I’d like to add that sometimes, against all odds, I do have self esteem. On bad days, I wait for the good days. As I got older I finally realized that this is what I’ve got to work with, so it better be enough, and try not to sell myself short.
That’s good. That’s excellent!
I wonder what would happen, though, if instead of realizing that you have bad DAYS, you realize that you have bad MOMENTS. This is something that I’ve found in myself lately. I have this bad habit that if I wake up in a foul mood, I write the entire day off. Or maybe the entire week! (I’m having one of those right now.) But why? A bad moment does not have to prophecy into an entire day. Or week. Or month. Or lifetime.
Good moments are sometimes found in the oddest and most mundane places. We just have to be open to them, and they can turn a day around like magic.
Instead of writing off the entire day because of one bad moment, why not anticipate a better moment? You do less violence to your thoughts that way, and that’s a self-loving act.
I’m going to take my own advice about that. Right now. Fuckin’ YEAH! 
I’ll quote someone that I admire very much: “Don’t believe anything I say. And don’t disbelieve anything I say. Just try it out and see what works for you.”
I’ll add to this sage advice – try it out ten times before you reject it. There’s gold in this thread, and I’m going to try out everything that’s been offered. Ten times.
One thing I realized was that I just couldn’t afford all that negativity. It just cost me too much in terms of work and relationships. I decided it was a matter of two choices: positive or negative. When a negative thought popped up, I asked myself why the hell was I doing this to myself? I’m frigging awesome! I’m a good cook, I followed through on my promises and damn it, I even used soap today!
I guess it’s something you build on. After a while, the thoughts are actions and the actions are memories. Everyone else’s responses are wonderful!
And here is a handy thread (zombie !) to get you started with determining what your particular life goals are.
Also, a very useful search term for self esteem is “self compassion” Google it, read and learn.
I used to have pretty rotten self-esteem; in the final years of my first marriage, it was as low as it has ever been, and I struggled with it daily. I won’t go so far as to say I was suicidal (I never got to the point that I would actually do something to try and take my life), but daydreams about how much easier it would be to be dead were pretty much a daily occurance. When my marriage fell apart, I crashed big time, but over the past four years, I’ve brought myself up significantly.
For me, it was a combination of many of the things mentioned in this thread. The first, big one was what Wesley Clark said - I had to learn to be as compassionate to myself as I tried to be to others. I am the king of making excuses for the behaviors of other people, but could never accept even the slightest mistakes or errors in myself. I had to really pay attention to my thoughts and attitudes, and when I’d catch myself berating myself, I’d force myself to take a breath, to mental step back, and imagine what I would tell a friend who had done the same thing. It was shocking at first, how badly I would beat myself up over things that I’d tell other people were ridiculous to stress over.
The second big step was acceptance. Regrets will kill a person’s self esteem, as will dwelling over “could have beens”. I’d spend so much time wishing that I had done something different, regretting things I’d done or said, dreaming about somehow going back in time and changing my actions, that I worked myself into a state of near inaction…and I do believe that inaction is the food that feeds poor self-esteem. It took a really good talk with my recovered alcoholic father to highlight this for me - as distant as we have been for most my life, we really share a lot of similar mental traits. In the past ten years, he has become a very different man, and a huge part of that is that he’s learned that regrets and second guessing were a huge part of what lead him to drinking. He lives now without regrets - that is not to say that he does everything right or that he is an ass who just ignores the consequences of his actions. Indeed, he still screws up regularly and says or does things in a less then ideal way. The difference is that when he realizes he makes a mistake, instead of dwelling on it, he apologizes if it affected another person (he doesn’t apologize to himself - that leads to regrets), he does his best to make things right, but if it can’t be done, he accepts the consequences with an understanding that he’s learned a good lesson on how not to do things. He never says “I wish I hadn’t done that” or “I wish I had done this instead” because that does nothing, NOTHING, to change what it is. Instead, he looks at it, he says “Well, that was the wrong thing to do. Next time, I won’t do it.” And he lets the regret roll away.
Third was learning to take a little pride in all the things I do get right. I’m far, far from a perfect person (I no longer hold myself to a standard that insists on it), but I try very hard to do well in the things I can do well at, and to accept praise when I do so. Very little in this world is within my power to change, but the things that are, I take responsibility for. I pay my child support on time, every month, regardless of my debts or obligations. I am proud of that, because so many dads don’t. At work, I’ve been getting glowing reviews - I work hard to be on top of my duties, and to be an asset to my organization. These things are all me, and I deserve to pat myself on the back for them.
In the end, as cliche as it may seem, I find that my father’s favorite AA prayer really helps me focus. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Mind you, I’m not even slightly religious, leaning heavily towards atheist, but it doesn’t mean that the idea behind the prayer is any less valid. With every doubt I find myself having, every dip in esteem, I ask myself - is this something I can change? If yes, I fix it, even if it means saying I screwed up - accepting consequences without regret. If no, I have to accept that it is done, and have the peace of mind that at least I know now how not to do that in the future.
I was pretty pathetic as a child and teen - never felt pretty enough or smart enough or worthy of attention. After a year of college, I dropped out and joined the Navy, and that was that. I found I did well in the ordered and disciplined military, and I really did look for opportunities to excel. Once I cleared the first hurdle, the later ones came easier, and by the time I decided I didn’t want to be in the Navy any more, I was self-confident but I didn’t take myself too seriously, and I went on to have a great career. Now of course, being old and retired, I don’t have to care what anyone thinks about me, so my self-esteem soars! 
I will grant that the military isn’t for everyone. But the point is that you need to find your fit - what do you enjoy that you do well - and you put your effort into that. Eventually, those successes help you realize that you don’t have to be best at everything, and even when you’re great at something, chances are someone may be better. No matter - you can’t worry about others - just concentrate on yourself.
Anyway, that’s what’s worked for me.
I don’t even understand some of the responses in this thread. Maybe the definition of “self-esteem” is different than what I take it to mean.
IMO, you can be a good person, you can do the “right” thing, you can have integrity, you can be effective at your job, people can like you-- and you still don’t have “self-esteem” in the sense that you do not feel good about yourself, you deflect compliments, you don’t understand the value others see in you, etc.
The one thing that sounds somewhat silly but really worked for me is self-affirmation. Essentially you need to fake it til you make it… Make a conscious effort to think good things about yourself. You may have to come up with some kind of mantra, Stuart Smiley-style: “I am a good person. I am attractive. I am caring. I am strong.” etc etc. It will feel weird and ridiculous at first, but after a while it becomes second nature and really makes a difference (at least, it did for me.)
Good luck!
Force yourself into a “this day and forward…” manner of thinking. I used to let past events, failures, embarrassments, etc crush me as I’d dwell on how stupid I’d been, or how mean, or how embarrassing. Especially with relationships and social situations.
The bad things are gone and can’t touch you, forget them and don’t repeat them. Your whole life is now the edited “Good Parts Version”. I bet if I read the Good Parts Version of your life, I’d think you were a cool happening admirable person.
“Confidence” is overcoming normal aversion or self-consciousness one might have going up to a pretty girl to ask her on a date or punching some jerk in the face who gives you shit. “Self-esteem” is the belief that you are even worthy of doing these things in the first place.
What is it about themselves that people hate so much? Did you find out you were a decendent of Stalin or something? Are you still worrying about that missed jump shot from some junior high basketball game no one remembers or missing your chance to ask out some girl in college who is probably now fat and annoying the shit our of her husband somewhere in Bumfuck, Anystate USA?
They didn’t even let me play, and I did ask her out and she laughed in my face. Happy now?
Come on dude. Look at you! If someone like you asked you out, wouldn’t you laugh too?
Self-compassion is powerful in overcoming self-loathing. This website has some great information.
A belief that there’s something fundamentally wrong with one’s self. And not something that they just can’t help, but something that they could fix if they weren’t so inept/lazy/self-absorbed/whatever-adjective-you-can-come-up-with. And not something that’s just a quirky imperfection, but something that indicates a pervasive wrongness–something that’s always on the forefront of their mind. They could get married, earn their Ph.D, and run a marathon all in the same week, by that wrongness will always mar their accomplishments.
I’m sure for every self-hater, it’s a different “something” or “somethings”. It doesn’t matter how many assurances you give that person. They will not stop believing that they are broken somehow. Especially if the person who is assuring them is not broken in their particular way. They have to come to the realization, all on their own, that they are either not broken or that their brokenness isn’t that big of a deal.
I didn’t exactly hate myself, but I had low self-esteem for a long time. I think it was mainly because I never lived up to my own expectations. (still don’t)
I gradually got over it through the years. After meeting several thousand people, I realized that I really wasn’t so bad. 
The people that really should hate themselves usually don’t in my experience (sociopaths, dictators, general assholes, etc). It is one of the black ironies of life.
I’m going through this at the moment, working myself out of a funk. In my case, I grew up in a seriously abusive environment, in which contradictory messages were rampant. For example, we weren’t allowed to succeed or do well at anything or my father’s ego would be hurt. Likewise doing less than perfect wasn’t an option and the definition of perfect changed on the whims of a very sick man, and only after the job was completed.
Consequently, the normal development of self-worth did not happen for me. Simply doing things well did not add up to a better self esteem because of the fucked up internal messages. My counselors weren’t really able to help me on this issue, and it was because we were talking across each other. Without a sense of normalcy, the words the counselors used didn’t register with me.
I may have continued this forever, but I had children and I realized that their father needs to have better self esteem in order to do all what is necessary in order for them to grow up into healthy adults and that I needed it in order to be able to help install it in them.
The funny thing is that I’m good with my kids. Ulfreida talks of re-parenting yourself, which has meaning for people who work at being parents or had good parents, but is something which was meaningless for me prior to having my children. I’m learning how to treat myself as well as I treat my children, and how to have reasonable expectations for me the same as I have reasonable, age-appropriate expectations for them.
What this means to me, is that I can better see that there is a rational, adult side within me. There are also the voices of a scared three-year-old who is still scared of the impending doom and a shrill critic who is ever eager to point out failures, even from decades ago. It is letting the rational side overcome the child and the critic. These voices allowed me to survive childhood, but their use is limited now, so it’s time to be the adult.
It was useful for me to think of confidence, self-worth and compassion as skills rather than innate qualities, which helps me think more rationally about it, and gets away from the Critic.
It’s still a struggle, and I’m still working very hard at it, but I’m more optimistic about the future.
Yes, and this is why I believe that the fix is on the inside, and not through outside accomplishments. It’s a fundamental core belief that you belong, and have a birthright to happiness.
Success in life doesn’t buy this. How many rock/pop/movie stars have we seen crash and burn? And how many “failures” have you known that were perfectly happy, normal, friendly people?
Well said.
Believe it or not you are in good company and your life can soar in time. There are studies which reveal Americans are generally over-confident ie. overestimate their knowledge and abilities. Europeans do too but much less. Interestingly Asian cultures are the opposite - and lack of self esteem is a driver in those societies to learn more, be better.
So you are among the millions of decent people the brash ones elbow aside. Only in time the brash find out their self-belief is an illusion and fall into resentment and mediocrity.
What self-doubt does give you is humility and that’s a fine thing - it keeps you grounded.
There are many good suggestions on this thread. I think self-respect and/or self-compassion are better concepts and attainable.
I was raised with a steady stream of feedback that I was irresponsible, lazy, immature, incompetent and melodramatic. This is what I heard every day for the first 17 years of my life. It didn’t matter that I was a straight-A student, seriously involved in church activities, had a ton of friends and a number of talents. All that mattered is that I couldn’t put the garbage bag in right, or that I left spots on the dishes when I dried them. And whenever my imperfection reared its ugly head, hellfire would rain down on me. Whenever my mother and I fought, I was initially confident in my rightness and her wrongness - but I usually spent the last hour groveling on my knees for her forgiveness, while she made fun of me and then proceeded to go into the next room and spend hours on the phone saying horrible things about me. And I would pray and pray and pray for God to fix me.
If you are on the receiving end of a failure to parent, or you are bullied all day long or otherwise told repeatedly that you are worthless, it takes a while to learn how to combat those messages. I am still hyper-vigilant about being lazy or immature. I have a hard time believing those are not fundamental flaws that I must constantly overcome. It doesn’t matter that I worked full time to support myself as a senior in high school, or that I have a Masters degree… those are just anomalies. Since I have always had depression, it has interfered with my life countless times, and every time it does I can’t help but feel like I failed.
I’m not saying I think like this all the time, or fully buy into it. These days I’m actually a lot better at giving myself credit where it’s due. But there is always a part of me that feels insecure in my ability to be a worthwhile person.