It goes without saying that everyone wants to feel good about themselves, and wants to be in a position where they can enjoy a high degree of confidence, comfort in their own skin, and a strong sense of their own capabilities and potential.
Although these are things we all want, issues with insecurity and a low sense of self-worth are very common, and frequently have a crushingly negative effect on the quality of our everyday lives.
Developing a strong and healthy sense of well-being and capability isn’t a simple and straightforward process – it will be unique and different for each individual person, and there will undoubtedly need to be a pretty long process of trial and error along the way.
All the same, here are a few tips that are likely to help to put you on the right path to feeling better about yourself, and enjoying a greater sense of well-being.
Focus on introducing daily habits that move you in the right direction and make you feel proud of yourself – rather than fixating too much on large-scale goals
James Clear, author of the book “Atomic Habits,” reckons that being highly goal-driven isn’t such a good thing after all – and that’s a lesson he learned largely from first hand experience as an athlete, and then an entrepreneur.
The problems with being very goal-focused include the fact that a goal-focused mindset always puts you in a state of feeling deprived and anxious in the here and now. You can’t appreciate the situation you’re in, or stop to “smell the roses,” because your happiness and sense of accomplishment lies in the future, and can only be enjoyed once your goal is achieved.
But then, if and when you do achieve your goal, you’ll probably just find that you feel underwhelmed and have to chase the next goal. The end result is that you are always frantically searching for something, but are never able to enjoy the prize.
Another issue with being very goal-driven is that just about every ambitious person is highly goal-driven, but that most don’t achieve those lofty goals, most of the time. So success has to depend largely on other things.
The argument that James Clear makes is basically that you need to focus on getting your daily habits right, instead. If you have good and productive habits in place that can move you more and more in the direction you want to be heading in, then you can feel accomplished and satisfied each day, as long as you perform the right habits.
Actually start taking care of yourself, instead of beating yourself up
Although we’d all like to feel good about ourselves, most of us are quite bad at actually treating ourselves with a basic degree of care and respect.
Instead of being understanding when things aren’t going well at work, and when we are dealing with personal problems that prevent us from being as productive as possible, we beat ourselves up, call ourselves pathetic, and drive ourselves to the point of complete breakdown, while fuelling ourselves with caffeine, stimulants, and other drugs.
If you want to feel better about yourself – and to just feel better in general – begin by actually taking care of yourself. Among other things, that means ensuring that you deal with any potential nutrient deficiencies, such as the extremely detrimental and common deficiency in magnesium, get enough sleep, and eat enough of the right kind of food.
If you’ve got an untreated cavity, visit a dentist. And if you’re not happy about certain features of your everyday life, take steps to change them. Treat yourself with a bit of care and respect.
Be more daring, and explore more potential avenues
It’s possible, if you’re not outgoing and daring enough, to fall into a slump in life and to stay there forever, simply because you’re too timid or accustomed to things to rock about and try something different.
If you’re not happy with your life as it is today, and with yourself as a person, you should strongly consider trying things you haven’t tried before, and taking paths you haven’t taken before, to see what possibilities and potentials lie that way.
Don’t be reckless or careless here – but do be bold and courageous.
Pay attention to your intuitions, and live in line with your values
If you keep having intuitions and messages from your conscience to tell you you should be doing certain things, or that you shouldn’t be doing other things, and you ignore those little messages, you’re likely going to have a pretty bad time.
Ultimately, a tremendous part of self-respect has to do with living in line with your values, directly. So if you make a habit of lying, or behaving in a way you can’t respect, stop that.
Simply by living in line with your values, you can often experience tremendous transformations in a very short space of time.
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