Building Confidence: The Impact of Self-Compassion on My Self-Esteem
In my last post, I talked about my journey of cultivating self-compassion. Today, I wanted to talk about how embracing a compassionate mindset has significantly increased my self-esteem.
I talked about how I hated looking at photos of myself because they highlighted my flaws, what I didn’t mention was how much I hated myself and how low my self-esteem was.
I’ve realized the past beliefs I held about myself were wrong, but for a long time, I thought I was:
- unattractive
- incompetent
- that subject of conversations behind my back and people were pretending to be my friends to be nice.
- unloveable and unworthy
I also doubted myself, compared myself to others, had a negative internal dialogue, and believed I lacked intelligence. Despite family, friends, and partners complimenting me and pointing out my strengths I didn’t believe them. I thought they were just trying to make me feel better.
My mindset started to change while I was at my previous job. I’m not sure what it was about this team, because I had worked with amazing teams, and managers before, but I started to realize:
- How capable I am
- How easy it is for me to pick up and retain new information
- People like me because of my openness
- I’m worthy of being in the spaces I’m in
- My need for perfectionism fueled self-doubt whenever I made mistakes
As I started to embrace my abilities, I began looking at how I talked to myself by challenging my negative thoughts. I did this by asking myself:
- Is this thought helpful?
- Why do I hold onto this belief?
- Is there evidence that supports this belief?
- Conversely, what evidence contradicts these beliefs?
Questioning the beliefs I had held for so long, changed the way I talked to myself.
- If I made a mistake, it wasn't because I was stupid — it was because I was human.
- If I felt unattractive, it wasn’t because I was ugly — maybe I was just a bit bloated
- if I started to think that my boyfriend didn’t love me anymore because we had been long distance for a while, I would remind myself that if my feelings hadn’t changed, so there was no reason for me to believe that he had.
This shift in how I talk to myself has significantly increased my self-esteem. Not only is it easier to challenge deep-rooted beliefs I’ve held, but it’s also helped me see my strengths and abilities.
I’m hoping that by sharing these kinds of posts we can build a community that uplifts and supports each other. I know that together, we can break free from self-doubt, celebrate our strengths, and cultivate unimaginable confidence in ourselves and our abilities. It’s time for us to rewrite our narratives to empower ourselves 💖
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