10 Ways to Elevate Your Self-Esteem and Boost Your Confidence

Have you ever felt like you’re not good enough, not doing enough, or not successful enough?

Do you ever think that you should be further along with your business by now?

Do you beat yourself up thinking you’ll never get out of your day job and make it as a successful entrepreneur?

Those can be signs that you struggle with low self-esteem and confidence issues.

Rest assured, you can work around that and find again the self-assurance and passion you had when you were crazy enough to start that business in the first place!

But first, let’s make sure we are on the same page about what self-esteem and confidence are.

Self-esteem is how we value and perceive ourselves; the dictionary describes it as “confidence in one's own worth or abilities”.

In other words, if I value myself and my abilities, I have good self-esteem. If I see myself as a badass who can overcome any obstacle to reach my goals, I have good self-esteem.

But if I see myself as a failure, someone who never gets a breakthrough and will never be as good as their peers, chances are I have low self-esteem.

Trusting that I am worthy of success, love, and respect and that I am capable to reach my goals, is having a good sense of self-esteem.

Now let’s dive into what confidence means.

Confidence according to the dictionary is “the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something”, in our case that someone would be ourselves.

Confidence here is trusting ourselves to do the right thing, and act in a way that’s aligned with our values, it’s knowing that we have our own back and that we can rely on ourselves.

Feeling confident is about trusting ourselves and our abilities when we have to present our business to a potential client or an investor, when we have to speak in front of a group of people, or when we need to overcome a challenge.

It’s feeling sure of ourselves and our ability to reach a successful outcome.

Now let’s dive into 10 ways to elevate your self-esteem and boost your confidence to become the badass boss you envision yourself to be!

1. Affirmations

If you’ve been around this blog you know that I am a sucker for affirmations.

Positive affirmations can be so powerful and they truly can be life-changing if you dedicate yourself to the practice.

It’s also a very easy way to remind yourself of who you are, who you want to be, and your own abilities.

You can base your positive affirmations off of the vision you have of your future self, even if that’s not how you feel / where you are right now.

For example, I might not be running a 10K month business yet but I can use affirmations to reinforce my self-confidence and belief that one day it will happen by saying “I earn a massive and steady income working for the highest good for all”. (this is actually one of my personal affirmations that are taped to my bathroom mirror!)

This might seem simple, but that simple affirmation is a real pick-me-up for me when I lose hope to ever live from my passion and purpose.

Create personalized positive affirmations that resonate with you, who you want to be, and what you want to achieve.

If you want to write a book but lack confidence in your ability to do so, you could say “I am inspired every day and dedicated to writing my book and publishing it”.

I KNOW this seems simple and too good to be true, but this technique can be SO POWERFUL, try it!

2. Self-care

Taking care of ourselves is absolutely critical to boosting our self-esteem and confidence.

How do you want to feel confident to put yourself out there and sell your product or service if you don’t take care of your body, your mind, and your appearance?

Self-care is the practice of taking care of yourself.

By doing so, you show love and respect to your mind and body and they thank you for it by making you feel good about yourself and your abilities.

By taking care of myself I am sending a message to myself and the world that I am worthy of love and attention and this is definitely an esteem and confidence booster!

Figure out what self-care looks like for you and make sure you incorporate it into your everyday life.

For me, a lot of my morning routine has to do with taking care of my mind in a way that allows me to show up as my best self for the rest of the day whether it’s for myself, my business, or my friends.

Going to the gym is also how I let my body know that I respect and value it and that I am ready to do anything to take care of it.

And the result is that I feel good in my body and empowered in every way after a good run or journaling session!

3. Challenge negative and limiting beliefs

Negative and limiting beliefs are definitely high up in the food chain of what keeps us from feeling confident and worthy of success.

Whatever you tell yourself you are, you are.

If you tell yourself all day that you don’t have what it takes to make it with your business, chances are you won’t make it. If you tell yourself that you are stuck with your current income and don’t see a way to increase it, you are going to stay there.

But if you start challenging those negative and limiting beliefs, your perception of what’s possible for you will start shifting, and new opportunities, ideas, and people, will start knocking on your door.

Challenging negative and limiting beliefs is one of the hardest things to do if you have been stuck in the same loop for a while, but not impossible!

The first step is to identify them, challenge them, and then find techniques to replace those beliefs.

I have two blog posts on the subject: Changing the Narrative: How to Replace Limiting Beliefs to Reach Your Full Potential and Limiting Beliefs.

4. Write a booster list

Let’s do a simple confidence booster exercise.

Take a piece of paper, your phone works as well, I’m just a pen and paper fan, and make a list of everything you’ve accomplished since you started your business.

Even the small steps that you think don’t matter.

From getting the idea for your business, starting your social media account, and getting your tax number, to selling your first product or service.

If I were to make that list it would look something like this:

- getting the idea to start an online coaching business

- working on my limiting beliefs to get started

- publishing my first YouTube video

- starting my Instagram account

- speaking for the first time in my Instagram stories

- starting my blog

- discovering I love writing and I’m not too bad at it

- writing my first coaching program

- COACHING MY FIRST CLIENT!

- being consistent with content creation

- having a positive impact on other people’s lives

- taking a business class

- getting the idea to start a non-profit down the line

And so on.

You probably don’t feel it because this isn’t your list but I have a massive smile on my face right now and I’m borderline tearing up thinking back on the wild journey I’ve been on since I got the idea to start this business in 2021!

It’s a simple and quick exercise, yet it holds a lot of power to help you reflect on your journey so far and see how far you’ve already come!

5. Visualization

An exercise I like to do for myself and with my clients, is to create a picture of the future as we want to see it.

Now that you’ve challenged and imagined a life free from your limiting beliefs and got your confidence in your ability to get things done high up after writing your booster list, this exercise should be easy to do.

Picture yourself in the future, I like to usually picture myself five years into the future because it seems realistic for me to have accomplished (most of) my goals by then, but you can picture yourself a year or ten years from now.

Describe what a day in the life of that version of you looks like.

Where do you wake up in the morning? What do you have for breakfast? What clothes do you put on to go to work? From where do you work? From home, or an office? Do you have a team working with you? Who are your clients? What do you do in the evening to unwind from your day and enjoy this new exciting life that you live?

Free yourself of (self) judgment and limitations, overcome any inner dialogue telling you "that’s not possible”, “how do you think you’re going to get there?”, “come on, that’s unrealistic!” and create an image of the future you want to live in!

This is a great way to project yourself into the future, stimulate your sense of purpose, and define your goals, all the while freeing happy hormones into your brain!

6. Try new things

This might seem counterproductive but trying new things can be a real confidence booster!

Just last week I experienced it when I gave my first group workshop, live! By live, I mean in a room full of people!

Never have I imagined that I would be able to do something like that before tackling my limiting beliefs, but here I was, standing in front of people with my PDF file being projected on the wall and only myself to rely on, giving a workshop about limiting beliefs.

A real full-circle moment for me.

And doing this exercise, even though I had no idea if I was going to be any good at it or enjoy it, was a real confidence booster! Because it confirmed to me that I am on the right track and I am doing the right thing.

I could have told myself that I wasn’t ready, that I didn’t have enough experience and not given myself a chance to show what I was made of, but I chose to step outside of my comfort zone, and boy did it pay off!

What’s something you know will benefit you or your business and you don’t do because you’re afraid?

Is it offering sales calls? Is it signing up for a class? Is it presenting your product or service to a new client or investor?

Focus your attention on the benefits of doing it rather than on the fear, follow your gut, get out of your comfort zone, and see what happens.

Worst case scenario you walk away feeling good about trying and knowing that it’s not for you and you don’t have to spend any more time beating yourself up for not trying. Yes, I am really good at finding the silver lining.

7. Read positive reviews about your work, service, or product

Something I started doing after hearing a few people recommending this technique to quickly pick yourself up and get a confidence boost, is to look back at what happy clients said about your product or service.

I started collecting reviews and encouraging messages received from my clients and audience that I can read when I need a reminder that I am good at what I am doing and I should keep going.

And it doesn’t have to be reviews per se, sometimes it’s just someone reaching out into your DMs to let you know that a piece of content or something you said uplifted or helped them!

These reviews are PROOF that what you are doing matters and that you are on the right track, keep them close!

You can easily screenshot or copy-paste your reviews and DMs and save them somewhere you know you’ll easily find them.

8. You are allowed to be proud of yourself today

Something I notice happens a lot with new business creators, is that they think that they haven’t done enough yet to be proud of themselves.

Non-sense.

Why do you judge yourself in a way you wouldn’t dream of judging a friend that’s trying to create something new?

You have to talk to yourself like you are your own best friend, not like you are your worst critic.

Think about a friend whom you are proud of because you think they kick ass at what they’re doing. Would you wait for them to reach a certain level of success that you deem worthy before telling them that you are proud of them?

I don’t think so, I know I don’t.

I love to encourage my friends, and strangers, wherever they are on their journey and not only when they’ve reached a certain point.

So why would I wait to reach a certain level of success before feeling proud of myself and recognizing that I am worthy of love and success?

We are born worthy of love, happiness, and success. Period.

Don’t go and try to think anything else, you are doing enough today, you are worthy of success today, and you can be proud of yourself TODAY.

9. Set achievable goals

Setting goals can be either very exciting or daunting for a business creator.

We either set them too high or too low.

The goal is to set big goals for the long term and achievable goals for the short term. If you do it any other way you are putting yourself at risk of failure and losing the confidence that you can achieve any goal.

I like to set goals for the year, then for each month, then for each week.

It helps me keep the big picture in mind while focusing on what I have to do today to reach that goal in the future.

Reach small, actionable goals every day, that are building up to bring your big vision to life.

Make sure your to-do list is not overwhelming or unrealistic, that’s the quickest way to lose faith in yourself and your project.

Do one achievable thing every day and use it to build your confidence in yourself to achieve your big, long-term goals!

10. Become your own cheerleader

This might be a hard one but if you’ve worked through some of the previous steps in this blog post, it should be easier now.

As I said we tend to be our own worst critic, but we really have to learn to become our own cheerleader.

I know, easier said than done, but starting to notice how you talk to yourself and changing your inner dialogue when you are not being supportive or loving will help you build your self-esteem and confidence.

When you are starting a business, you need to be able to rely on yourself to show up, do the work, and reach your goals, and that’s really difficult to do if you are getting in your own way.

Of all the techniques we’ve seen in this blog post, pick two or three favorites to come back to when you feel yourself slipping down the road of self-loathing or anxiety.

I am not claiming any of these techniques will magically make you feel good about yourself and confident, but I am saying that if you put intentions behind being kinder to yourself and becoming your best supporter, if you show up for yourself consistently, and do small things each day to improve your self-esteem and confidence, you are increasing your chances of feeling good about yourself and being successful, whether that’s in your personal or professional life.

Final thoughts

Now a note on the reality of being a business creator and having to cheer yourself on and rely on yourself each day to get results: it’s not always easy.

Being here for myself each day isn’t easy.

Cheering myself up every day is not easy.

Sometimes I give in to the anxiety, and I get down the spiral of negative self-talk, despair, fear, and confusion about the future.

And that’s not fun. Not for me, and not for the people around me.

But if I insist on always coming back to myself and picking myself up, I slowly build self-esteem and gain confidence in myself to reach my goals one day.

The journey of business creation is a wild one, but the opportunities for personal growth along the way make it all worth it.

If you enjoy my writing and are interested in finding out more about living in alignment with your purpose, personal development, and the road to living an impactful life, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter where I explore those subjects each month and offer you insights and tips to help you on your journey!