Everyone is doing the best that they can, but life has a way of challenging us. On those days, it can be very hard to feel good about yourself no matter your accomplishments, goals, dreams, or ambitions. While you can’t expect to be at the top of your game every single day, there are ways to ensure that your best days are more common than your worst ones. The good news is that you don’t have to make major lifestyle changes to start feeling better about yourself. Simply follow these tips and you could start feeling better and doing more than you ever thought possible.
Journal Writing
Never underestimate the value of writing your thoughts down in a journal. There are many benefits to be gained from journaling, and it’s a great way to find out more about how you feel about yourself. It’s easy to be overly critical of ourselves, but seeing those thoughts on paper can make us more fully realize when negativity has taken over.
Journaling is an excellent habit to get into because it can be very useful for organizing your thoughts and can make setting (and reaching) goals much easier.
Writing a journal every day is a proven way to reduce stress, but it’s also great for memory. There are many reasons to start a journal, but for creatives especially, who benefit from improved creativity, regularly writing a journal is certainly an essential process. Start writing a journal and you might just start feeling better about yourself.
Tackle Your Issues
We all have aspects of our looks that make us uncomfortable. One of the best and fastest ways to feel better about yourself is to straight-up tackle those issues. If you’ve put on weight and it’s getting you down, start looking at your exercise and diet. If your glasses make your eyes look wrong, start saving up for new glasses.
It might sometimes feel as if the issues that we have with our bodies are insurmountable, and ‘just something I have to live with,’ but you might be surprised by your range of options.
For example, if your teeth aren’t as healthy as you’d like, or you rarely smile in photos because of tooth issues, then a chat with your dentist might provide you with more solutions than you thought possible. If your teeth are bad because you’re scared to death to visit dentist practices, find a dentist known for helping patients with extreme fears of dental procedures. When it comes to our physical appearances, there may be solutions that you haven’t considered.
Treat Yourself
One of the fastest ways to feel better about yourself is to buy yourself something nice. While it can become unhealthy to treat yourself every time you’re starting to feel down, the occasional splurge is actually proven to improve happiness, well-being, and even health.
Whether you head to the local mall or you do all of your buying online, putting a little treat in your basket will always make you feel better about yourself and put a smile on your face.
The trick here is to balance out those treats. That means not going overboard to the extent where you’re spending too much money on treating yourself and neglecting more important purchases. Stick to smaller, more affordable treats, and you’ll be able to treat yourself a lot more regularly.
Look At Your Diet
Preparing and then eating a healthy, satisfying meal can be a quick and easy way to start feeling better about yourself. The simple act of cooking gives your mind something to focus on that isn’t negative, and knowing that you’re going to be eating what you’ve created is a great source of satisfaction. Look at the current contents of your cupboards and your refrigerator. If there are more examples of unhealthy food than there is fruit, vegetables, or salads, then it’s time to start looking at ways to start buying more healthily.
Write a shopping list, create a weekly meal plan, or even just start looking up recipes online to see how challenging different meals will be to prepare.
Cooking isn’t some mysterious activity that only a select few can accomplish. There are thousands of videos, articles, and even gifs walking you through each step of cooking something new. Find your favorite meals and start cooking! It might surprise you just how much cooking and then eating a more healthy menu will make you start feeling better about yourself.
Consider Your Social Circle
It’s a no-brainer that the people we spend time with are going to affect how we feel about ourselves. Getting rid of toxic personalities can be very difficult, but it’s one of the fastest ways to start feeling better about yourself. Toxic people bring everyone down, will rarely add positives to a group dynamic, and if you’re already feeling negative about yourself, then those toxic people will tend to make you feel even worse.
Whether you opt to cut toxicity out of your life in one fell swoop or you cut down gradually, the goal is to instead surround yourself with a more supportive social circle.
Get in contact today with your best friends, and reach out to those people you admire and trust. Having that more supportive social group will make it easier to feel better about yourself, especially if you’re going through a particularly rough patch.
Build A Playlist
Music can be an incredibly powerful mood influencer. Even the darkest, most introspective songs can be therapeutic, so it’s important to understand the value of a good playlist. Music can make us feel alive, improve moods, reduce stress, and even ease pain. If you stream playlists, then start building one that’s just jam-packed with emotional, positive, and fun songs that will get you in the mood to get up and dance.
Whether you listen to your positive playlist while on your daily commute or when you’re considering doing some tidying up at home, get the volume on loud, and start moving.
Jane Austen said that “Without music, life would be a blank to me,” and Napoleon said, “Music is what tells us that the human race is greater than we realize.” Whether it’s a distraction or a motivator, never underestimate the value of the right song at the right time.
Do Some Exercise
We all know that even a small amount of exercise every day can be beneficial, but so few of us actually do any. You don’t have to sign up for an annual gym membership that you never use either. There are countless guides and tutorials to home exercise routines that you can do without any expensive equipment.
If you’re new to exercising, then start slowly with some simple push-ups and situps, and as you get more confidence, start pushing yourself a little more every day.
Even if your only form of exercise is a brisk walk once a day, you’re going to feel better about yourself every time you do it. If you can take that daily walk in a natural, green space, then the benefits can be even greater, and you will start to feel more positive, less stressed, and a lot more motivated. If there’s one way to start feeling better about yourself, it’s to start moving more.
Read A Book
Reading is a proven way to develop more empathy, but it’s also a great way to start feeling better about yourself. There are many benefits to be gained from reading books, but you don’t have to read those complicated and challenging classics. If it’s been a while since you last picked up a book, then think about your interests and start doing some research into the best books that reflect those interests.
Fiction means being able to explore new worlds, experience new perspectives, and live new lives.
Whether you pick up a Harry Potter book or something by Dostoevsky, you will get a very real sense of accomplishment when you reach the final page, and that boost alone can start to make you feel a lot better about yourself.
Help Others
Everyone is going through their own trials and tribulations, and, very often, we know very little about the challenges other people are facing. Choosing to help others is a great way to be a positive influence on people’s lives, but it’s also very good for feeling better about yourself.
You could start by looking at your social circle and finding out who needs help with a particular challenge. Alternatively, go even further by volunteering your time and energy at a local charity or organization.
Kindness matters, and helping other people to get through the day or to reach their goals is one of the most impactful ways to boost your own self-esteem, improve your mental health, and reduce your stress levels. Start taking a closer look at the world around you and identify just where you could be helping.
Have A Hobby
Having a hobby of any kind is good for your mental health and your creativity, but there are still too many people who lack that essential outlet. Hobbies provide people with a huge range of benefits, one of the most important being that they encourage you to take a break from the daily demands that you face.
It’s all about forgetting the world around you for even a brief time, meeting new challenges and beating them, and having an outlet that makes you forget about the stresses that you face.
If you only spend your free time slumped in front of the TV binge-watching shows that you’ve already seen a thousand times, it might be time to start looking at hobbies that will get your brain working. There are endless opportunities for choosing a new hobby, and having something new to do might have more impact on your self worth than you might think,
Learn More
Education and learning new skills is a great way to start feeling better about yourself. Luckily, living in the age of the internet means that you can learn more about almost every subject.
If you want to get your brain working, then signing up for a new class at your local college or taking an online course is one of the most rewarding and satisfying steps you can take.
There are free courses available on almost any subject, and where you’re interested in the history of ancient Egypt, want to know more about physics, or would like to find out more about gardening, there will be a course or YouTube tutorial that teaches you what you want to know. Learning something new could even be the first step to a new career.
Ditch The Phone
The modern smartphone is a tech marvel and has made life easier for millions of people. Unfortunately, it can also be a huge cause of stress and can dramatically affect our self-worth. Social media can be a supportive influence in your life, but it’s far more likely to be a cause of stress. Studies into the mental health effects of social media highlight again and again just how detrimental Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be for us, and can quickly lead to a rise in depressive thoughts and a drop in self-worth.
Feeling inadequate about your life after seeing your friends and peers online enjoying their best life can be very hard on mental health, and the results can be catastrophic.
Spend time away from your phone and off social media, and you’ll find that you will start to feel better about yourself before you know it. You may even find that you miss it less than you thought, and could even take the step of deleting those social media accounts and moving on with your life.
Feeling better about yourself doesn’t have to mean making huge changes to the way that you live. Start with small changes and build yourself up. You’ll find that the more proactive you are about improving your own sense of self-worth, the easier it will become to take those bigger steps.
