you kick the self-doubt habit and start kicking butt. And she narrates this Audie Award-winning audiobook herself.
Try New Things
Trying new things can be scary, especially if you've spent a long time telling yourself that you aren't talented enough, whether those skills be artistic, or athletic, or musically inclined. But who's to say you can't be, or that you can't find joy in trying out new pursuits without a focus on success? You don't have to be the best at everything; you just have to enjoy it—and you never know where new hobbies or activities might take you. If you need any extra convincing, pick up Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes. Rhimes is the mega successful woman behind many of TV's most popular shows, but even she felt stuck in a rut until she challenged herself to say yes to new opportunities for one year. And that year turned out to be exciting and full of wonderful things she never could have imagined. Let her convince you of the magic of being open to new possibilities.
Manage Your Stress
We all deal with stress, no matter how successful or happy we may be. But when our stress or anxiety is unmanageable or overly intense, we're more likely to be extra harsh and unforgiving with ourselves. Add on feelings of failure and inadequacy because we're not handling the stress well, and it's a vicious cycle that's hard to break. Despite all the talk about setting boundaries and self-care, managing stress can be challenging—especially for women. Luckily, there's Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski to help guide us. These sisters shed light on the biological stress cycle that so many people—women, in particular, but also men—get caught up in. With a newfound awareness of what makes us feel so frazzled, you’ll learn how to recognize your emotional triggers and return your body and mind to a state of calm. And, yes, positive self-talk, human connection, and healthy habits all help.
Define Your Values
It's easier to have self-confidence and build self-esteem if you know what's important to you, and where your priorities fall. Take a few minutes to sit down and really think about what matters most to you, whose opinions you value, and what values you want to structure your life around. If you need help figuring that out, we recommend Untamed, written and narrated by Glennon Doyle. Although a successful self-help writer and motivational speaker, Doyle had lost touch with her true self. In this intimate memoir, she reveals how she had to go through a personal reckoning, during which she learned to let go of the world’s expectations of her and instead honor, trust, and listen to her own voice.
Helping Others
While you shouldn't rely completely on outside validation to help you build self-esteem, know that you are a talented, smart, resourceful human being who has a lot to offer the world, and helping others can definitely help you feel good about your own abilities. We recommend Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. by Brené Brown, a powerful listen that looks at leadership not as a position of power, but as a quality in people who are able to see the potential in others, help uplift them, and do the hard work of being vulnerable and brave in order to do great things.
Admit—and Embrace—Failure
Failure can be scary because, well, it's failure. But failing doesn't make you weak or less worthy; it just makes you human. In order to build self-esteem and confidence, we must be able to fail, look critically (but constructively) at those failures, and then take what we've learned and keep moving forward. Leslie Odom, Jr. can help with that. In his Audible exclusive memoir Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning, he talks about how he was a dreamer who had to take risks in order to achieve success, and offers concrete advice on how to take control of your life, start achieving your dreams—and keep going if you fail.
Get Outside of Your Head
Sometimes when we have low self-esteem, it's difficult to have perspective. We get caught in cyclical, crummy feelings and thoughts about our own lives and situations, and we don't think about the bigger picture. That's why trying something new, reading about someone whose life differs from your own, or volunteering to help someone else can be useful. It puts your own life into perspective. If you need help with that, we recommend Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell, an incredible full-cast listen that offers an immersive and eye-opening look at how we think and talk about strangers, and how we make sense of people we don't know. This audiobook will help you think more openly about others, and also help you when it comes to conflict management.
Gather Inspiration
Sometimes building self-esteem just requires a bit of inspiration, a reminder that the world isn't all bad—that there is good, even when times are hard. No one is better at dispensing inspirational tough love than Cheryl Strayed. In Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar, Strayed answers a multitude of questions from readers about love, loss, heartbreak, and living life. Her words are a balm and a motivator, and you might even want to write some of them down on sticky notes and spread them around your house as positive affirmations.
Tackle Bad Habits and Start New Habits
Bad habits, or even just unhealthy habits, can really wreak havoc on your mental well-being and self-esteem. But breaking habits and cultivating new ones can be really hard. That's why we recommend picking up Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear. He looks at biology, psychology, and neuroscience to explain how habits work, how to break bad habits, and how to develop healthier routines with staying power. If you know how to approach forming good habits, you're more likely to stick to them—and that sense of accomplishment and stability feels great.
Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help
It's okay to ask for help. In fact, it’s more than okay: it’s necessary. Depending on what you're dealing with, it can be so useful to ask for the advice and help of a mental health professional. They'll be able to talk you through your specific concerns, help you formulate a plan, and give you strategies to improve your life. If you're feeling nervous about seeking professional help, we recommend the Audible exclusive Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb. Lori is a therapist who has helped so many patients over the years, but when a personal tragedy sends her reeling, she goes searching for a therapist of her own. This memoir covers her experiences helping others and seeking out help, and the parallels she draws from being on both sides of the proverbial couch.
Tirzah Price is a writer and contributing editor at Book Riot.
