The VIP Inside of You: 13 Secrets to Overcome Low Self-Esteem

By Richard Ruganirwa

Each of us has faced a variety of challenges as we grow from children to adults. Those experiences can shape our self-esteem positively or negatively. The VIP Inside of You: 13 Secrets to Overcome Low Self-Esteem is a guide to exploring what contributed to your low self-esteem, and gives you powerful tools to increase it. Richard Semariza Ruganirwa shares his own story, along with spiritual examples from history, to illustrate how you can address your low self-esteem. He defines the challenges that come from low self-esteem, but also how you can grow your confidence. Right from the beginning, The VIP Inside of You serves as inspiration, reminding you of why you are a VIP, and worthy of being loved and respected. With his pastoral background, Richard also taps into the importance of devoting time to your spirituality and self-care as ways to create a greater level of self-esteem. Not only does Richard dive into the systemic ways that your self-esteem can be attacked, he shares how you can overcome them. No matter what the cause of your self-esteem issues, Richard brings you frank and clear explanations and practical ways to address them. The VIP Inside of You: 13 Secrets to Overcome Low Self-Esteem is truly to path to rebuilding and strengthening your self-esteem, no matter the circumstances and challenges you might be facing! You are a VIP!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Ruganirwa
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781963039009

Book preview

Introduction

Today’s climate is full of challenges to your sense of self-worth. With COVID19 contributing to isolation of individuals and families, your mental health has likely taken quite a beating. Making decisions for yourself and your family is more challenging, simply because you may be struggling to trust your own judgment. Yet, even if you acknowledge the need for assistance, it can be difficult to find. Counselors and therapists are booked out for months, which means that your struggles might only be getting worse.

My goal in discussing self-esteem issues and potential solutions is not to minimize this issue, but to turn a spotlight on how we can help each other to improve our mental health and wellness by addressing our self-esteem in practical ways. That involves looking at the causes of low self-esteem and then providing tested ways that you can use to do the important work of recognizing your value.

Self-esteem issues can feed into other mental health concerns, so by working to address your self-esteem, you can actually give yourself a better foundation to deal with other mental health concerns. Why is that so important?

When you value yourself, then you will seek the assistance necessary to give yourself the best possible care, both mentally and physically. Plus, addressing self-esteem helps you to begin to heal from past pains and traumas, leading to different choices as you move into the future. Those new choices can build up your self-esteem, leading you to find joy in your life and relationships.

Struggling with self-esteem issues can lead you to think that it is acceptable to remain in toxic relationships, choose harmful behaviors, self-harm, addiction, and more. You might struggle with treating others well, or worse, brag on yourself constantly, trying to pretend that you are not scared or struggling with your own negative thoughts and beliefs.

Part of understanding why you are dealing with self-esteem issues begins with diving into your past and learning how it shaped the way you think about yourself. The truth is that your past, including how you were raised, the society norms that played a part in your community, and larger forces outside of your control all contributed to how you view yourself. It laid a foundation for how you make decisions and interact with others.

Looking at various areas of your life, you can probably identify what is going wrong but might be struggling to figure out the best way to fix it. There might even be part of you that wonders why you keep encountering the same types of relationships, or fail at making any progress toward your goals. You might even feel as if your own decisions are sabotaging you, but you are not sure why you keep making these choices.

Instead of continuing to beat yourself up or live with the frustration that your life is not what you had planned or dreamed, let’s start looking at what makes up your foundation, and how you can begin to make repairs by changing your thinking and habits to better serve you.

Let’s be clear – you are a VIP! By understanding what contributed to your low self-esteem, you can tap into the tools necessary to help you build up your self-esteem by grasping how your view of your own value plays a critical role in the decisions you make and the relationships you invest your time and energy in.

Once you identify the areas that are contributing to your low self-esteem, then you can use my 13 tools to address those issues and build up your self-esteem. Diving into your self-esteem and understanding what contributed to how you think and feel about yourself is a critical part of addressing your mental health. Never underestimate how valuing yourself can lead to dramatic changes in your life, as well as helping you to get clarity about what you truly want in your life.

Beginning this journey takes courage, but you deserve to take this chance for healing and to be inspired to shape your life instead of letting your past define your future.

Part 1

The Reasons Why People Suffer from Low Self-Esteem

You are not alone in struggling with issues of self-esteem. The truth is that low self-esteem does not discriminate. Instead, low self-esteem can strike for a number of reasons, even if a person seems to have it all. Some individuals can work hard to appear that they have everything together because they don’t want people to know how much confidence they lack or how much they are hurting internally.

Low self-esteem is a lack of confidence, which is often fueled by feelings of incompetence and inadequacy. When you have low self-esteem, you tend to gravitate to negative thinking, while setting extremely high standards for themselves. Then when you don’t meet those high standards, it fuels the negative thinking, creating a circular pattern that continues to drag down your self-esteem. Those struggling with low self-esteem can even find themselves dealing with high levels of anxiety, particularly during social situations. To address low self-esteem is challenging, and those who struggle with their self-esteem might feel that it is a hopeless situation.

When I work with individuals on their self-esteem issues, I recognize that it is typically not an easy fix. We have to get past the surface problems or challenges in their lives to understand how they got to this point, before they can pick a new path. To truly embrace their VIP status, I need them to see how valuable and worthy they truly are. But that means diving into their past and recognizing everything that has contributed to who they are and the struggles they face.

There are a variety of events or ideologies that can end up shaping how someone views themselves. Trauma can negatively impact our self-esteem, but even what we are told by those we love can play a role in shaping how we view ourselves.

Think about your parents. If they spent time defining your limits because of your gender or their cultural expectations, then when you don’t meet those expectations or stay within those limits, you can feel rejected or unloved. That makes you question yourself or make the decision that you must be unworthy and unlovable. I bet you can already see how that is going to negatively impact your view of yourself. You might start making decisions that put you in harm’s way because you believe you don’t deserve to be safe or treated with respect.

All the little conversations from our past can end up playing a huge role in who we are, how we react in various situations, and how we do or don’t practice self-care.

In the following pages, I am going to dive into some of the key areas that I have found impact how our self-esteem is shaped and that influence how we think, what we tell ourselves, and the beliefs that shape our decisions. As you read through them, please keep an open mind. Think about your own childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood. Can you see how some of these things impacted you? Have you experienced some of these things and are you still struggling with their impact, even years after the event?

We are exploring your experiences as the foundation for making dramatic changes that can positively impact your life. Before we start the process of building up your self-esteem, let’s begin to identify all the ways that your self-esteem is being torn down, both in the past and the present.

I encourage you to get a journal and take the time to write about your experiences. It can be enlightening, especially when you look back at your experiences through a different framework or perspective.

You might see things that you never saw before, and you might also identify some areas where you need to focus in order to heal. Doing so will help you to find value in who you are and what you are capable of accomplishing.

By journaling, you give yourself a place to reflect, which is a critical part of breaking the chains of the past and consciously making decisions that will change your present to bring you into a better future.

My own family dealt with many of these challenges, which resulted in my own struggles with self-esteem. We were from a family that was looked down upon because of our tribe and cultural background. Later, as we dealt with war and conflict, I eventually became a refugee. It was a struggle for me to find my value and self-worth when others simply saw me as an interloper in their country.

Refugees are often treated as less than by the citizens of the country that takes them in. Even when they are able to find a friendly new home, there is still the adjustment to a new culture, a new community, and a new way of doing things. The credentials that might have gotten them a good job in their home country might not assist them in finding employment in their new country.

That means, for a refugee, there are a lot of changes in a short period of time, with much of their possessions left behind. There are often assumptions that refugees are using the conflict in their home country as a reason to move to a new country. The truth is that people do not want to leave their homes unless they are forced to, or there is no other option available.

No matter where refugees come from, they share two fundamental characteristics: a desire to live and a desire to improve their lives, even if they are fleeing into a hostile and uncertain future. They are fleeing, leaving behind jobs, social networks, and even members of their families. If they are leaving a war zone or persecution, that could mean they had to leave with little more than the clothes on their back. Then there are the smugglers or couriers, as they do whatever is necessary to avoid detection.

Once they reach their new country, there are many barriers. I work with refugees, helping them to gain