How to get back what you’ve lost is hard as you get older because life gets in your way. There is so much noise and you get pulled into it daily.

In the journey called life, most of us start out with hopes, and dreams, and along the way we experience things that create pain, loss, low self-esteem, and low self-worth.

Some of us never developed healthy self-esteem or self-worth because of common factors:

1. Abandonment
2. Mean comments from others
3. Societal view of beauty
4. Learned habits that you pick up from others in your family

In some cases, you may not even be aware that you have low self-esteem because it probably wasn’t taught or discussed when you were a child. Now that you are an adult, you probably haven’t thought about whether you have high or low self-esteem or self-worth.

Do you feel your parents mistreated you as a child if so the anxiety and disappointment from their treatment can linger your entire life unless you forgive them? Forgiveness is not for the other person it is to free yourself from the burden of pain left by others.  

Here are signs that your self-esteem is low:

1. You allow people to mistreat you
2. You avoid looking in the mirror whenever possible
3. You don’t like to take pictures
4. You don’t like to try new things
5. You have dreams but you are afraid to pursue them
6. You are always angry
7. You put other people down
8. You try to hide your true self
9. You self-medicate
10. You won’t let go of a past relationship even though it’s been over for years or never started
11. You can’t forgive yourself
12. You don’t like change
13. Try to please everyone
14. You don’t tell the truth about yourself or others
15. You have an excuse for everything
16. Always making others wait for you
17. You have a need to control others
18. Settling for things you don’t love (clothes, job, relationship, apartment)

A lot of the above behaviors are unconscious so you may not realize you are doing them. Remember life’s lessons as you move along your journey to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again. 

The reasons why your self-esteem matters:

• It can cloud the way you see the world
• It will affect your daily choices (jobs you take, men you choose, the apartment you rent, your living environment)
• How you take care of yourself
• How you treat others
• How do you spend your time
• It will determine if you go after your dreams or just talk about them
• It can cause depression

A woman’s life is the sum of her choices but a lot of times we make them without much thought. Some bad choices can last a lifetime so it’s important to understand who you are and why you make the choices that you’ve made and in most cases still making. Only then can you start making different ones and change the direction of your life and maybe even create an Amazing Life.

It’s easier to find excuses for why you can’t go after your dreams or you refuse to try new things to figure out what it is you really like.

The recording that plays on a loop inside your head tells says what’s wrong with you, why can’t you do anything right, what can go wrong and why certain things can’t happen for you.

This recording is your self-esteem and it’s time to feed it some new messaging but only you can do that by changing what you do, write, read, listen to and tell yourself. The devil is in the habits, it’s the habits that determine how your life is today and how it will be five, ten, or twenty years from now.

If you are tired of your life and are ready to at least try one thing that you haven’t tried before so you can finally start working toward your dream that you lost, forgot, or never had, here are a few tips.

1. Define your goal/dream:
   • I want to be on the New York Time bestseller list
   • I want to shoot an award-winning film
   • I want to get married and raised 3 smart, kind, and loving children
2. Create a plan in writing
   • Get a journal and start releasing all the ideas from your brain so you will remember them
   • Write down all the things that have been holding you back
   • Once you release some things, now it’s time to put your goal on the top of the page and work your way backward from where you are to where you want to be. Creating steps as you go, for example, your first step will probably be researched.
     • How do you do what you want to do?
     • Somebody has already done what you want to do you just have to find out how they did it.
3. Work toward your goal or on yourself every day
   • If you only have 20 minutes then use that time to focus on your dream or take better care of yourself because you are worth it.
   • Keep a pocket notepad so you can write whatever pops into your head, you can see if it is a good idea later.
   • Be mindful of what you put in your mouth, and your brain because the world we live in puts out the negativity by the truckloads if you stay tuned in it will affect your time, your attitude, and your choices.
4. Measure your progress
   • Happiness and fulfillment are all about progress
   • Measure it by whether what you are doing is getting the results you are looking for.
   • If you are not getting the results then change your strategy quickly, you don’t want to spend time doing something that is not working.

How you live, what you eat, how you dress, where you work, and what you do daily is a reflection of your self-esteem and self-worth.

Answer the following questions in your journal. You do have one, right? If not use a piece of paper but a journal.

• Why did you choose your current job?
• If you are unhappy at your job, why are you still there?
• Look around your home, what would you like to change?
• Are you happy with your love life? If not, why?
• When you look into the mirror what do you see?
• If you were granted 3 wishes what would they be?

If you can’t answer the 3 wishes question that means you haven’t spent enough time with yourself.

Listening to music, watching TV, or reading a book is not spending time with you and your thoughts. The reason why I asked you the above question is that questions make you think about your current reality but you will have to go to the past to understand why you’ve made certain choices in order to not make the same ones again.

Most people live in the past or the future because they don’t like the present. But remember that the present is a gift. Also, you can not have a big life without dealing with your present life. It’s the present that must be changed in order to change the future.

What do I know about self-esteem and self-worth? I’ve spent years wanting a better life and I thought I was pursuing my dreams in a productive way. But, I didn’t realize my self-esteem was getting in my way.

Why? Because I was doing a lot of things but not the right things that would put me out into the world in a big way. After several years of helping women, most of them were single mothers like me, and they were raising kids with special needs and their self-esteem was lower than mine so I was able to help them if only a little.

It took me years to realize how low my self-esteem was and why this is where self-awareness comes into play.

If you don’t spend time building a relationship with yourself how will you know what you like and what you want out of this journey called life?

Life is but a journey with a million choices that at the end of it all determines if you really lived.