3 signs of low self-esteem and how to overcome them

If you don’t feel very good about yourself, it’s important to recognise that you have the power to change it. Below we discover what you can do about it.

I love self-esteem—both the singer and the concept. To me, self-esteem is all about how we value ourselves and the way we perceive our own worth. From low confidence to people-pleasing, so many of the challenges we face can be traced back to our self-view and self-worth. This is why building up your self-esteem can truly change your life. But what does it mean to have low self-esteem?

Symptoms of low self-esteem

In terms of the symptoms of low self-esteem, I don’t think these are very hard to recognise. Insecurity, constantly looking for external validation, comparing yourself negatively to others, feeling like an outline of a human and not knowing who you are – these are all things that I think can accompany self-esteem. So, how do you know if low self-esteem applies to you? It’s always going to show up differently but, in my experience, there are three clear signs that you have low self-esteem:

1. A strong inner critic

These two go hand in hand. If you’ve got a strong inner critic, you are going to have low self-esteem because being hard on yourself and critical of yourself makes you see yourself negatively. If you had an inner champion type of voice, you’d value yourself and perceive things positively or neutrally.

Confidence is almost impossible with a strong inner critic. You can forget about assertiveness, creativity, self-belief and risk-taking. If you only hear your inner critic then the first step to building up self-esteem is creating another internal narrative – a strong and uncompromisingly compassionate one – and then turning the volume up on that while you dial it down on the critic. I have met (and muted) many inner critics through resilience coaching – maybe yours is next for the tuning-out treatment?

What you can do about it: Challenge your inner critic. It’s not correct, it’s not psychic, it’s just a fearful part of you trying to protect yourself from making mistakes by ensuring you don’t do anything, ever. Challenge its narratives and develop a more powerful, action-driven compassionate inner voice for yourself instead.

2. External events knock you sideways and affect how you feel about you/your self-worth

Low self-esteem means that the way you perceive and value yourself isn’t coming from you. It’s defined by things like how people treat you, what goes well and what doesn’t, by achievements, attention and external validation. We all need a bit of this from time to time but it becomes problematic when you need external events to go well to feel good about yourself. And if they don’t, you can’t. Imagine a world in which everything around you could be crashing down, yet, you still feel OK about yourself. That’s entirely possible once you build up your self-esteem.

What you can do about it: Get clear on who you are on a deep level and what matters to you the most. What are your values? What is your purpose? What are your strengths and weaknesses? These are the building blocks of self-worth that nothing can knock.

3. You give up easily/don’t start things

This is linked to self-esteem because when self-esteem is low we don’t see ourselves as capable of success – and failure becomes terrifying. So, we take zero action. When you have high self-esteem, success and failure matter a lot less. Because your self-worth isn’t dependent on them (see above) you’re free to treat these as events that offer information you can use to make different choices going forwards. When failure is a terrifying thing – the end of the road – we can be so afraid that we don’t even try or give up at the first hurdle.

What you can do about it: Move from a fixed to a growth mindset. This means changing how you view failure, allowing yourself to try and fail, experiment and learn – making it all part of the richness of life. Key to this is self-compassion – kindness and taking (imperfect) action to help yourself.

Low self-esteem is a horrible feeling and the reason so many of us stay fearful and stuck in life. But it’s not part of who you are. Changing it means tweaking your mindset and habits so that you have a different perception of yourself and value yourself fully.

That’s exactly what the process of resilience coaching is designed to achieve – in less than two months. It can be that fast and simple no matter how many of these signs of low self-esteem you have.