Build a Highlight Reel of Yourself
It took me almost 30 years and a lot of reading to learn this: keeping a highlight reel of ourselves is so important for fostering healthy self-esteem.
People with healthy self-esteem are collected and nonreactive in the face of doubts, judgements or insults. Life is tough. When the outside world doesn’t give us love or respect, healthy self-esteem is that thing that lifts us up, allows us to love ourselves, fends off whatever nonsense thrown at us and moves us forward.
Our highlight reel is all the positive, concrete evidence about us that demonstrates our strengths that makes us respect ourselves. It’s the solid reflection of our values, our character and our identity. In our daily life, take small actions that allow us to embody our values, such as resilience, love and compassion, and build a positive image of ourselves. After such an action is taken, save it to the reel because this is something that we should feel proud of. Also, search the past for memories of those actions and take note of them. Whenever we feel we’re not enough, whenever self-doubt or guilt creeps in, whether that’s triggered by the mean voice in our head, a tough circumstance or other people, we can go back to those highlights to refute our distorted thoughts.
Our brain is already biased towards negativity to help us survive. Without a highlight reel to create balance, we would have nothing to fall back to in the face judgements, unfavorable opinions, gaslighting or a difficult situation. We would crumble and start doubting ourselves, our capabilities, our identity. Our self-esteem would be ruined and depression would follow.
Start taking small and meaningful actions today, build a highlight reel, and use it to cultivate our self-esteem.
