Tip 1: Acknowledge the negativity; don’t run from it
How to become happier with yourself? It’s ok to not feel great all the time. Yes, you have read that correctly. If you are expecting to read the answer to being happy all the time, well you’ve come to the wrong place and in fact there is nowhere online where you will find this. Why? Nobody on this planet is happy all the time, even if it seems it. Happier people are just able to acknowledge their negative feelings better, work through them and feel happy the majority of the time. They do this by starting to face the truth and not running away from it.

A good thing to do is either to talk to friends or family, but an even better practice is to journal. In fact, I’ve started to double my journaling efforts. Journaling is like being your own therapist at times. Make it a daily activity, where you journal a question and then write the answer; getting the words or the clutter out of your head, really does help.

Tip 2: Practise gratitude to be happy with what you have now
Do you find that your mind is constantly rushing into the future? I know mine certainly has. When this happens, we can never be happy; there is always the feeling that something else is to come. Instead of doing this, learn to appreciate what is great in your life right now, no matter how small. I would advise 3 x 1-minute slots a day naming those things that you appreciate. It could be the bed you woke up in, the nice meal you had, a great chat with a friend or anything. This may not be too easy at first, but you will get better and better at this and start to feel great about life and to become happier.

Tip 3 – Get off social media
I constantly say this. It’s not to say get off completely but scrolling on social media, looking at those ‘perfect’ people, who aren’t perfect at all, will not help. Social media is useful and great for networking but can cause negative feelings such as disconnection from reality, unhealthy comparisons and actually ruin relationships if you don’t engage, person to person. All of those are happiness killers.
Instead cut down on your hours on social media, have social media free times and instead, spend those times doing things that you enjoy or which give you satisfaction. Start small in cutting down the hours .

Tip 4- Focus on you and your efforts rather than the outcome
Linked to social media, we live in a highly competitive world today, whereby we want instant results. It’s great to set goals and to have ambitions but at the same time, it’s good to accept that things take time and it’s best to focus on being happy RIGHT NOW.
Learn to appreciate yourself more by giving praise for what you do on a daily basis and find the fun in as many things as possible.

Tip 5- Perfection doesn’t exist and so get rid of it
Perfection can be a killer; someone being perfect does not exist. Nobody in this world is perfect, even if you perceive them to be. I am talking about life and yourself, nothing is perfect. When I started to accept that things do go wrong and that I have my own faults, I felt a lot better about life. Having the expectation that nothing will go wrong, is not realistic and will only do more harm than good.

Summary
Keep applying things to yourself and your own life that make you feel happier. Easier said than done? Well yes…. Like anything but nothing will change unless you take action. Rather than just reading tips to be happy, you need to action steps on how to train your brain to be happy. Isn’t it worth spending time taking action to make yourself happy? Make habits for happiness.

Jonny Pardoe © May 2020
http://example.com
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Jonny Pardoe

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The post How Do I Be Happy? appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.

Why do we compare ourselves to others?

Do you find yourself saying ‘I compare myself to everyone’?. It comes back to the brain. In its negative default, the brain is always looking out for dangers. The problem is that this negative default makes us constantly compare ourselves to others and therefore become less happy with our lives. We may feel that we have to compare ourselves to others to make sure that we fit into society to survive.

This is not just a challenge for women, but also a challenge for self esteem for men or for your own confidence.

As a result, our mission is to train the brain to be happy. As the cliched quote goes: ‘happiness comes from within’: this is very true. Therefore, make sure that you are looking inside yourself to find happiness, rather than looking to find it in others. This requires constant action but worth it.

Ok Jonny but how?… well, as usual, here are some personal strategies that I have used for this particular challenge to stop myself being compared to others.

1. Reduce social media hours

As mentioned at the start, social media is overloaded with information and people’s activities. Social media is the worst place to go if you want to stop comparing yourself to others. At the same time, it is great for networking, growing your own business (if you have one) or making contact with people. Looking at it too much is only going to cause negative feelings for us.

As it’s something to which we can become addicted, trying to cut it out completely is not going to work. Instead figure out the best times to avoid it and when you can use it. For me, I don’t go on social media until midday. This is because I need to complete my hardest tasks by midday and so I can’t afford to go on social media to distract me. I then stop looking at social media in the evening so that I can chill out and enjoy something relaxing, whether that’s watching Netflix, reading a book or playing my PS4.

2. Write down your achievements

Write these down no matter how small you think they are. They are what you’ve achieved and not what somebody else has done. Writing down what you’ve done, time and time again, teaches you about the great things that you’ve achieved. It then allows your thinking to focus on those great things about you. This, along with your other habits, will take time, but this is teaching you not to dismiss all the great things about you. You are enough. This helps your self worth.

3. Watch yourself on video each day

Does this sound a bit vain? Well I don’t care if this is the case if it gets results. The first time people look at themselves on camera or hear themselves speak, they can think ‘oh that’s horrible’, which is exactly what I’ve felt. When I do it consistently every day though, I learn to appreciate myself.
You don’t have to be an expert speaker or even a YouTuber. You can do this just for yourself. The beauty of doing this, is that you learn to be comfortable with yourself. You are no longer just looking at other people on video and thinking ‘oh I wish I was more like them’.

Summary

So, to stop comparing yourself to others, stop and think what is going to prevent you from comparing yourself to others. Again, as with anything, if you ask the right questions, you will get the right answers, and then take positive action. The above blog gives some practices that you can incorporate into your life in order to try and reduce how often you compare yourself to others and how to become your own hero. You may think of your own ideas, as you ask yourself what might help you to stop self-comparison. Like anything, it will take time and effort but isn’t it going to be worthwhile to feel great about yourself every day, rather than looking at what someone else does? It’s your choice.

The video can be found HERE

The podcast can be found HERE

Jonny Pardoe © May 2020

http://example.com

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:

Jonny Pardoe

Photo by Richard Jaimes on Unsplash

The post Self Comparison or be your own HERO appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.

Treat self esteem just like a muscle in the gym. You won’t improve it unless you work at it. You probably have heard the phrase ‘Don’t skip leg day’ in the gym. If you haven’t… what it means is that some guys will work purely on their upper body and not on their legs. The result? They come out with massive or muscular upper bodies but thin or ‘chicken’ legs. In particular, self esteem for men seems to be something a lot of us neglect (me included, in the past).

The same is true with self esteem.If you are not constantly working on it, then you will not increase it. Simple. Mine became so low at points that I became so fed up with it, that I decided to do something about it. I dived into book after book, course after course but where I started to reap rewards, was when I started applying consistent habits to my life. My self esteem is by no means perfect now but it is so much higher than it used to be and most of the time I feel great about myself. Of course, I will have knock backs from the inevitable challenges of life, but then I know the habits which will help me to get back on top.

What I am going to share with you today

• What is self esteem
• Simple ways to boost self esteem with some powerful habits

So what is self esteem?

I thought I would cover this as there are so many definitions out there: self esteem, confidence, worth, acceptance etc. You’ll find a whole range of results in different books and search engines. From personal experience and my best sources, these are my definitions:

Self confidence = how you feel about yourself in a given situation or skill

Self worth / acceptance = how you feel about yourself now in life

Self concept = the idea of what value you bring to life and what you are capable of

Self esteem = a combination of self worth/ acceptance and concept

Therefore, to increase self esteem, it’s important to have a great opinion of yourself but accept who you are now. Positive thinking alone will NOT work. If someone ever says ‘think positive’, to be totally honest, it’s not very good advice. You can’t think your way into better self esteem; you have to be applying regular actions that improve your self esteem. You need to apply the right habits.

Powerful habits to help build self esteem

These are things that I’ve researched and then applied to my own life. I do not talk about things unless I’ve actually tried them firsthand, as I’m not some robot computer quoting theories. I actually want to talk about real life experience.

Weekly goal planning

Setting goals helps you to connect to your own value. Setting goals helps you to understand what you want and to feel a sense of purpose. It’s important to be ambitious but also to set realistic goals, which can be broken down. A big challenging goal can be broken down further.

Now – it can be great for the self concept side to think ambitiously and to set big challenging goals, but if you aim too high and don’t reach them all the time, your self worth / acceptance will decrease. This was one of my biggest challenges with my self esteem. Therefore when challenges come, reevaluate the goals and break them down further. It’s important to review your goals and those tasks that support them, at least weekly, to check that you are on track.

I spend a couple of hours every Sunday morning doing this. There is plenty of guidance on goal setting available but the important thing to do is to set challenging goals which are then broken down so targets are achievable. That way you will get a boost in momentum as you go. If you don’t hit a goal (which has happened to me plenty of times in the past) don’t worry too much. Instead assess the challenge and go again.

Journaling the good and the bad

Understanding and fixing low self esteem starts with understanding what your good and bad habits are. These help to increase your self awareness. When you increase your self awareness you will be able to take actions that are better for you. Personally, this is something that I do every day.

For example: yesterday I felt great when I was fasting but I felt rubbish when I was scrolling on social media for too long in the evening.

Consciously writing it down will allow your mind to adjust your good and bad habits, but first of all, adopt this self awareness habit to acknowledge what makes you feel good or not so good. This is a great start to self improvement and self love.

Exercise

You’ve probably heard about the benefits of exercise, producing endorphins, chemicals which make you feel good. Yes… so this is the next habit to consider. Exercise is a great habit for you. It doesn’t mean that you have to run a marathon a day or exercise two hours a day. 20-30 minutes of exercise is sufficient. Ideally something that makes you break into a sweat. By exercising you are looking after your body, therefore giving a message that you are caring for and loving yourself. This is brilliant for self esteem.

Positive talk in the mirror

Have you experienced those horrible conversations in your head? ‘You’re rubbish’ ‘That was pathetic’ ‘Nobody likes you’ and much more. Well if you constantly speak to yourself like that, guess what? You probably won’t feel great about being you. It’s not enough to try and override it every time it comes up, though. You have to constantly speak to yourself in the right way; that way you train your brain to speak more positively to yourself. For this purpose, I speak to myself in the mirror for a minute, telling myself what I like about me. This can be hard at first but start by picking small things that you like about yourself or good things that you’ve done in the past, Then make this talk a habit.

Spending time alone in silence

This comes back to self awareness. This is about not running from your thoughts but allowing them to be there. When we are alone with our thoughts, it allows us to acknowledge them, understand them and therefore understand what might be needed.

I do this twice a day: one 30 minute run or walk and one 10 minute sitting alone with my thoughts. It is important to note though, that MUSIC OR PODCASTS ARE NOT ALLOWED.

Why? Well although these things can be great for us, and can be useful at other times in the day, for the purpose of this, those things will detract from allowing us space to be alone with our thoughts. Music or podcasts are distractions from our own thoughts. So therefore allow time with yourself with your own thoughts.

How to improve self esteem – Keep working on that self esteem muscle with habits

So the above are some very powerful habits to help work the self esteem muscle, which have worked for me. There are other habits to help overcome low self esteem available but give the above ones a try and see how you get on. They don’t have to be massive habits, some can just be short, practised for a few minutes a day but see what works for you. Give it some time. Journaling how you feel after trying things is a great way to pick up what works for you.

Self esteem is a muscle you just have to work on, even if it’s hard work at times. It’s a muscle not to neglect; why would you want to feel miserable about being you, when you are you? The choice to work on it or not, is yours.

You can find my video of this blog HERE

You can find my podcast of this blog HERE

One final note…

The six pillars of self esteem. Check out this video if you want to boost self esteem even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhuabY4DmEo&t=4s

Photo by Daniel Apodaca on Unsplash

Jonny Pardoe © April 2020

http://example.com

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:

Jonny Pardoe

The post Self Esteem Improvement – 5 POWERFUL Habits appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.

External validation is dangerous. External validation takes away control of your own life. I do not want this for you, and I don’t want this for me. It’s not saying everyone else is bad but rather it creates the reliance on something out of your control, to be happy. Why not take this control back?

My struggle with external validation

Now before I start, I’m going to be honest: I am no angel by any means. Of course, naturally, I will look at how many books I’ve sold, how many people like my social media posts or who is texting me this week. As someone who is a growing Coach, Author, YouTuber and Podcaster, of course I am going to do this. Yet I’ve learnt that it is better to use this as feedback for what is and isn’t working, rather than relying on it for my enjoyment and satisfaction out of life.

I used to be so reliant on results for dictating my life. My struggle in Amazon book sales when I first started publishing books, my likes on social media as an older teenager, my expectations of receiving text replies from a girl I was dating, all used to take a large amount of control over how I felt. It was ok when things were going well but when they weren’t, I felt awful and worthless.

So instead, over time, I decided that the only approval I needed was self-approval. I know I’m not the only man or person who struggles with external validation though, whether it’s ‘I need to find the romantic partner to like me’, ‘I need more likes’ or indeed any kind of validation at all.

External validation during coronavirus

You would think that the need for this might be reduced, as we are in our own homes. However, as we all know, technology and social media are all around us; after all, we most of us still have our phones and the internet in our homes. In fact, we are probably relying more on social media and technology now, as we can’t go out and physically interact with people as much. Although I would hope that you are not the type of person who spends much time on their phone when with others anyway…

So, here are my top three tips that have helped me to reduce external validation.

Top 3 external validation destroyers

Reduction in social media and/ or texts
Looking at your phone can play a major role in external validation. So stop…Simple!
…..Ok, or maybe not look at it as much. The problem is we become addicted to our phones, and research shows we get dopamine hits when we get likes or texts. Therefore, cut down rather than stop completely, as then we are more likely to maintain this reduction rather than give up completely.

Go for a walk without your phone or music. Just enjoy nature.
I’ve found this so relaxing. Sometimes I am so tuned into music, podcasts or checking my phone that I don’t focus on the present and what is around me. When I started to go for walks and runs without anything, I found it so relaxing. I am focused on being present, rather than thinking about everything and everybody else. Just a 20-30 min walk each day can do you the world of good.

Find something you genuinely enjoy
Not something that will make you look good to others. Something in which you can lose yourself. It may be something creative or it may not be. When I write a book, I fall into that world and forget about everything else around me. I don’t care about what others think or how good it will look. It doesn’t have to be something amazingly productive. It can be anything that you love such as reading a book, learning something new or even watching a film you enjoy.

Conclusion
External validation is something very common for us all. It becomes dangerous when we get too addicted to it though, as it’s something out of our control, dictating our happiness. Instead, bring the focus back to you. There are some simple quick tips to help you to do this: focus on feeling good and on being you.

Jonny Pardoe © April 2020
http://example.com
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:
Jonny Pardoe
Photo by Thom Holmes on Unsplash

The post External validation during the coronavirus appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.