Ways to Boost a Woman's Self-Esteem

Self-esteem refers to your opinion of yourself, how you feel about your strengths, weaknesses, abilities and physical appearance. These opinions are influenced by environment and relationships. If you are a woman with a healthy view of yourself, you take pride in your abilities, while acknowledging your weaknesses. Low self-esteem hampers your ability to succeed and make positive choices. To boost your self-esteem, you need to make an honest self-examination and make lifestyle changes.

Don't Compare Yourself with Others

• Making unfair comparisons reinforces negative views of your abilities and accomplishments. Instead, acknowledge your positive attributes and realize that some people know more than you do while others know less. Start by grabbing a pen and a piece of paper and making two columns. In each column, honestly write down your strengths and your weaknesses. Take pride in your strengths and continue improving them. If your weaknesses reflect things you want to change about yourself, actively work on them, asking for help if necessary.

Look at Your Past Successes

• The human tendency is to look back at your life and obsess over all of your failures and all of the things that could have been. Focusing on your failures manifests itself with worry that you haven't made career advancements, haven't gotten married or had kids, or are going through a divorce. You should reflect on all of your accomplishments from your childhood to the present. Your list of accomplishments could include teaching yourself a sport, graduating from high school, paying your way through college and getting your first apartment.

Do Charity Work

• Charity work gets your mind off your own problems and lets you focus on the needs of others. You become less self-centered, one of the attributes of low self-esteem. Helping others builds your confidence because you realize your contribution to society. Lend a hand at local food banks, soup kitchens or Big Brother/Big Sister. Select organizations need volunteers with special talents, such as literary programs that offer free tutoring. You can also volunteer your time at local schools, whether you have kids or not. Volunteer Match helps you find volunteer opportunities in your area.

Associate with Positive People

• Associating with encouraging, positive people builds your self-esteem, while people who focus on your negative qualities bring you down. There's nothing wrong with receiving constructive criticism; however, nitpicking friends and family members affect your view of yourself. You feel tense because you never know what they will say. Go out with a friend for a girls' night out and steer conversations away from negative ideas. You might have to break ties and limit association with friends known for their toxic influence. You need to have an honest conversation with family members who are negative.

Challenge Yourself Physically and Mentally

• Exercise gets your heart pumping and builds your confidence, no matter what size you are. Try different activities to challenge your physical endurance, such as hiking, rock climbing and boot camp. Your self-esteem increases when you accomplish physical challenges. Combine physical activities with charity by training for heart walks and marathons. Enroll in educational classes, arts and crafts workshops or enrichment activities to get your mind off your weaknesses and learn new skills. Learn about subjects that interest you or take dance classes.