How do I gain more self-esteem?

Maybe he just thinks that means you are dissatisfied with him?

One thing I found helps with self esteem is being evolved in a lot of things. Get a regular exercise schedule.

If you don’t have any time to sit around and do nothing, you will feel more needed! That’s how I fixed it!

Join a cause to help other people.

Comparing yourself to others is like comparing snowflakes. They are all different but no one is better than the other. He likes you for you. You should as well!

Try to become more competitive in your class(provided that you’re qualified enough for this). People will see you in high regard and you’ll earn your charisma. Sometime company and support from good friend can help you go through this.

Both @mowens and @mattbrowne suggestions are great. I had zero self-esteem socially until I met my future wife while working volunteer security at a shelter for battered women. Altruism and seeing that there are others much worse off than you are can work wonders, especially if you are making a tangible contribution to bettering their situation.

The reason why you feel this way is psychological and probably has to do with your upbringing. As to how to get more—when you find out, let me know.

Ok, to be fair, in my case getting rid of depression helps. I think if I could believe people’s feedback, that would help. Perhaps most important would be to somehow throw out the impossible expectations of myself. Sort of of the nature of if I don’t save the world, I have failed and am no good. But it does no good to dwell on it. I just have it set up so there is no danger of ever feeling good about myself. Lucky, lucky me.

Being in college you have a fresh start away from home where perhaps there were people who were not supportive of you or even made you feel insecure. Nobody at college knows you and you have a great opportunity to open up and become more accepting of yourself. Practice laughing out loud, smile as often as you can even change your hair style or clothes to suit the new outgoing you. Just having a positive attitude will make a huge difference in how you feel about yourself.

Consider getting the book Self-Parenting. Work through it. It will make you much more aware of your negative self-talk and your childhood defense mechanisms.

Thanks for all the suggestions. The thing is, I have no reason to be self-conscious (don’t mistake this for me being conceited, as I’m not at all.. quite the opposite) I have a great GPA, all the support in the world, and am trying to get into volunteer opportunities and internships (although with 25k other kids trying to do these things, it’s more difficult that it seems) Do you think that it’s just natural for some people to have low self-esteem? Is this always a bad thing? I’ve met people who need to be knocked down a peg or two, and I’m sure if that’s as bad or worse than quietly being discontent with oneself.

I know this term is thrown around quite a bit, but you may be suffering from a little bit of depression. I know I sometimes feel the same way that you do: feel like everything you do isn’t good enough, you don’t measure up to the goals you have set for yourself, and there’s no real reason why you feel this way because everything else in life is good.

It’s a tough one to deal with and everyone deals with it in different ways. I’d recommend doing something that makes you feel good about yourself and do a lot of it. Sometimes helping other people and volunteering is great for some people (extroverts, mostly). I find for myself it’s better to keep doing things I know I’m pretty good at because you always see consistently good results, and you improve yourself in the process.

College is a big change for a lot of people, it just takes time to really find yourself… sounds cliche, I know.

Depression is a common cause of low self-esteem. You have to keep an eye on that, to make sure it doesn’t get worse, and you start unraveling. I was reading a book about working to recover from Depression last night. They said that people usually do exactly the wrong thing to get better when they get depressed.

When you’re depressed, you don’t feel like you have enough energy to do stuff, so you cut back on what you do. What do you cut back on? The stuff you think is not necessary; the fun stuff. So you can focus on your work load more. This turns out to place more pressure on you and you cut back more and you do less and you feel worse about yourself and the next thing you know you are contemplating suicide.

So maybe you’re trying to do too much. Maybe you need to relax more and have fun more instead of working to control your low self-esteem. It’s not under your control. And the more you try to control it, the more you’ll fail, and the worse you will feel about yourself.

Give it the fuck up! Let go of some of your high powered successfull student rat race stuff, and do something for yourself. Read a novel. Walk in the woods. Have dinner with friends. Go skinny dipping (that was a great one when I was in college). Let things go. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself, and I have a feeling you’ll start feeling much better. And when you do, you can start doing more work. But do not let go of the fun, and it has to be real fun, not planned fun. Something you don’t even think about, but just do. Like Nike says, just do it.

Is a learned thing from your family? My mother would always slam me about having too much pride if I would say something positive about myself.

go find yourself a bunch of toadies and have them say or write fabulous things to you all the time and answer your ideas with approval and admiration…