What exactly is self esteem, anyway? Let's jump right into it. Self esteem is basically your attitude toward yourself. To be more a bit specific, it is the way you look at yourself, feel about yourself, think about yourself, and evaluate yourself. If you struggle at all with with keeping a positive attitude toward yourself, I definitely understand where you're coming from because I've been there myself. But there are two points of good news here: the first is that you are definitely NOT alone on this, the second is that there are numerous ways to improve to yourself esteem that really work when you put them into practice. Let's move on, shall we?

Give back to others

You don't need to spend countless hours volunteering or donate huge amounts to charity. The idea here is to focus outside of yourself and turn your attention to how you can affect the world around you in a positive way. You can do this by being extra helpful at work, doing favors for friends, being generous to strangers, or by just being a little extra friendly and nice. When turn your attention outside yourself, you'll learn to forget about your all your perceived flaws.

Avoid negative people

Negative people bring you down. They talk about what's wrong with others, with themselves, with their friends, with their significant others, or with the world in general. This will rub off on you and lead you to feel "ok" with being a complainer and a victim, which are two things you want to be the opposite of. Surround yourself with positive people, even if that means reading books and watching videos of positive influences.

Appreciate imperfection

The imperfection you need to appreciate is your own imperfection. No matter what flaw you have, others have it worse out there. And some people probably see your perceived flaws as quirky, cute, and "normal". Stop comparing yourself to others.

Live an "active" lifestyle

This is probably the most important aspect here, and it doesn't just mean exercise regularly or run or bike or swim or everything else you would associate with living an active lifestyle. This means being proactive, speaking up more, expressing your opinions more, setting goals, working toward your goals, taking responsibility for your life, and working to improve your weaknesses and perfect your strengths. When you live life in this way, you are constantly making progress which builds upon itself in the form of self-esteem.

The key here is to implement all these habits into your daily life. Sometimes it's hard to stay focused on making positive improvements, but whenever you find yourself backsliding you can simply remind yourself what your goal is regarding high self esteem, and what steps you are going to take to get there. By giving back to others, avoiding negative people, appreciating imperfection, and living an active lifestyle, you are already making big steps toward your goal of having high self esteem.