Here’s what you do:

Take a deep breath, slow down and ask yourself this question: what are 3 things I can appreciate about myself?

These things don’t have to be big things.

Maybe just that you listened fully for a few minutes to someone who needed it today.

What are 3 things I can appreciate about myself?

Write down your answers every evening in a journal made out of paper or on your computer/smart phone.

A nice extra benefit of writing it down is that after a few weeks you can read through all the answers to stay positive and get a good self-esteem boost and change in perspective on days when you may need it the most.

When you do what you deep down think is the right thing to do then you raise and strengthen your self-esteem.

It is not always easy to do. Or even to know what the right thing is.

But keeping a focus on it and doing it as best you can makes big difference both in the results you get and for how you think about yourself.

It can paralyze you from taking action because you become so afraid of not living up to some standard. And so you procrastinate and you do not get the results you want. This will make your self-esteem sink.

How can you overcome perfectionism?

A few things that really helped me are:

Go for good enough.

Remember that buying into myths of perfection will hurt you and the people in your life

• Be your own best friend.

How would my friend/parent support me and help me in this situation?

• Find the upside.

What is one thing I can learn from this? And what is one opportunity I can find in this situation?

This will help you to change your viewpoint and hopefully not hit the same bump a little further down the road.

When you are kinder towards others you tend to treat and think of yourself in a kinder way too. And the way you treat other people is how they tend to treat you in the long run.

So focus on being kind in your daily life.

When you try something new, when you challenge yourself in a small or bigger way and go outside of your comfort zone then your opinion of yourself goes up.

You may not have done whatever you did in a spectacular or great way but you at least tried instead of sitting on your hands and doing nothing.

And then later on you can do the same thing a few more times and improve your own performance.

When you compare your life, yourself and what you have to other people’s lives and what they have then you have destructive habit on your hands.

Because you can never win.

There is always someone who has more or is better than you at something in the world. There are always people ahead of you.

So replace that habit with something better.