How to Build Healthy Self-Esteem Without Faking It in 3 Simple Steps

#1 is counterintuitive but crucial.

“Hey, long time no see! How are you?”

I turned around. There she was. A girl I was very good friends with in high school but both went our own ways afterward. Yet, seven years later, we ran into each other at the same party.

We started off with the kind of small talk you have after not seeing each other for several years, until she said something that I’d never expected”

“You know, I want to thank you for everything you did back then. I’d never have gotten to where I am today without you building me up.”

I was baffled, to say the least. She had a great job, was in a happy relationship, and living together with her boyfriend for multiple years now. She seemed to be a happy, fulfilled and self-confident person. So far so good, she’s got her life together. But how in the world did I contribute to that?

She explained. And slowly but surely, it dawned on me. The big picture that I couldn’t see back then now became clear as day. She went through the typical issues all the people in high school go through. Struggling with grades. Friends talking behind her back. Heartbreak. Fights with her parents. But the thing that really held her back and gave her headaches wasn’t a crush who didn’t reciprocate her love or a failed exam. They were merely gasoline onto an already burning fire: Low self-esteem and trust in herself.

Yet, here she was. Somewhere along the way, she had managed to build her self-esteem and trust in herself. She made things happen. And she did it herself. I was just the guy who showed her how to do it and gave her a hand when things got too bad. And as a result, she thrived.

Low self-esteem sucks. It can hold you back in a number of ways. You don’t trust in yourself enough, so you don’t even try and accomplish something, even if you could. Because you see yourself as incapable, other people will see you like that as well. In the end, you’ll miss out on a lot of great opportunities in life, just because you thought you couldn’t do it.

If you suffer from low self-esteem, you know what I am talking about. You have a lot of regrets, I-wish-I-hads, and I-wish-I-coulds floating around in your head.

Let me tell you something: You can do a lot more than you think. And the path to unlocking your potential lies in building up healthy self-esteem and trust in yourself.

Judging by what my friend told me, I’ve got a hand for showing others how to lift themselves up and build some healthy self-esteem. And today, it’s your turn.

What Self-Esteem Really Is

Do you know what the biggest issue about healthy self-esteem is? You can only build it up yourself. It is built through your own experiences, not someone else’s words.

You can have people say that you are beautiful and smart all day long, but if you don’t experience yourself as such a person, you will forever see an ugly, dumb loser when you look in the mirror. Tough titty.

Self-esteem is a measure of how you feel about yourself, not of what others think of you.

That’s why you can fake it to the outer world, but never to yourself. You may be able to fool people around you and have everyone think of you as the big shot. But deep down, you will always know.

At the same time, you can’t have your self-esteem built up by others from scratch. They can inspire you, give you a hand or show you how to do it. But ultimately, you are the one who has to make the experiences that make you feel good about yourself.

Healthy and Toxic Self-Esteem

Self-esteem doesn’t equal self-esteem. Confusing, huh? Let me explain in some simple words.

Healthy self-esteem is based on things you can control — your internals. You can’t control how much money you make, but you can feel good about your work ethic and the skills you develop. You can’t control if someone else falls in love with you, but you can be confident in yourself because you strive to be a good human being. Focus on the things you can control, improve them, and you’ll slap on a good portion of healthy self-esteem.

Toxic self-esteem is based on things that are not in your control of — external factors. Popularity, Instagram likes, the car you drive, the shoes you wear, or the arm candy that follows you around. These can all be taken from you in an instant. And whenever this happens, your self-esteem plummets. Your self-esteem is dependent on external things that are not within your control, which is highly toxic.

So now, the million-dollar question is: How exactly do you build healthy self-esteem? How do you make yourself feel good about the person you are?

Let me show you.

First Things First: Stop Comparing Yourself with Others

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, this is the first step you have to take. What other people are doing and how they are is outside of your control. They are not living your life, they didn’t grow up as you did, they don’t have the same story as you do. So why the fuck would you compare yourself to them?

I see it happen over and over when I go to the gym. People ogling other people and admiring their body or parts of it. And instead of looking at themselves and feeling good about their chiseled abs, they lose sleep over the fact that some other dude has bigger biceps.

Don’t compare yourself with someone else but instead with yourself yesterday. That’s how you make progress and feel good about the person you are.

With that out of the way, let’s give you the three steps you can take to build healthy self-esteem.

1. Accept that you have low or toxic self-esteem.

I know that this sounds counterintuitive, so let me explain.

When you feel bad about your low or toxic self-esteem it puts you into a downward spiral that keeps you from working on it and building healthy self-esteem.

You feel so bad about yourself that all you can think about is how low your self-esteem is and how bad these issues are. You worry so much about the things you don’t like about yourself that you can’t come up with the energy or the focus to actually work on them.

So, the first thing you have to do is to get rid of this bad feeling that overshadows everything else. Getting rid of bad feelings is quite counterintuitive. You have to accept it instead of fighting it. This is the only way to make some room for working on your issues.

Sure, you might lack social skills. Yes, your body isn’t ready for summer at all. No, you haven’t landed your dream job yet. So what? Lamenting and self-pity won’t do anything but suck up your energy and distract you.

For a moment, accept the situation as it is right now and focus on improving it.

2. Invest in yourself.

Now that you have your emotional baggage out of the way, it’s time to get your hands dirty and make some progress.

You can now focus on the areas that make you feel bad about yourself and improve. This has two beneficial effects. First, you make progress. You actually improve. And because you make that progress, you are becoming a better person and will feel better about yourself. Second, you are making use of a little psychological trick. We, humans, value things more when we have invested our time, money, and energy into them. Our brains want to justify our investments to ourselves and therefore attach a higher value to what we invest in — and in this case, it is you.

Investment doesn’t equal money.

I have to make an important distinction here. Investing in yourself doesn’t mean to get liposuction, fake boobs, or a new pair of Jordan’s.

It means that you improve yourself as a person, whatever that means to you. Focus on your internals and on the things you can control.

If you feel bad about yourself because you have no education, start reading and educating yourself. Heavily indebted? Regain control of your finances by getting an overview, scheduling payoffs, and making a future investment plan. Feeling down because you put on weight and your old clothes don’t fit anymore? Switch to a healthy diet. Do you feel like you’re stuck and not making any progress in life? Set goals and work on them.

Take small steps & celebrate small wins.

The problem with low self-esteem is that the people who are stuck with it are likely to give up quickly. A tiny setback often is enough to bring them back to “I knew I couldn’t do it. I’m such a loser.” Understandable. When you’re down in the dumps, it’s hard to shoot for the moon.

Building self-esteem is like starting a fire. At first, you only have a small, flickering flame. You can’t put half a tree on top of a candle and expect it to light up. The candle will die down without so much as getting through the tree’s bark. Instead, you have to feed your fire little dry sticks until it has built up enough heat and momentum to tackle the big oaks.

If you’re lacking social skills, going to a nightclub on your own is a nightmare come true. But if you start off with asking people for the time or making small talk with the cashier at your local Starbucks, now that’s a different story. If you’re low on self-esteem because you don’t feel smart or educated enough, you don’t have to get an MIT degree right away. But reading a couple of blogs or books will already make you feel a whole lot better about yourself.

Remember when I said that self-esteem was about your experiences? This is what I was talking about. Small, positive experiences accumulate over time and make you gain confidence.

But wait, there’s more. To make the most out of the positive experiences you get from investing in yourself, you have to celebrate them. Often, you don’t even recognize the progress you’re making and in turn, your self-image doesn’t change a lot. You have to become more aware of your improvements and wins. A great way to keep track of all the things you achieved during the day is to take some time off in the evening and write them down. Ask yourself “what did I do well today?” and start writing.

Start small and then challenge yourself, step by step.

Practice self-care.

Not all of your efforts have to be directed at things you don’t particularly like about yourself. Often, low self-esteem is rooted in causes that lie way deeper and aren’t obvious to us.

While self-care isn’t the magic pill a lot of people make it out to be, it can be a good way to invest in and feel good about yourself as well as resolve some of your underlying issues.

There are tons of different ways to practice self-care. Physical — exercise and eat a healthy diet. Emotional — get in touch with your emotions and allow yourself to feel them. Psychological — self-reflect, turn down extra obligations to reduce stress, follow a passion. Spiritual — meditate, contribute to a greater cause, focus on the non-material things in your life. Professional — improve your work-life-balance, get to know your coworkers, hone your skills.

Building healthy self-esteem is like putting together a sculpture out of millions of tiny building blocks — and self-care is the glue that holds everything together.

3. Accept that you will always lack something.

True, healthy self-esteem isn’t grounded in how great you feel about your good sides and what you have. Rather, it is based on how comfortable and cool you are with your downsides and what you lack.

It’s easy to feel good about your strengths. We all have something we’re proud of, even if it’s just the fact that we can make a banging guacamole.

The harder — but crucial — part is the following: Accepting your weaknesses and the things you’re missing.

It’s the crucial last step that you have to take. You have to come to terms with the fact that you aren’t perfect — and never will be. Just like everyone else.

That doesn’t mean that you should stop improving and working on yourself. No. It just means that you have to first accept yourself with all your quirks and flaws.

Get Comfortable with Being Yourself

Improving your self-esteem will take a while. Your beliefs about yourself have had years to form and burn themselves into your head. It won’t always be easy, but in the end, it will be worth all the time and energy that you had to put into it.

Step by step, win by win, your inner fire of confidence will light up — until it’s grown from a flickering flame into a mighty, unstoppable blaze.

Start now. Go and take the first small step. And then the next one. And the next one.

You’ll spend your whole life with yourself, so you better get comfortable being just that.

If you suffer from low self-esteem, you think that you’re a lot less capable than you actually are. In fact, you (yes, you!) can save the world.

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