Can you think of a time when you had a lot of confidence in your abilities, your dreams, and your accomplishments? Do you remember how good that felt? Or was that too long ago?

Now try and think at what point did that confidence start to waiver or fade… That’s probably when you started to doubt yourself and you no longer truly appreciated who you were and therefore why you’ve been searching for a way to get that feeling back.

If you ask a lot of people how to get those feelings back they probably have told you you just needed to “love yourself,” or just start practicing “self-love“…

But what happens when someone tells you this? Probably not a whole lot because you may not know how to start loving yourself. There is no clear action to be taken when you’re told to do this self-love thing. Then you may think, “Well, I love my friends, wouldn’t I just need to start treating myself like I do my friends?” Sort of, but I’ve realized that there’s a little more to it than that.

So let’s look at that, take a look at the respect and appreciation you have for your friends, your colleagues, your teacher, your parents, siblings, etc., and you’ll most likely realize that you once had that same level of respect and appreciation for yourself as you do the people around you. But now it’s gone. You weren’t born hating yourself or constantly self-doubting, so when did that change?

See, I’ve learned that much like the promises we make with others, we all make promises or deals with ourselves, too—“contracts” if you will—but these are much more personal. They are our decisions about ourselves such as, “I’m going to be this way from now on.” or “I am going to be that way regarding this certain aspect of my life.” These decisions are how we decide to behave, who and what we decide we are and do, who we build ourselves up to be, the qualities we choose to have and therefore who we believe we are, etc., and when we break those kinds of “contracts” we make with ourselves, we start to go downhill.

Here’s how this seems to work:

• Example 1: Say a guy made a promise or pledge to himself early on that he would live a drug-free life and never use street drugs. He decided he would never do them under any circumstances, and he stuck to his decision all throughout high school though he was made fun of for staying clean and therefore didn’t have many friends. Let’s assume he’s now in college and he still doesn’t have any friends. He feels insecure about that fact and very isolated, so he starts making new acquaintances. Now, let’s say one night he’s with these “cool new friends” at a frat party where everyone is drinking and using drugs. These new pals offer him some of the drugs, which he declines at first, but then they start making fun of him. And since he doesn’t want to potentially lose these new “friends” he’s made, he is coerced or bullied into trying the drugs. Now, to other people, that situation might not seem so horrible, but it’s a big deal to our guy in the example since he promised himself he’d never do it, and now that he can’t trust himself like he used to, he may continue to do those drugs and become addicted, or he may move on to other illegal drugs and justify it for whatever reason. See how that works?

• Example 2: Assume a lady makes a vow to herself that she will never, ever cheat on her partner. She has told her boyfriend this, and he has complete faith in her. But then one day she finds a new man who really piques her interest, and she decides to cheat on her boyfriend with him. Clearly, this is a severe breach of trust, not just with her partner but also with herself, and it has cost her her self-respect. And sometimes, for some, all it would take to lose one’s self-respect would be to actively and consciously consider or intend to cheat on their partner… Our minds work in weird ways, but it seems that in this case, her simply intending to cheat could send her down the tubes. She didn’t actually cheat, but she went low enough to consider cheating on her boyfriend, and this shattered her trust in herself; it hurt her, even if just by a little bit.

• Example 3: A woman promised herself she would quit smoking but found excuses to keep it up because she realized she couldn’t live up to the “disciplined individual” idea she had decided for herself. This is most likely not the first time she’s let herself down on a personal level so she now doesn’t trust herself to be disciplined.

• Example 4: A man told himself he would stop being lazy and lose that weight for his New Year’s resolution but soon discovers he isn’t the “motivated person” he decided he was going to be, most likely due to all the times he’d let himself down in the past, so he then fails again…

This betrayal to ourselves hurts more than any contract we could ever break with anyone else—not your mother, your father, your siblings, your cousins, your partner, your friends, no one. I believe one of the many reasons why our self-confidence leaves us is when we stop respecting and trusting ourselves because we’ve broken contracts with ourselves.

Now, I do want to point out that I recognize there are a variety of additional reasons why people can lose their self-confidence, self-respect, and self-worth, and I will discuss some of these in future posts ranging from narcissistic abuse, toxic people and relationships, gaslighting, and more ways of determining where some of our doubts and insecurities may come from. So, if you’d like to continue your journey of recovering greater self-confidence and self-respect, please subscribe to my blog so you won’t miss whenever I post more articles!

Back to self-love now! There could be a multitude of times when you let yourself down on a really personal level and did things you told yourself you would never do, didn’t do things you said you would, and therefore, just like a domino effect, each time you did those things you couldn’t trust yourself more and more… Just think of it like having a friend who constantly lets you down or betrays you, it is very hard to trust them, if at all. The same concept applies to ourselves.

Now, this is not to be confused with situations where one does something that is deemed bad and it didn’t affect them, because they never said they wouldn’t do that. They never made any agreements or pledges to themselves about that thing so they didn’t go back on themselves about it. See the difference?

People seem to seriously downplay the importance of self-respect but I believe it really is one of the most important qualities one can have and when we lose that, we’ve pretty much lost everything until we find ways of getting it back. In my mind, self-love = self-respect; so when we respect ourselves, we love ourselves. I also believe our appreciation for and our belief and confidence in ourselves is vital to our mental health. The reason I feel “self-love” doesn’t work is because not many people have given any clear actions to take to actually love, respect, and trust one’s self again…

So how can one do this?

One way I’ve found is very simple! You can help regain your self-worth and self-respect by pinpointing whenever there was a time when you severely let yourself down by asking yourself the following questions, and when doing so, taking a good look and answering them honestly (it may be easier for you to write the answers down on paper or digitally, so I’ve created a five page PDF and linked it below which you can print out if you’d like which will help you really focus on the details and really hone in on those moments in your life):

• At what point did I lose my self-respect?
• When did I discover I could no longer trust myself?
• When was it that I decided my values, my needs, and my wants were no longer something I valued or something I deserved or felt happy about?
• When did I start believing that me appreciating myself was a bad thing?
• What way did I decide to be before things went wrong?
• What qualities in myself did I feel good about and respect no matter what others thought?
• What did I once believe in about myself?
• What did I once appreciate about myself?
• What accomplishments of mine was I once proud of?
• When was the last time I felt good about something I did?
• Who had I decided to be before things went wrong?
• When was the last time I felt confident about who I am?
• At what point did I no longer value myself?
• When was the last time I felt truly confident in my abilities?
• At what point did I start to doubt myself?

Once you’ve pinpointed when those times were by answering those questions, then you must own up to your actions and forgive yourself and then you absolutely have to rehabilitate all of the ideas and beliefs that you once had about yourself before things went wrong. This is extremely important. I cannot stress enough how vital this is. In order to trust yourself again, you’ve got to bring those ideas and beliefs back to life so you can believe in yourself to do what you wanted to do, be what you once were, have what you want to have, and know you are going to make it work because you have confidence in yourself again to do it.

Then you have to start actively changing your thoughts towards yourself. For example, you make a mistake, say you drop food on the floor, so instead of thinking things like, “I am so stupid! I’m an idiot!” or “Wow, I am such a clutz.” instead try to think, “Well, that happened. Maybe next time I should use a sturdier spatula, or pick it up in a different way, or maybe use a better plate.”

Another example: you get six out of ten answers wrong on a test and therefore fail it, so instead of going inward and thinking things like, “I am so stupid, of course I got it wrong. Just like I get everything else wrong in my life. I am such a failure. I will never amount to anything.” try to think things like this instead, “Okay, I know what I need to work on now, so I need to buckle down and study harder and make very sure that I understand everything I am studying. I am an intelligent person, I know I am. I have gotten myself through a lot harder situations before, I can do this! I will work until I succeed!”

After that, a very important step you must take is to implement some firm rules or guidelines for future behavior which will keep you in line and improve your chances of never letting yourself down again. Also, set healthy boundaries for yourself for your interactions with others and gently insist that these other people in your life accept and respect those boundaries, too. Here are some very basic examples of rules you can set for yourself:

• Don’t ever give into peer pressure to do anything I do not myself want to do regardless of judgment, criticism, bullying, or fear of disappointing others.
• Stay true to my own word: i.e. if I tell myself I’m not going to drink alcohol anymore, I must stick to it.
• The moment a negative thought about myself creeps in, think five positive thoughts instead.
• Do not lie to anyone I care about because I don’t like being lied to so why lie to them?
• I will try my best to be my authentic self and be transparent in whatever group setting I find myself in, meaning I will not put on facades or act like a different person depending on my social circles.

You have to start being your own dearest friend; give yourself a helping hand and be that truly supportive person who cares and wants you to succeed. So forgive yourself for your errors, get over them, revive the beliefs you once had about yourself (by doing the steps above), set some new rules for future behavior and I bet you will undoubtedly start to love yourself again and make better choices.

So to wrap up, I strongly encourage you to be kind to yourself. Bringing ourselves back up from the depths is already hard enough, don’t make it harder by thinking horrible thoughts and tearing yourself down because being kind to yourself again despite your past mistakes is the true core of self-love. And in my opinion, all of what I’ve compiled here is a great start to make it actually work and it’s what I believe they don’t tell you when they say, “You just need to practice self-love…” and to me, this is why it doesn’t work.

So if you really want to practice self-love, answer this question for yourself: “When did I lose my self-respect?“

Try it. Share this post with someone whom you think will benefit from it!

Best,

Mariah

Every Day Do It Yourself

All of the material in this post is solely advice based on what I’ve learned and tried, and what I’ve discovered to be true and useful for myself and others. Its purpose is to help people to better assist themselves with challenges in their lives. It is in no way intended to take the place of professional therapy whatsoever.