Understanding True Self-Esteem

Are people born with high self-esteem, or do some people happen to have it as a gift? Turns out neither is true! Self-esteem and self-trust are built by the routines, habits, confidence building exercises and way of life you embody. The individuals who appear to have high self-esteem, whether they’re celebrities under bright lights or people around us, all have struggles that we, looking from the outside in, do not understand.

That said, is it possible to build self-esteem?

YES! With only a few self-trust exercises mentioned in this post, it’s possible to go from seemingly low self-confidence to becoming unrecognizably attractive to the people around you, in a matter of days!

Try these confidence building exercises to see a change in record time and make others notice a confident and attractive aura around you.

What’s to lose? A week of experimentation, and you’ll have immediate results!

The Truth About Affirmations

Wait! So, where does confidence come from? There are many conventional ideas that say self-confidence or self-esteem is a by-product of the conversations you have with yourself every day, using affirmations like “I love my body” or “I’m the best at what I do.”

Let’s be honest—as much as affirmations are helpful, your mind’s not a fool. It’s with you every minute of your life! It knows ‘Joe’ well enough to know that when he affirms “being healthy” but spends most of his time on the couch with a big bag of chips and a sugar-filled Coke watching the next episode of Breaking Bad, he’s lying to himself every morning (Sorry, Joe).

Confidence comes from action, having proved to yourself that you are what you say you are—that’s when your mind believes what you affirm. The best confidence-building exercise I’ve found is to do things that make you proud and to match your actions with the person you want to be.

“Write out the description of the person you’d like to be, then act the part of the successful person you have decided to become” – Earl Nightingale

Here’s a list of self-esteem building activities to do and self-esteem killers that you should avoid!

Positive Activities (The To-Do List)

Celebrate Small Wins

It might seem trivial to celebrate small wins because of the “I can’t be happy until I achieve absolute success” or “Happiness comes after success” mantra promoted by the “all or nothing” hustle culture. In the midst of it, we overlook this crucial component: our feelings.

But wait, how are feelings and productivity connected? Very often we are brainwashed into thinking that “Work mode” means to shut off your feelings, which eventually leads to the very common symptoms of burnout, over-exhaustion, or just pure disinterest in the task at hand. It’s like your mind and body want to go in opposite directions and you’re stretched too thin. Yikes! That sounds painful.

What if we could use feelings as a compass to guide us through task completion? Before you start, change your state. Give yourself a tiny reward for taking initiative. Feeling good about a mini-victory makes you automatically want to continue on the path—a small reward to reinforce the positive behavior trains your mind to want to achieve more, win more.

Use psychology to your advantage!

Give Yourself Time to Grow

Psychologist Angela Duckworth’s research on Grit shows that persistence and sustained effort over long periods are often more predictive of success than talent alone. Very often, it is our inability to stick to the process that makes the difference.

We see this as a recurring theme in the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, where delayed gratification is the best predictor of success. Even though it’s not easy to stay committed during immense uncertainty or not enough success early on, the idea is to have low expectations but a high drive.

An idea by Tim Ferriss (Author, 4-hour work week) is asking yourself: “If I fail at this (insert example task), what skills will I learn that will persist even after that project?”

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” – Bill Gates

Giving yourself time to grow is a hidden self-trust exercise that in retrospect would seem like a gift that keeps on giving.

Be Honest With Yourself About Where You Are in Life

“Ah, not this bullshit again!” (I know, right????)

Requirements: 1 sheet of paper, 1 pen/pencil, 5 minutes of idle time, and 1/10th of your willpower.

There’s a reason most people avoid this step. Although it takes 5 minutes to do it, I can guarantee it will be the most uncomfortable 5 minutes of your life. You’re going to make all the excuses in the world about why you don’t have the time to do it or you have so many other important things to do. Before we have that conversation, must we look at your time on social media or YouTube today? Check-mate!

All jokes aside, I’m not here to attack you. The purpose of this is to make you conscious of the barriers our mind creates to avoid reality. This is the starting point; trust me, it only gets better from here on out. Progress can only be tracked when you know the starting point. It takes a lot of courage to sit down and have a conversation about where you are in life and where you want to be. It’s essential to have a direction, and it is okay (and very normal) to be unsure about it. But, avoidance is the mind-killer!

Keep the Promises You Make With Yourself

Perhaps the most underestimated rule of all—if you take anything away from this blog, let this be it! Remember the little things you tell yourself every day that you’ll get done but don’t end up following through? Yes, those little promises we make go a long way and determine the relationship and self-trust we have we have.

Here’s a ‘What if’: A friend made you promises, however small, but didn’t keep them? After these instances repeat 3 to 4 times, would you choose to trust them? What about 10 times?

At some point, you would know they’re not a person who keeps their word. Hence, lack of trust.

This is exactly what happens when we don’t keep the promises we make to ourselves, and the proof is the discouraging feeling that follows.
The Solution? Self-Trust Exercises!

1. Do not commit to tasks that are not a good use of your time—just say NO!
2. Block specific times for the tasks you promised to do. Use time-blocking.

Negatives (The Not-To-Do List)

Being Too Hard on Yourself

We all have bad days, but not everybody deals with them the same way. It is common to feel discouraged, disappointed, and like you will never amount to anything—and we know the effect that has on our state of mind. Here’s a “What if” exercise to try (get your notebook out or the notes app on your phone).

Answer these questions, only with a number on the scale of 1-10 (clarification below).

Let’s take an example of you with an imaginary close friend that you care about by the name of Tim:

• If Tim felt low and had a bad day, how would it make him feel if I told him that he was a failure and he would amount to nothing? [1 is absolute depression (dark clouds and everything) and 10 is extreme joy]
• If Tim had a day where he didn’t complete every single task on his to-do list and I told him he was a failure, how likely is it that he would want to continue those tasks the next day? (1 being not likely at all and 10 being very likely)
• If every morning when Tim woke up and got a text saying, “Today is going to be a bad day because of the bad day you had yesterday,” what state of mind would he be in for the rest of the day? (1- Extremely negative and 10 – Extremely positive)

If doing this to Tim decreases his chances of being successful, why do we do it to ourselves? Realize that you increase your chances of success if you treat yourself like someone you actually care about.

Not Questioning Our Inner Dialogue

We often find ourselves in thought spirals, with a voice in the background that says “You’re not good enough” or sometimes it can be subtle and trick you by saying “Let’s not work out today or let’s not do this (tough task) today.” What we usually do is accept what this voice says and start to listen to it instead of questioning it.

As Tony Robbins says, life is all about the questions you ask yourself.

Next time you hear this inner voice, before you accept what it says, question it. Simple questions like “How would I feel after completing this task?” or “What if I actually did this, what is the worst that could happen right now?”

Trust me, the day you realize 90% of the limitations you put on yourself are self-imposed, you’ll wonder why you didn’t break through these chains sooner.

I know, it’s not easy to believe, so here’s universal proof of this:

Roger Bannister, the first man to break the 4-minute mile record

The Roger Bannister Effect – From the beginning of the record, the fastest any human being had ever run a mile (1.6 km) was 4 minutes and 1 second. Runners from across the globe had been focused on breaking that barrier for nearly 70 years, all to no avail. But the “impossible” was done by Roger Bannister on May 6, 1954, with a record time of 3 minutes and 59 seconds.

But here’s the real kicker: Just 46 days after Bannister’s historic feat, John Landy, an Australian runner, blew past the Bannister four-minute barrier—he bested it by over a full second: 3 minutes and 57 seconds. Before a calendar year had passed after Landy’s record, three more runners broke the four-minute mark in the same race.

Why did three others break the 4-minute mile within a year after Roger Bannister, when before that the record stood for 70 years? Breaking the 4-Minute Barrier was thought of as “The Impossible Dream” and was also marketed as that—says a lot about how external ideas can create mental barriers.

Conclusion

The journey to building lasting self-esteem isn’t about finding a magic solution—it’s about the consistent practice of proven self-confidence exercises that reshape how you view yourself. Through these confidence-building exercises and self-esteem building activities, you’ve learned that real change comes from challenging your inner dialogue, celebrating victories (no matter how small), and keeping promises to yourself.

Remember, the most powerful self-confidence exercises aren’t just activities you do—they’re ways of living that transform who you become. Each self-esteem building activity you practice isn’t just building confidence; it’s breaking down the artificial barriers that have held you back.

Start your transformation today. Choose one activity from this guide and commit to it for just one week. Watch as your self-trust deepens and that magnetic aura of authentic self-assurance begins to shine through. Because the truth is, you’re not building something new—you’re simply unleashing the confidence that was always within you, waiting for the right moment to break free!

Check out our other blogs!