This post is all about how to boost self-esteem and love yourself this 2023.

Struggling to build a healthy relationship with yourself? Looking to improve your self-esteem, but don’t know where to start?

We all have looked in the mirror and heard that little voice in our mind telling us we are not good or pretty enough.

And even though there are people around telling you how amazing you are, deep down you never actually believe them.

So what does it take to believe and love yourself? How do the most badass women in the world feel so confident with every step they take?

Well, want to know a little secret that is key to boost your self esteem? The most important factor you need to focus all your attention on if you ever want to love yourself is your mind.

Sure, changing your closet will help you feel more confident, as well as dying your hair or painting your nails, or losing weight.

But the truth is you will never love yourself until you deal with your biggest enemy.

However, your mind doesn’t need to be your worst enemy, because it has the potential to be the best ally you will ever have.

And by the time you reach the end of this guide to boost self-esteem, you will know exactly how to learn to love yourself.

Understand where your low self-esteem is placed

The first step to boost your self-esteem is to understand where it’s placed.

Even though you think you don’t love yourself, I am sure there is at least one thing that you like, whether that’s your hair, your intellect, your kindness…

Understanding where your low self-esteem comes from and what parts you feel insecure about will help you in two ways:

-The first is to help you see that loving yourself is not as hard as you think. There are already parts of yourself that you love and admire. The thing is we tend to focus on the negative and let that low self-esteem leak into other areas of our life.

-The second one is to help you think of specific ways you can improve your self-esteem and self-confidence.

For example, if you feel insecure about your appearance, be as specific as possible. What bothers you exactly, is it the way you dress, your hair, your body type, your weight…?

Allow yourself to be vulnerable and dig deep over the real issue. Be as clear as you can on the things that bother you the most about yourself and make you feel insecure.

Solitude breaks

One of the best things you can do to improve your relationship with yourself is to spend time alone, in solitude.

Now I do want to clarify that solitude and loneliness are not the same things. 

Solitude is the choice of creating a situation where you are alone. It´s the ultimate “me time.” And it has so many benefits.

In this case, solitude breaks will help you improve your self-confidence by doing things alone and spending quality time with yourself.

It could be the smallest things, like waking up before the rest of the house to make a cup of coffee and watch the sunrise. Or even getting out of the house earlier to enjoy breakfast at a cafe.

You could even plan solo dates as a way to reconnect with yourself. Who said dates were only for couples?

It may seem awkward and embarrassing at first. But I promise you, the more you do it the better relationship you´ll have with yourself. And you will even start to crave those solitude moments.

How to boost self-esteem. Believe in yourself.

Contrary to what people may think, self-belief isn’t an ability that you are born with.

And even though it’s easy to look at someone confident and think I will never feel that good about myself, that is a lie.

Self-belief isn’t an inborn ability, it’s something that comes from the inside and that you need to create.

You will become what you believe you are because our words and thoughts are self-fulling prophecies.

But why is our mind so influential?

When you spend your days thinking about how you will never be good enough, you are training your brain to focus on this affirmation.

In the end, your brain is a soldier that likes to follow your rules and show you that your perspective is right. So it will start looking for proof that validates your beliefs. Proof like your flaws, insecurities, and other people’s strengths.

But let’s imagine a different scenario now. What if instead of the tragic story you tell to yourself you started changing your inner dialogue?

What would happen if you started saying “I believe in myself” every single day? What if you said, “I am constantly finding ways to grow and become a better person”?

Or “dam I look incredible today” whenever you look at yourself in the mirror? 

You would start training your brain to look for further evidence that supports these thoughts.

You can start changing these self-limiting beliefs by journaling or using affirmations -even if you don’t quite believe them, because when a lie is repeated enough times you will eventually start to believe it.

Create small daily wins that make you feel like the badass you are

I want to introduce you to the term self-efficacy.

Remember what we said earlier about the brain having the ability to be our worst enemy or our best ally?

Well, another thing you should know about your mind is that it loves giving meaning to everything it does.

And here is where self-efficacy comes in. This term according to phycologist Albert Bandura means: 

“Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments (…). reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and social environment. These cognitive self-evaluations influence all manner of human experience, including the goals for which people strive, the amount of energy expended toward goal achievement, and the likelihood of attaining particular levels of behavioral performance.” 

In other words, your mind has a little wall full of self-belief blocks. So when you succeed at a task it puts a new block in this wall. And when you fail a task it takes out a building block from this “I believe in myself” wall.

Now, self-efficacy is important because we can use it to our advantage to boost our self-esteem by “scheduling and creating victories”.

To do this I want to share with you two methods, choose whichever you feel most comfortable with or even both.

• The first one is scheduling into your planner three wins every day.

Choose something that you want to do, and try to make it easier in the beginning.

For example, if one of your goals is to run 2K every day, choose as one of your victories for the day to run 5 minutes.

If you want to read a whole book this month, your victory could be to read 10 pages that day.

When it comes to self-efficacy the important thing is not the size of the tasks, but if it’s completed or not.

The more tasks you complete the more blocks your mind will add to that self-belief wall and the easier it will be to convince yourself of the superwoman that you are.

• The second method I want to share with you is to write every day 10 small victories of the day.

It can be anything you have done that feels like a challenge to you, like getting out of bed or catching up with your email. 

The purpose of this exercise is to acknowledge and appreciate the small achievements to help you build your confidence.

You could write these victories in a journal, the notes section on your phone, or in this small victories of the day journal I created especially for you, which you can download for free!

Take care of yourself

We all have read that one of the best things to do whenever you are feeling down is to do a little self-care routine.

Well, the truth is that this actually helps.

And I´m not just talking about self-care activities, but taking care of yourself in general- moving your body, taking care of your diet, drinking water, taking your vitamins

Something that I have noticed along my self-love journey, is that the more care I take of myself the better I feel.

It could be the simplest things like putting lipstick on, even if I’m not going to go out, or going out for a walk.

Putting effort into your image, and making smart choices for your mental and physical well-being, are small actions you can do that can majorly improve your self-esteem and self-confidence.

So right now, I encourage you to think of two ways you could take care of yourself today and schedule them into your day. Here are a couple of ideas to inspire you.

Side note: You will not feel like a badass woman every day of your life.

Finally, I wanted to end this article with a little something most of us aren’t even aware of. You won’t feel confident every day of your life.

In fact, not even the most confident woman in the world feels like a badass every single day. And that is totally fine.

As you start working on your self-love journey, the days you don’t feel confident will become the exception rather than the norm.

But, that will not always be the case. Now, do you know what is the magic component that will set you apart from your old self during those days?

The way you react to those self-limiting thoughts and beliefs.

There is this very famous quote that goes “life is not what happens to us, but how we react to it”.

And I believe it totally applies when it comes to self-love. You have at your hand all the tools you need to believe in yourself and love who you are.

It is in your hand to make the decision to change that inner story in your mind.

So whenever you are having a bad day, don’t believe those thoughts. Be gentle and remind yourself of how incredible and beautiful you are.

Change your inner narrative and don’t allow those negative beliefs to destroy your progress.

I hope the tips and steps in this blog post on how to boost self-esteem and love yourself.

You are amazing and have immense potential. But you need to start believing in yourself to achieve all those dreams.

Don’t feel pressured to do every step on this list, focus on the ones that resonate the most with you and spark your interest. Remember that you ARE worthy of even your deepest desire!

What’s your favorite self-care activity? I´d love to read you in the comments!