By: Camden Baucke MS LLP
It seems like low self-esteem is everywhere.
I can only say this because I interact with people all the time. While my career is based on reading people, low self-esteem is not hard to miss.
Low self-esteem is visible in your actions, your words, your posture. It’s the aura of hesitance, that any flicker of a mistake could light your life on fire. If you struggle with self-image, I’m truly sorry. It’s the agony that just doesn’t seem to go away. But there’s a reason for that.
The common denominator in any part of your life is your self-image. If it be relationships, work, or school, you bring your brain with you.
The start of a healthier life starts with a healthier self-esteem. In this article, I will cover 8 steps to get you on the path to liking who you see in the mirror. Each step is linked to another article solely dedicated to it if you’d like to learn more.
1. Accept Imperfection
Perfectionism is often seen as a virtue linked to high performance, but it can become deeply damaging when the need to achieve overshadows well-being.
True perfectionism isn’t just working hard. It’s an unhealthy, rigid demand for flawlessness that harms mental, physical, and social health. It sets impossible standards and traps people in black-and-white thinking: anything short of perfect is failure.
Driven by fear of mistakes and catastrophic failure, you believe that one misstep could unravel everything, creating intense anxiety and self-criticism. This rigid framework, rooted in unrealistic societal or personal expectations, fuels a cycle of overwork and burnout. To break free, you must embrace flexibility, balance, and resilience.
This means loosening rigid rules, finding healthy limits, filtering catastrophic thoughts, and accepting that mistakes are part of growth—not proof of your inadequacy. Perfectionism turns life into a desperate avoidance of failure, rather than a joyful pursuit of excellence for its own sake. Replacing it with resilience allows for setbacks without self-destruction.
Perfectionism is not a mark of pride but a barrier to feeling truly good enough. By accepting imperfection, you can live a fuller, healthier life where self-worth isn’t conditional.
2. Stop Growing, Start Living
Growth is only beneficial when purposeful and aligned with personal values.
Growth can be healthy when it supports meaningful goals, like advancing your career, caring for your health, or nurturing your family—especially when driven by genuine self-care and love. Some growth, though demanding, is necessary and rewarding over time.
Growth can also be harmful if it stems from fear, greed, or unhealthy motives. When growth is pursued just for the sake of it, without boundaries, it often leads to burnout and dissatisfaction.
Enjoying life’s rewards matters too. Like a bonsai tree, healthy growth is intentional and balanced, not overgrown. Step back, reflect, and ensure your self-improvement efforts align with your true desires rather than fear or pressure. By setting meaningful goals and appreciating what you’ve achieved, you can decide when to grow, what to prune, and when to simply savor the life you’ve built.
3. Conquer Insecurity
Insecurities are like hidden monsters, quietly eroding our confidence and sense of worth.
They often show up as fears of not being good enough, being judged, or feeling unworthy of love. These beliefs can affect how you see your body, how you relate to others, how you perform at work or school, and how you trust in relationships. Left unchecked, insecurities can lead to anxiety, depression and isolation.
The good news is that insecurities can be managed. It starts with self-awareness—paying attention to your thoughts without harsh judgment. Challenging negative thinking helps break the cycle of self-doubt. Treat yourself with the kindness you’d give a friend.
Focusing on your strengths and avoiding constant comparisons with others also builds resilience. The goal is self-acceptance—understanding that your value doesn’t depend on perfection or meeting unrealistic standards. Overcoming insecurity is a process that takes time, patience, and gentle practice. By nurturing self-worth from within, you can build healthier relationships with yourself and others, living more freely and authentically.
4. Don’t Beat Yourself Up
It’s vital to distinguish self-criticism from humility.
While they may seem similar, they produce opposite results for mental well-being.
Self-criticism is rooted in fear. It fixates on flaws, minimizes achievements, and feeds anxiety and shame. This mindset often relies on harsh comparisons, unrealistic standards, and deep negative core beliefs that you’re somehow defective.
Humility is grounded in self-awareness and acceptance. It means recognizing your strengths and weaknesses without exaggerating either. Humility encourages calm reflection, curiosity, and growth—without punishing yourself for mistakes. Unlike self-criticism, humility doesn’t tie your entire worth to one role or failure.
The main differences are emotional tone (harsh vs. calm), focus (flaws vs. balanced), motivation (fear vs. growth), and physical sensations (stress vs. ease). To shift from self-criticism to humility, challenge negative thoughts, practice mindfulness, and ground yourself in the present.
How you talk to yourself shapes your self-esteem. Cultivating humility instead of self-criticism builds resilience, healthier relationships, and lasting self-respect. By choosing curiosity and balance over fear, you strengthen both your mental health and your growth journey.
5. Forgive Yourself
When you hurt someone, repairing that relationship is only half the work. We must also forgive yourself.
Mistakes are part of being human—life’s complexity makes them inevitable. Understanding this helps you accept what happened without excusing it. Acceptance means seeing all the factors involved and taking full accountability for your part. From there, you can act to make amends, learn from the experience, and prevent repeating it.
Self-forgiveness is not letting yourself off the hook—it’s letting go of harsh self-condemnation so you can grow. Holding onto guilt only deepens anxiety and self-criticism, while forgiving yourself rebuilds trust in your own judgment and keeps your self-esteem intact.
To forgive yourself, accept what happened, make amends where possible, and carry the lesson forward. Let the mistake shape better choices, not your worth. Others may forgive you quickly, but self-forgiveness frees you from lingering shame. Mistakes don’t define you—they teach you. Breathe, accept, forgive, and move forward stronger.
6. Create Kinder Thoughts
Negative self-talk is the constant inner dialogue that criticizes and doubts you, damaging mental health and self-worth.
This inner critic can stem from childhood experiences, trauma, or unrealistic expectations, and shows up as patterns like catastrophizing, pessimism, self-blame, mind reading, and overgeneralizing. Left unchecked, negative self-talk fuels anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and poor performance, creating a destructive cycle that reinforces itself over time. Don’t lose hope, because it can be changed with awareness and practice.
The first step is documenting your negative thoughts to spot patterns. Next, plan to challenge these thoughts by asking if they’re factual or distorted. Cognitive challenging helps reframe harmful thoughts into balanced ones. Reinforce these new perspectives with positive mantras like “I am enough” or “Mistakes help me grow.”
Replacing self-criticism with supportive self-talk takes effort but transforms your mindset over time. Be patient and compassionate with yourself—progress happens gradually. With practice, you can quiet the inner critic, build resilience, and nurture a healthier relationship with yourself.
7. Be Self-Compassionate
Self-compassion is often misunderstood as weakness, self-pity, or narcissism, but it’s actually a powerful mindset that helps you navigate life’s challenges with balance and resilience.
While it’s easy to show compassion to others, turning that same understanding inward can feel uncomfortable due to misconceptions and a habit of harsh self-criticism. Many fear that self-compassion means avoiding responsibility, but in reality, it strengthens accountability by replacing shame with constructive understanding.
True self-compassion means acknowledging your struggles—mistakes, stress, or failure—without punishing yourself. It invites you to treat yourself with the same grace you’d extend to a loved one. Practicing it involves recognizing your difficulties, accepting your emotions, and resisting the urge to minimize your pain or inflate your flaws.
Building self-compassion is a skill that develops over time and can help lighten your emotional burdens, restore balance, and support growth. Instead of fueling guilt and shame, self-compassion puts you on your own team, making it easier to recover, learn, and move forward stronger.
8. Find True Self Worth
Self-worth is the inner measure of how much you believe you matter.
It acts like an invisible scale, with worthlessness on one end and grandiosity on the other. True self-worth sits balanced in the middle, where you neither undervalue nor overinflate your importance. It’s not based on what you do but who you are at your core.
Like caring for expensive sunglasses, how you value yourself determines how you treat yourself. Healthy self-worth brings consistency, care, and grounded living. Distorted self-worth affects every part of life—too little leads to withdrawal, perfectionism, and people-pleasing; too much creates entitlement and conflict. Both erode relationships, work satisfaction, and emotional health.
True self-worth doesn’t need proving. It’s about recognizing your unchanging value. When you stop tying worth to performance or approval, you find calm and confidence. Work and relationships thrive without hidden agendas for validation.
Balanced self-worth frees you to grow, risk, and fail without questioning your value. When you live from this middle ground, life becomes more authentic, resilient, and fulfilling.
Reflections 
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