The Truth About Building Self-Esteem as an Adult (How to Build Self Esteem as an Adult)

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Nobody talks about how hard it is to build self-esteem as an adult when nobody built it in you as a child.

[00:00:08]You're not just working on confidence.

[00:00:10]You're trying to create an inner voice you were never given. You're learning how to validate yourself when no one ever did. Comfort yourself without feeling stupid for it. Trust yourself without needing outside approval. And believe good things about yourself without proof from anyone else.

[00:00:28]You're basically reparing yourself. And it's uncomfortable because it can feel fake at first, like you're lying to yourself, like you're trying to convince yourself of something you don't fully believe yet. But self-esteem isn't something you wait to feel. It's something you practice until it becomes familiar. You build it by keeping promises to yourself, by not abandoning yourself when things get too hard, by speaking to yourself with a level of patience you never received, by choosing yourself even if no one else is. You're basically becoming the parent to yourself that you needed growing up. And high self-esteem plays a decisive role in the partners we choose and the love we believe we deserve. High self-esteem is what gives you the audacity to say, "I am too good for this." When self-esteem is low, it alters attraction. This is because self- loveve and self-esteem are not the same. Self- loveve is how you feel about yourself.

[00:01:27]Self-worth is the recognition that you have value. Self-esteem, however, determines what you believe you are entitled to experience. It shapes what feels attainable. It decides whether you will claim a standard or negotiate it.

[00:01:43]Many of us women are taught to cultivate self-love. We learn to affirm ourselves.

[00:01:47]We learn to name our strengths. We learn to say we are worthy. And yet in our intimate relationships, we still accept less than what aligns with that worth. A woman can love herself and still not believe she deserves emotional stability. She can know she is valuable and still accept inconsistency. She can speak highly of herself and still attach to men who are unprepared, emotionally unavailable or resistant to growth. Low self-esteem does not always look like insecurity. Sometimes it appears as overextension as patience that stretches beyond self-respect. It's empathy that overrides discernment. Self-esteem develops in the presence of attuned caregiving. It grows when a child is seen, heard, and valued without having to perform for affection. When that foundation is unstable, adulthood becomes an ongoing attempt to secure externally what was not solidified internally.

[00:02:45]High self-esteem changes relational patterns. It allows a woman to say without arrogance, "This is beneath what I am prepared for." It permits her to walk away from potential. It teaches her that she does not need to be needed in order to be valued. So, if you wanted to know where I'm reading from, those are two separate posts that are on my Instagram page and on my threads account, which is under Kindle D. I wrote that based on self-esteem and posted it. And then someone asked, "But how do you build self-esteem as an adult?" So, it got me thinking.

[00:03:21]It is harder to build self-esteem as an adult because you weren't you it wasn't cultivated in your childhood by your caregivers. So, we're going to talk about that more on today's healing Sundays episode. So, I want to talk about something that I feel is not talked about enough, and that is self-esteem. And I'm not talking about just the surface level version, you know, being confident in how you look or just quote unquote loving yourself more.

[00:03:50]I'm talking about the kind of self-esteem that actually determines who you date, what you tolerate, and how long you stay in situations that don't feel right. Because whether you realize it or not, your self-esteem is determining the type of love that you feel that you deserve. It's deciding the kind of love that you think you're allowed to have. And if nobody built self-esteem in you early on, if nobody taught you that you were enough, then dating, relationships, attachment, just how you move in your everyday life, all of it can get very confusing. So, let's really get into this. So, nobody taught you that you were enough. And now you're an adult trying to believe it. So, what does that look like? It looks like questioning yourself more than you trust yourself. It looks like looking for reassurance in places that were never meant to sustain you. It looks like overextending, overexplaining, overgiving, hoping that something or someone will finally reflect your worth back to you. You're not just working on confidence. You're trying to create an inner voice that you were never given.

[00:04:59]You're learning how to validate yourself when no one ever did. comforting yourself without feeling stupid for doing it. Trusting yourself without needing outside approval. Believing good things about yourself without any proof from anyone else. None of this is easy to do. It's reparing and it can be uncomfortable and that's because it feels fake at first, like you're lying to yourself, like you're trying to convince yourself of something that you don't fully believe yet. But the thing about self-esteem is not something that you wait to feel.

[00:05:38]It's something that you have to practice until it becomes familiar. So let's define clearly what self-esteem is.

[00:05:46]Self-esteem is the relationship that you have with yourself. It's not just confidence. It's not just thinking you're attractive or capable. It's the baseline belief that you are worthy and deserving.

[00:05:59]and valuable without having to prove it first. And you can always tell what someone's self-esteem looks like by how they treat themselves when something goes wrong, how you talk to yourself when you mess up, how you treat yourself when no one is watching, what you tolerate, whether you abandon yourself to keep other people. Some people think that self-esteem is allowed, being bold or outspoken. But real self-esteem, it can be quiet. And actually, it is quiet when you think about it. It's the ability to sit with yourself without tearing yourself apart. It's trusting your own judgment without needing a second opinion every single time. It's not needing constant validation to feel secure in who you are. And more than anything, self-esteem is consistency.

[00:06:48]It's choosing yourself over and over again in small ordinary moments. And it's not because you always feel amazing about yourself, but because you decided you're not someone you're willing to keep abandoning. And so this is how it can show up in dating. Because this is where it can really become visible if you didn't really notice it before about yourself. Self-esteem decides the type of love that you think you are allowed to have. It shapes what feels normal to you. Not what you say you want, but what you actually accept. So if your self-esteem is low or unstable, dating can start to look like needing constant reassurance to feel secure. Some reassurance is fine and it is necessary, but I mean constant reassurance.

[00:07:33]Overlooking red flags because attention feels like validation.

[00:07:39]Confusing inconsistency with excitement, staying longer than you should because being chosen feels better than being alone. And none of this is because you're dumb. or because you don't know better. It's because your internal standard hasn't caught up fully with what you deserve yet. Because you can know something logically and still not move like it emotionally.

[00:08:03]That's the gap that self-esteem fills.

[00:08:06]When your self-esteem starts to build, your patterns shift. You're not just looking for chemistry. You're looking for consistency. You don't ignore confusion. You take it as information.

[00:08:19]You stop trying to win people over and start paying attention to how they show up. And the biggest shift of them all, you stop choosing people based on potential and start choosing based on alignment. You stop trying to convince someone of your value and start asking yourself, do they align with the life that I'm trying to build for myself?

[00:08:40]Because self-esteem makes one thing very clear. You are not trying to be liked.

[00:08:45]You're trying to be met. And that can change everything from who you entertain to who you keep to who even has access to you in the first place. And so here's how you actually are going to build your self-esteem as an adult. Self-esteem is really built in like small unglamorous type of ways, if you will. It's by keeping promises to yourself. By not abandoning yourself when things get too hard. By speaking to yourself with a level of patience that you've never received. By extending grace to yourself. Understanding and compassion to yourself. By choosing yourself even when no one else is watching. And yes, all of this is going to feel unnatural at first. It's going to feel forced or rehearsed, even a little delusional. But that's what happens when you practice the truth that no one has ever practiced with you. And as someone that had to build her self-esteem herself as an adult, for me, all of the things that I listed worked. And like I said, I know it all sounds so cliche, like keeping promises to yourself, speaking gently to yourself, being nice to yourself, having compassion. I know it feels so cliche and it feels like it's not going to work. like what is this? This is so fake. But think of it as like you are being the parent to yourself that you needed. Think about how you would talk to your inner child, your inner little girl if she came up to you telling you about an issue or telling you about something that happened or asking for advice. Think of it like that. Think of how you would speak to her. You wouldn't speak to her in a mean tone. You wouldn't yell at her. You wouldn't go off on her. You wouldn't dismiss her.

[00:10:38]Think of it like that. That's how I It's not how I thought of it to help myself build my self-esteem. But later on, looking back, I realized that's what I was doing. It's like I had to become the person to myself that I so needed growing up. And I feel like in me doing this work on this platform, you know, writing the books, um, doing the videos, all the things that I was a little nervous to do, I pushed past it and did it anyway. And that really built my self-esteem as well because it's like I didn't think that I would ever be doing videos, honestly.

[00:11:22]Someone asked me a long time ago, you should get on YouTube. And I'm like, oh no. But then something just told me, "Let me try. Let me push past it." And I did it. And it's like once you see that you can do something, it builds your self-esteem.

[00:11:36]So my homework for you, I'm going to start doing that. I think on these healing Sundays, my homework for you is to find something that you've kind of always wanted to do, but you're a little afraid to do. And it could be small. It could be going on a solo date, going to a bar by yourself. It can be taking a Pilates class. Anything that you've wanted to do but felt a little nervous to do, I need you to try it. Even if it's starting your own platform, even if it's writing your own book or starting your own Instagram page, you know, doing what I do, whatever it is, start it. And once you start it, I want you to continue with it. And then you'll see, oh, it's not so scary. I can do it. It's kind of like how a parent would push you, but we never had that really. We never had anyone to encourage us or to make us feel good or build our self-esteem. It's been so many times as a kid to where my parents like really ruined my self-esteem.

[00:12:37]And I don't think at the time they realized that that's what they were doing because it wasn't outright abusive. I didn't have and my upbringing wasn't outright that bad, but it wasn't healthy either.

[00:12:50]I remember I came home all excited. Had this paperwork in my hand to be a cheerleader at school. I was in like elementary. I was so excited. I came home, ran in the door. I was like, "Mama, mama, look, they doing cheerleader tryyous. I want to be a cheerleader." And I never forget, even as like a child, the way that she looked me up and down.

[00:13:13]I guess she can be one.

[00:13:16]She was assessing like if I was fit enough to be one because I was a a chubier kid. And that look I was always so intuitive as a child. I feel like because I know I was around maybe seven or eight, but I knew what that look meant. The way she looked me up and down before saying, "I guess she can be a cheerleader." She didn't say, "Yeah, do it. That's exciting. Come, I can help you." None of that. None of that. And I didn't even try out.

[00:13:48]Oh [ __ ] I wasn't trying to cry.

[00:13:51]I was not trying to cry. But it's like like it hits you. You know that it's so many times that when you were a kid that you were like just self-esteem just pushed down and ruined. Like who would I be? Like I probably wouldn't be taking so long to become who I am if I didn't have my self-esteem, you know, ruined like that, you know?

[00:14:25]And I think I remember with that little chili to try out sheet, I think I remember just balling it up or throwing it away, you know, because that's all it took is for her to do that. And she didn't ask me about it. She wasn't concerned. and she, you know, never tried out, never even thought about doing it again. And it's like little moments like that just ruins your self-esteem.

[00:14:51]And it makes it worse when you're in high school, especially when you have children, other kids at school, you know, talking bad about you. And then you come home and you have to deal with it from your own caregivers and your parents. you don't have no one to talk to about what you're experiencing. So, you're left to try to deal with it alone. And as a child, the way you deal with that alone is by basically feeling bad about yourself. You know, you don't you have not fully developed the emotional capacity that you need to understand that that's not how you should be talking to yourself and that's wrong how people are talking to you. That's wrong what your parents are doing. You don't know these things yet. So that's why I always say when you get older, you have to revisit certain moments in your life and declare that that was wrong. My parents were wrong for that. I shouldn't have been talked to that way. That wasn't the right way to go about that as a child coming home with that paper excited about being a cheerleader.

[00:15:46]Rather, I was too big or not. That wasn't for my mom to determine that I couldn't be a cheerleader. That wasn't for her to say. What she should have done is my mom and say, "That would be so good. I'm excited for you. go ahead and try out. You know what you what kind of moves you going to do? Well, you know, what kind of cheerleader you going? What you know, she she should have been, you know, excited about it with me. It wasn't her place to tell me that I couldn't do it if if the cheerleader try out people, whoever saw me and thought that I was too chubby to do it or whatever. Not saying that they would have thought that, but it was their place to tell me that, not my mom's place. You see what I'm saying?

[00:16:28]Because I know some of you because when I do coaching with you, you'll kind of like try to understand your mom's point of view point of view. Like I could see someone telling me this story that I coach and then being like, "Well, I was chubby, so I understood why she did that." That wasn't your mom's place to tell you that. Your mom's or your dad's place is not for them to break you down because they're preparing you for the world. The world is already hard. They need to build you up so that you can face the world. That's how you face the world. A lot of parents got it in their heads probably from their own upbringing that the way that you face the world is by me being hard on you like the world is going to be. But that just makes you weak.

[00:17:10]And enough parents don't realize that that's what they're doing. They are weakening their kids. They're not making them stronger. They're making them unable to really sit with their emotions. They're making it they're making their children unable to even have good social skills and have good interpersonal relationships and making it difficult for them to build friendships and romantic partnerships, you know, and so no, your parents should have really built up your self-esteem. It wasn't their place to be that honest with you or to keep it real with you like my mom used to say.

[00:17:50]And it's so many other instances that I can think about to where I was happy and excited about something and didn't recognize that something was wrong with me until she pointed it out. I never would have thought that I was too chubby or too fat or ugly or any of those things. I never would have thought those things about myself. I never did on my own until she made me feel that way, you know.

[00:18:14]And so, yeah, as I got older, I realized what helped me is being the person that I needed growing up. It's like, I can't talk to myself in those ways. I can't beat myself down. I can't be that negative to myself. I just can't anymore because it wasn't feeling good. And so I just started being very soft to myself, very understanding and compassionate with myself, grace to myself, pushing myself that I can do it, you could do this. I never had anyone to really tell me that.

[00:18:51]I mean, my mom had her moments and I think it's because they were sporadic moments because it was whatever she felt truly that she could believe in. You know, it's like I feel like my mom didn't know how to I guess she would say like encourage me because it was too close to lying to me, I guess you would say. So, it was only things that she felt that deep in her soul that I could do, you know? It was never just anything. It was random things that she only felt right. Expressing things like, "Oh, you can do it." And so, building your self-esteem, it takes practice.

[00:19:31]It takes you practicing so much that it's like not only are you becoming the parent that you needed to yourself, but it's like you are reconditioning and rewiring your brain and your nervous system.

[00:19:47]And so it may feel like I'm lying. It may feel like you're lying to yourself. It may feel like all of these things are untrue because it's something that you're putting in yourself first.

[00:20:00]It was never embedded in you before. So there's no evidence of it. So you have to be the evidence. So understand that it's going to feel so forced, so fake, like I'm lying to myself. But keep putting it in yourself until it becomes like repetition, until it becomes just something that you do.

[00:20:25]I'm always going to encourage myself.

[00:20:27]I'm always going to say, "I can do it. I got this." And at the same time, I'm always going to be compassionate with myself when I can't do it or when I didn't do well. I'm going to give myself grace when like, "That's okay. You know, you tried. That's good. We're going to try again." Just like a parent would say to you, a good parent would say to you.

[00:20:47]And so it's like you just have to be truthful with yourself, but really truthful, you know, like for example, if you know that you've put on weight, you know, and you're not liking how you look in the mirror, that your clothes are not fitting and all of that.

[00:21:08]You think the truth would be you're just so fed and out of shape, you look a hot mess. Look at you. You can't even fit your clothes right. That's not being honest.

[00:21:20]That's you like recommending yourself.

[00:21:23]That's you talking to yourself like a parent would or maybe your parents did.

[00:21:30]That's not your voice. That's not how you should be talking to yourself.

[00:21:33]Instead, you can still be honest, but also have grace. You can say, "I've been a little depressed lately and I've put on some weight and I think that I would feel better about myself if maybe I lost some weight. Let me let me work on losing this weight so I can feel better about myself and look better in my clothes or this is going to be hard for me to lose this weight. I know that I can be lazy sometimes, but I'm going to push. I'm going to try because I want to feel better about myself." something along the lines of that. It's still conveying the same thing that yes, I've put on weight and yes, I don't like how I look, but you don't have to talk so bad about yourself. And this is with anything, y'all.

[00:22:19]Anytime you find yourself getting to the point of where you are talking so negatively and bad about yourself, I want you to stop and examine it and then say it in a more graceful way.

[00:22:32]There's someone I know that I'm close with that um she made a comment years ago like, "Man, I ain't going to never have a house. You know, she's married and she really wants a house and always has." And I stopped there. I'm like, "You can't say that."

[00:22:50]And like the more honest thing that you could say there is it's a lot of steps to get a house, but I'm confident I can find someone to help me to go through this. Like I can do it. Something like that. Because yes, it's like saying that there's truth to it that it can be a little challenging, you know, but you can still do it. You see what I'm saying? You see how it just you flip it and you think more positive like I'm going to have a house. I may not have one next month, but I'm going to do it.

[00:23:24]I'm going to work towards it and get the help that I need to get there and get me a house and ask who I need to ask. Go to the real estate agents I need to go to ask go to the credit builders I need to go to to show me how to build up my credit to get a house. Whatever it is, it's like you are instead telling the truth in that way instead of saying I'm never going to have it. just be like, "I can have it. I just gota I just gota I need I need a little help to get there, but I'm gonna have it." Something like that.

[00:23:52]And she has a house now, by the way.

[00:23:55]She's closed on it next month. And I was so overjoyed because I'm like, I knew it.

[00:24:02]And she said this years ago, but um she was in the process of trying to get one recently, but she was going to rent one, but it was costing too much. And I'm like thinking to myself, she going to end up figuring out a way to buy a house. Her husband, her and her husband, they're going to buy a house. I know they can do it. And she did it. I had it. I be knowing. So that's what I'm saying. It's like you can't talk so bad about yourself. When you talk negative about yourself, that reflects that you have low self-esteem. So you can be honest with yourself. when you're speaking positively to yourself, but work it how I say it. You know, instead of I'm not going to have a house, say I say it's a little challenging to have a house, but I can I could do it. It's nothing I can't do. I can figure it out and we can have it. Something like that.

[00:24:49]Because yes, you are still understanding that there are barriers there, but you're not saying you're not counting yourself out before you even give yourself a chance is what I'm saying. So that's how you talk to yourself. That's how you build your self-esteem. That's how you build it up and work it up. You know, you can do it. Just be who you need it to yourself. Whenever you find yourself talking badly to yourself, think about how you would talk to your inner child, the little girl in you. How would you talk to her? Would you talk to her that way? Would you talk to any little girl that comes up to you, your own little girl? Would you talk to her that way? No, you wouldn't talk to her that way. That's how you build your self-esteem. That's what worked for me.

[00:25:33]And I have books out. My latest book, which is this is for you. So much to unlearn plus relearn. It talks a little bit about that and just in general things all my nuance reflections and insights and things that you have may have heard on social media or heard out there but it's like I give my own thoughts on it like you know I look at it this way and get deeper with it cuz you know I get deep with stuff. I also have one-on-one mindset intuitive coaching. I have where you can do just a one-time call either an hour or 30 minutes or I have monthly subscription if you feel you're going to need ongoing help. That's all linked below. And so you just have to stop searching for proof that you're enough. You have to move like someone who already knows that she is enough. And you are going to outgrow people who benefited from you having low self-esteem.

[00:26:24]Because once you start seeing your value, you stop negotiating it. And that's when your life actually begins to change. And not all at once, but enough for you to never go back to who you were when you didn't believe at all. So that's all I got for this Healing Sundays episode. Girl friends, I hope this helps. You know, I really, really, really do. I love what I do and I've really been that girl with all the things that I talk about. I never want to talk about something that I have never experienced myself because I feel it's inauthentic of me and that's not what my platform is about. So, I'm telling you, you're not alone. I've really been through the things you've been through and and had the struggles you have. I get it. And it's like you can come out on the other side. You really, really can. and you can rise out of anything. Okay, so that's all I got for this healing Sundays. Until next time, girlfriend friends. Peace out.