Conventional wisdom can be good when it addresses the real problem. But the issue with a lot of common advice surrounding self-esteem is that it only addresses the symptom, not the actual problem.
It’s like having an accident and breaking a bone, then putting a bandage on it. It won’t address the actual problem.
Instead, we need to go deeper than advice like “fake it ’til you make it.”
So let’s look at some of the most common reasons your self-esteem isn’t growing despite you putting the effort in, and that way, you can identify the right place to start.
1. You’re trying to earn approval rather than self-respect.
There are two general types of validation – internal and external.
Self-respect is a form of internal validation. It tells you that you have value and worth regardless of what other people think. When you focus on validating and approving your own choices, your self-respect and thus, self-esteem, grows.
In contrast, seeking and earning the approval of others is a type of external validation. But it’s not always the healthiest approach, and it doesn’t grow your self-esteem, because your self-esteem essentially becomes reliant on their validation.
Plus, you can’t base your self-worth on other people’s approval because it means sacrificing your well-being to satisfy their wants and needs. And that isn’t showing yourself respect.
What’s more, other people may not want what’s best for you. Instead, most people want what’s best for them, first and foremost.
Unfortunately, malicious people will use your need for external validation against you, manipulating you into doing things for them to earn their favor. And even people who aren’t malicious are still most likely to watch out for themselves first, not you or your well-being.
It’s not that everyone is terrible or totally selfish. It’s just that people are self-interested.
So if your self-esteem isn’t growing, you want to explore whether you’re actually focusing on respecting yourself and your choices, or whether you’re actually focused on trying to get other people to like and approve of you.
2. You are mistaking people-pleasing for kindness.
Another form of seeking external validation is people-pleasing.
Many people-pleasers view people-pleasing as a good thing. They decide that if they do kind things for other people and do what those people want, they will earn favor and that person’s praise and acceptance will help boost their self-esteem.
The problem is that people-pleasing is not only an unhealthy behavior, it’s also manipulative, even if unintentionally so.
If you’re people-pleasing to make yourself feel good or earn acceptance, you’re not actually doing things for other people out of the kindness of your heart.
You’re doing it to earn praise to boost yourself up. Which, again, puts your self-esteem in the hands of people who don’t deserve to hold it. Self-esteem is something you have to grow for yourself.
3. You avoid the challenges that create genuine confidence.
You might be under the misguided belief that failure and setbacks will harm your self-esteem, and as such, you’ve been avoiding trying anything that’s not a sure thing.
But the easiest way to build genuine confidence is to challenge yourself and overcome those challenges.
You may be thinking, but what if you fail? Won’t that just damage my confidence instead?
Well, it depends on how you look at it.
Confident people understand that they aren’t going to get it right every time. They know that they can’t know everything, and that sometimes things just don’t go to plan.
That’s not a personality flaw – that’s just life.
Instead of tearing themselves down for it, they reframe failure as information. They’ve learned what not to do, and now they can pivot.
Having self-esteem and confidence does not mean believing that you’ll achieve everything every time, or even at all. It’s knowing that even if things don’t go how you planned, you can pivot or set a new goal. That mentality helps you earn confidence.
Essentially, your self-esteem grows when you prove to yourself that you can handle difficulty, not when you avoid it.
4. You are waiting to feel worthy before you treat yourself as worthy.
Self-esteem is a bit of a paradox because it takes some belief in yourself in order to start believing in yourself.
How does that work? How can you even grow your self-esteem if that’s the case?
Well, it comes down to re-addressing how you look at self-esteem and your value. Do you believe that you inherently have worth? Or do you think that you are supposed to earn it? And if you do believe that you are supposed to earn it – where does that leave people like seniors, children, and the disabled?
All people are inherently valuable and have worth, regardless of what they can or cannot do for others. You inherently have value because you are a human being who deserves respect and consideration.
You may not be able to convince yourself that you have much value at first, but you may be able to boost yourself into that mindset enough to get started by reminding yourself that you are a human being, which makes you inherently valuable.
5. You have confused being flawless with being worthy.
There are too many people who believe that flaws make them less worthy than other people.
So they strive for perfection in order to increase their self-esteem, believing that if they do a great job, then they’ll be proud and deserving of love from themselves and others.
But that’s not how self-esteem works.
Self-esteem is knowing that you have that unconditional worth we talked about. It’s knowing that you are still worthy regardless of your flaws and mistakes.
Perfectionism puts conditions on your worth. If you make mistakes, then you are flawed, and if you are flawed, then you are not as worthy of pride and love as others.
But in reality, everyone is flawed. Everyone.
The people who present a pristine package of perfection just have a good public-facing image.
So if your worth depends on being flawless, or near flawless, you’ll never feel worthy, because you’ll never get anywhere even close to it.
6. You’re only counting your successes that feel extraordinary.
Many people think that their big successes are how they should define their self-esteem and measure their self-worth.
The truth is that not everyone gets big successes. Or, alternatively, big successes don’t happen all the time.
You don’t want to be in a habit where you feel like you have to earn your self-worth by accomplishing big things, because you have no idea when those big things might happen.
Plus, we go back to the issue of inherent human value here. The disabled, children, and the elderly may not always be in a position to make big, extraordinary successes happen. Does that make them less valuable? Of course not. That’s a silly way to think.
Similarly, you are still valuable even if you aren’t being “productive” by having those big successes.
Instead, celebrate small wins and goals. Meeting your daily goals to do a particular thing demonstrates a dedication to your own personal progress that is worth being proud of.
Closing thoughts…
Self-esteem can be tricky to grow because it’s easy to focus on the wrong things.
Plus, as we talked about, healthy self-esteem stems from healthy self-esteem, which makes it hard to get that cycle going.
It may be hard to convince yourself that you inherently have worth because you may not like yourself very much, or at all. But you can remind yourself that you are a human being. You are valuable and worthwhile, regardless of what anyone else has caused you to believe.
And if all human beings deserve to feel good about themselves, to have value and self-worth, then that includes you, too.
