How to gain personal security and high self-esteem?

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

─ Rumi

We've all had some days in our lives that we compared our progress and achievements to the people around us. Particularly, these people are the ones who are so close to us such as our friends, cousins, colleagues and so on. They are usually at the same age as you, and subconsciously you have a feeling of competition with them. That's why you don't usually feel jealous about your parents, uncles, aunts, grandpas and so on. For instance, your colleague gets a promotion and you begin to compare (perhaps with a bit of feeling jealousy) your job progress and achievements in life with hers. Or your friend gets in a relationship and you start to compare yourself with him and you think about having the same thing for yourself. The bases in our societies, cultures and traditions which mostly blindly shape our blueprints and beliefs about life is a very important topic which will be covered in another article.

For now let’s take a look at the following questions: where does this kind of comparison feeling (jealousy) come from? And, how can we overcome this feeling? The answer to the questions lies down in your self-esteem and personal security. Let's first define the terms self-esteem and security by asking you a few short questions. What do you think about yourself? How do you evaluate yourself? How worth do you think you are? Your answers to these questions reveal your attitude to yourself as an individual which is the definition of self-esteem. The more you think of yourself, the more self-esteem you have and you will be a more secured person. An example of a secured person would be a person who is proud of himself and won't be easily influenced by the circumstances (distractions). So, the more self-esteem and security you gain, the less comparative and jealous you'll be.

But, what if your self-esteem and security is very low? How can you improve that? There are actually a couple of ways to take to improve the level of your self-esteem & security:

1. Think about the things in your life that you're proud of. If you can't come up with a bunch of the achievements and successes that you're proud of in life, you would probably have a low self-esteem. So, brainstorm and think about it deeply. They don't need to be very big stuff that you've conquered in your life, they could be little things such as getting a degree, completing a course, passing an exam, losing weight, helping someone or donating something. When you think about the good things that you have achieved in life, you will automatically start to feel good about yourself (higher self-esteem) on a conscious level of thinking.

2. Think about how ridiculous it would be to tie your own happiness to the other people. One day you see someone’s doing better than you and you feel down, the other day you see someone’s doing worse than you and you feel good. Of course, it is good to notice that there are people who are beneath you and wish to have the things in your life because it increases your self-esteem and makes you to be grateful for what you already have your life. For instance, you can think about the people in the Africa struggling with the water shortage or innocent people around the world trapped in the nonsense wars (such as Middle East wars). When you start to consciously think about these kinds of situations, your little worries and problems start to shrink and disappear. Always remember that no one is ever perfect and most of the people that you feel jealous about might feel the same way about you, even for the smallest things in your life. They might have so many problems in their lives that you’re not aware of. A good example of this is the pictures and videos that people share on social media these days, but you don’t see the stories behind their faces. Just notice that it might be the biggest possible success or the best moment of their life to share, but, there has been so much efforts, difficulties, tears and harsh realities behind their faces that you don’t see. Most of the times, they don’t share their problems, their failures, their humiliations and so on. So, you’re just taking a look at the final piece of their efforts. But, a big mistake that some people do is that they usually tend to compare the best moments of others to the worst moments of themselves. Do you think it's fair like this?! You tell me!

3. Be focused on your own interests, priorities and values. The more you concentrate on your own way of living (which deep down aligns with your values and priorities in life), the happier you will be. In this case, you will not compare yourself to the others because you have established your own values for life and have already achieved some of them (or at least you're moving in that direction). So, instead of wasting your time to fulfill the external demands of others that don’t have any meaning for you, get busy with your own way of living that makes you to meet your inner life values.

4. Compare yourself to your past version. You should always measure your own success and progress on the way to your desired life. Compare the present version of yourself to your old version in yesterday, the day before, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago and so on. Nowadays, with the busy daily life of people, it is sometime hard to remember that where we were and where we are right now. How far you’ve come? How much you’ve learned and grown? By asking this kind of questions you can remind yourself about your achievements compared to your old version. In this way, you can clearly see that how far you’ve come and achieved along the way to your goals.

To sum up, you should be proud of your achievements in life so far, you should tie your happiness to yourself not to the other people, you should be focused on your own way of living (values) and measure your success along the journey to your desired life. 

I wish you all the best along your life journey :)