{"id":90012,"date":"2023-01-20T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=90012"},"modified":"2023-01-27T15:29:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T19:29:34","slug":"how-to-build-self-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/how-to-build-self-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Build Self-Worth: Be Kind to Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are you hard on yourself? How do you build self-worth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Low self-esteem<\/a> can be detrimental to your life, especially if you make yourself believe you can’t do anything extraordinary. Kristin Neff’s book Self-Compassion<\/a><\/em> assures that you can raise your self-worth with just one simple solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to learn how to build self-worth by being compassionate with yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Self-Compassion Contributes to a Stable Sense of Self-Worth<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To learn how to build self-worth, you need to build self-compassion. Neff argues that self-compassionate people don\u2019t experience the kinds of harmful fluctuations in self-worth that self-critical people do because their value isn\u2019t rooted in external factors\u2014specifically comparisons of themselves to others and their success or failure at achieving particular goals. Instead, self-compassion is<\/a> an internally driven mindset that centers on your whole being. A self-compassionate person recognizes that success and failure<\/a> come and go and don\u2019t define you as good, bad, loveable, or unloveable. She says this is an important distinguishing factor of self-compassion from its often compared, deeply hyped neighbor, self-esteem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Research supports Neff\u2019s argument, finding that when self-esteem is rooted in external sources, it\u2019s tied to greater social, emotional, and mental health problems<\/a>. A 2002 study of college freshmen found that students whose self-worth centered on physical appearance, academic performance, and others\u2019 perceptions of them reported stress and anger, greater relationship and academic problems, and higher levels of drug and alcohol use and eating disorder symptoms than other students.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neff says that for decades, the field of psychology has wrongly propped up the idea that having high self-esteem (your assessment of your worth) makes you happier and leads to success. She argues that self-esteem is an unstable metric that can fluctuate unpredictably because it\u2019s often based on factors outside your control, for example: <\/p>\n\n\n\n