How To Actually Boost Low Self Esteem & Stop Procrastinating

If I had to take a swing in the dark here I would guess that there are probably a lot of things you want to accomplish in your life. If I was betting money on it I'd say you haven't accomplished many of them.

Unfortunately, if you are part of the vast majority of people (92% to be exact) I'd be correct.

It’s incredibly easy and relieving to defer the entirety of your personality, flaws, self-esteem & motivation onto vague unsolvable causes. I’ve done it quite a bit myself and I know you've all done it too.

Regardless of whether you accept it or not.

After all, if you've been a certain way since you can remember, then maybe you should just assume it’s who you are right? Objectively it's probably a mixture of the environment you grew up in, genetics/brain chemistry, and all that fun stuff, right? You've been a procrastinator since birth, you've felt socially awkward since kindergarten. These things don’t change, at least not for you. It’s just who you are, and you'll learn to work around it. No point in addressing something that's embedded into your DNA.

Before you click off this page thinking I’m about to launch into a Tony Robbins style self-help guide (I kind of am), please just entertain me with the following.

Try to answer the following two questions.

If you don’t have an answer that feels natural just make something up. Write something that sounds like some annoying person somewhere would probably agree with it.

Don't worry I'm not recording what you type unless someone offers me a good price.

For the few of you that actually tried to complete the prompts you probably noticed that it wasn't all that difficult to come up with something.

You probably also noticed that both of your answers had some degree of truth to them. Although one might be more objective than the other.

But which one would you rather focus on?

If one of these had to be ingrained into your mind for the rest of your life which one would you pick?

Which one do you think would get you further towards your goals?

Which one would you place onto someone you didn't hate?

I'm not trying to ask you which one is closer to the truth. But whichever one you chose to focus on would surely impact the decisions you make throughout your life. As annoying as this kind of stuff may come across as there really isn't any denying it. The people who focus on limitations will have more of them. Even if they are valid.

We pick the data from our minds to confirm what we already believe to be true of ourselves and the world.

Almost the entirety of our self-identity comes down to confirmation bias and there is no shortage of data.

When it comes to self-image pretty much everything can be true (and false) and you are probably much less objective than you'd like to think.

Is this getting too hokey?

Sorry.

Can You Actually Change Your Self-Image & Core Beliefs?

Maybe? I would of course like to believe the answer is always yes. You can boost your self-esteem, confidence, and motivation to levels you thought impossible. At least that much is true. You can change deeply ingrained personality traits in a day that you probably thought were unchangeable. But maybe not all of them.

However, maybe you specifically can't. Maybe you are entirely right about yourself. You have somehow managed to build your self-identity out of pure objectivity and there is no room for growth. Maybe you are already perfect or maybe you just suck way more than everyone else or got dealt a truly impossible hand. That's definitely the case for someone out there reading this. I'm truly sorry you had to get through this article just to be left with that.

But the truth is most people do meet the minimum requirements to reach their goals and change for the better. And they probably know that already but still do nothing. Unfortunately, if they don't do something about it they aren't going to have a very fulfilled life. There isn't really any way around that.

For most people, someone in their exact position has accomplished everything they could dream of.

The good news is that it's probably not going to be as hard to shift your mindset as you would think.

Like a mental couch potato, you may have allowed your confidence and self-beliefs to get ridiculously out of shape. It’s probably time that you change that.

Very deep, I know. If I had a less irritating way of writing that I would have.

How To Actually Build Self-Esteem & Shift Mindset

So far this has been mostly drivel. I'm sure you've seen a million articles in the self-help niche blasting you with the same few points but ultimately leaving you with nothing you can apply.

Hopefully, I can offer you something that you actually can do. Something that will make you notice a difference in both the way you think and feel.

And all it really is, is exercises. Mental exercises that force you to think from perspectives that you aren't all that used to. Maybe even think of thoughts that you have never had in your entire life.

If you have been a chronic procrastinator for your entire life, you've probably never asked yourself:

Why am I not a procrastinator?

Because why would you ever do that? It doesn't make any sense. But how can you ever expect to change something you constantly reaffirm to yourself every single day of your life?

You have to know what it feels like to be someone you're not.

Fake it till you make it.