It’s hard to walk through the halls of school when you don’t quite believe in yourself. It might feel like everyone is looking at you, like they’re all talking about what you’re wearing or what you said in class the other day. It’s easy to fantasize about all the ways your peers are ganging up on you.

This sort of thinking is common with those who experience poor self-esteem. It’s common to feel like the odd person out. However, there are some conscious steps you can take to help build your self confidence and strengthen your self esteem.

If you don’t have a high level of self-esteem, it’s pretty important to try develop it, and that’s something you can do. Here are some suggestions to do that:

• Explore your thoughts. Sometimes thinking gets the best of us. There are patterns of thought that can help create a low self esteem over time. What’s great about recognizing these patterns is that it provides an opportunity to change them. If you see any of these thinking patterns in yourself, you can begin to work on actually thinking differently, especially in certain circumstances that might make you question your self-worth.
• Figure out your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what your strengths are can add to a sense of feeling good about yourself. Knowing your weaknesses can be just as important. When faced with a difficult task, for example, instead of pretending to know how to get it done and then fail (which can dampen your self-esteem), you can ask for help or simply admit that you don’t have that skill. Admitting your weaknesses is in itself a certain kind of strength.
• Don’t beat yourself up over your weaknesses. There’s a sense of confidence that you might develop with knowing what you can and can’t do. Instead of beating yourself up for your weaknesses, simply be honest. Doing so can bring inspire the respect of your peers, parents, and teachers.
• Don’t compare yourself to others. Although comparing ourselves to others is easy to do, especially when we don’t have faith in our own lives, this is the first thing that weakens self-esteem. There’s only one life to live and that’s yours. Taking responsibility for it is the best way to build self-confidence.

• Set realistic goals for yourself. As you continue to reach your goals and achieve them, your self confidence will only improve.
• Trust your own feelings. This is hard to do when you might have been taught that your feelings are not worth trusting. Often, we are taught to trust reason and logic instead. However, feelings are a certain kind of intelligence that can lead to building self-trust which in turn can boost self-confidence.
• Take it one day at a time. Do your best each day.  Giving it your best each day can also help boost your feelings about life.

These are suggestions for building your self esteem. You focus on one at a time. You might let it build slowly. And one day you’ll notice that you’re feeling great about who you are and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks!