Learning to Love Yourself-How to Develop a Strong Sense of Self

Summary: Your sense of self is who you are and how you see yourself. Developing a strong sense of self (meaning you have a clear self-concept, a strong sense of self-worth, and you don’t rely on others to make you feel good about yourself) is the best thing you can do if you want to have self-worth that lasts and enjoy real connection in your relationships. Here’s how to develop a strong sense of self & what to look for in yourself to improve on this. 

What is a Sense of Self?

If someone asked you to tell them a little bit about yourself, what would you say?

Maybe you’d think about hobbies or talents, maybe you’d describe yourself in terms of your family or other relationships, maybe you’d tell them some of your qualities and characteristics.

Think about this for a minute.

What are the things that you know about yourself or would say about yourself if you were telling someone who you are? (And you were being completely honest and not holding back?)

This is your sense of self: your sense of identity, how you see yourself, or what you know about yourself.

Your sense of self hugely impacts how you interact with others and the strength of the relationships you form, not to mention how comfortable and confident you feel with yourself.

Strengthening your sense of self will impact just about every aspect of your life for the better.

What is a Strong Sense of Self?

Having a strong sense of self means that you can easily answer someone’s questions about yourself because you have a clear sense of identity, feel comfortable with who you are, and you don’t need someone else’s approval in order to maintain those first two things.

Let’s break this down more.

There are three key aspects to having a strong sense of self:

1. Clear Self-Concept: This means having a clear idea of who you are. You confidently know what makes you you. (What do I like to do when I’ve got downtime? Where do I want to go to dinner? What are my unique talents?)

2. Positive Sense of Self-Worth: This means feeling good about yourself. Valuing who you are. Not that you’re better than others but also not that you’re worse. Just that you’re comfortable with yourself. (OK, but this might be hard to come by sometimes. Never fear, we’re going to talk about how to get to this point.)

3. Secure Sense of Identity: This is the real clincher. This means being able to maintain a sense of who you are and confidence in yourself (those first two things I just mentioned) without needing others’ approval or even when other people invalidate you.

The long and short of it is this: 

To have a strong sense of self, you’ve got to free yourself from relying on other people to call the shots on how you feel about yourself.

Needing approval from others can really make those first two aspects of a strong sense of self, clear self-concept and positive sense of self-worth, difficult to hang on to.

If you want others’ approval, you might just go along with whatever they want to do and lose your sense of clarity about what you like.

Or you might feel so tied to approval from others that your self-worth feels very fragile and prone to fluctuations based on praise or disapproval.

And as long as you let others dictate your feelings about yourself, you’ll never develop the kind of lasting confidence and connection you crave. 

But that’s not easy.

If you fall prey to wanting other people to like you or make you feel good about yourself, you’re like most of us. We all do this to some degree, so don’t beat yourself up about that.

The whole point of this article though is to help you strengthen your sense of self, so let’s keep talking.

The Opposite: A Reflected or Weak Sense of Self

One of the easiest ways to understand having a strong sense of self is to consider what the opposite looks like.

Somebody with a weak or reflected sense of self looks to others for validation of their choices and of who they are. This person does things because it’s what others want.

I like to think of it like you’re watching yourself live your life (like you’re looking in a mirror, hence the name “reflected” sense of self).

You’re watching to see if you live up to others’ expectations for you. You want to know that you measure up.

Or you want to avoid their disapproval.

Essentially, someone with a reflected or weak sense of self is saying, “I am who I am through your eyes.”  (So make me feel good about myself.)

People with a reflected sense of self rely on others to determine their self-worth and their self-image.

But often we can’t see these behaviors in ourselves very clearly.

Let’s take a look at how this might be showing up in your life.

Signs of a Weak Sense of Self

Here are some common ways that a weak sense of self might show up. See if any of these sound familiar to you:

• I often feel like I’m walking on eggshells around someone to avoid conflict
• When I do have conflict, I tend to get super emotional and say things I later regret. I also tend to dwell on it and can’t move past it. (Or the opposite of this would also indicate a weak sense of self: disengaging from the conflict entirely, like walking away or giving the silent treatment.)
• I need reassurance after a fight that the other person still cares about me
• I say yes to things that I don’t really want to do
• I hate when someone wants me to pick where we go to dinner or to choose something. I have a hard time making decisions
• I’ve given so much of myself in doing things for other people that I don’t really feel a sense of purpose in my own life right now
• I don’t have very many hobbies
• I feel awful when someone gives me honest feedback about something I am doing
• I don’t really like who I am
• I need other people to say nice things or give me compliments in order to feel good about myself
• I feel like some of my relationships are codependent
• I shy away from doing things that are scary or hard
• I’ve got a lot of anxiety
• I worry about what other people think about me
• I do a lot of things because I think I “should”
• I don’t feel like I can be my true self around most people
• Social media often makes me feel worse about myself

Ok my friend, if you see yourself in some of those things, just know that you are not alone. Most people are doing these types of things and just aren’t recognizing it. 

So, gold star for you because you’ve just taken the first step in strengthening your own sense of self—and that’s seeing where your weak spots are!

Self-Silencing at the Root

Before we talk about developing a strong sense of self, let me tell you this.

If you’ve got a weaker sense of self than you wish you did, you’ve probably got some self-silencing happening.

Want to find out what that might look like for you? Try this free quiz:

How to Develop a Strong Sense of Self

Having a strong sense of self means:

• Not allowing others to define you
• Being comfortable and confident in who you are
• Being willing to challenge yourself and grow because you aren’t threatened by others’ disapproval
• Being willing to let others truly see you at an intimate level

But how do you get that? 

First of all, let me just mention that I’ve got a whole program dedicated to helping you do just that! If you’re ready for that, check this out.

So how do you strengthen your sense of self?

Step 1: Catch Yourself in Weak Moments

The very best thing that you can do to kick off this process of strengthening your sense of self is to catch yourself in the act of using a reflected sense of self. 

Watch yourself today and notice times that you’re making choices not because they are what you want, but because you don’t want the invalidation of being disagreed with

Spot times when you are saying yes to things that you don’t actually want to do because you think it’s what you should do 

Find a few examples of ways that you are letting comparison with others make you feel good or bad about yourself. 

When you start to spot these things in yourself, don’t beat yourself up.

Instead, pay attention to them and see if you can flip the script, just this once, to be more in line with your own internal feelings. To be more in line with who you are instead of who others want you to be. 

Step 2: Reclaim Yourself

One of the biggest things that can happen when you’ve got a weakened sense of self is that you can start to lose some of your sense of personal identity. You might have lost track of your own hobbies and talents. You might be self-silencing. 

So, one of the most meaningful tasks you can do is to start to reclaim yourself. Actively choose something that makes you happy. Do something that matters to you. Say something that is important to you. Start to take more ownership of who you are.

Taking active initiative in your life, doing things for yourself because they are what you want, might feel strange to you at this point. That’s OK. It’s great to have a unique identity that you are comfortable with. Baby step in that direction.

Step 3: Be OK with Discomfort.

Part of this process is going to be taking a close look at yourself and challenging the things that need to change.

It’s going to be seeing places where you are weak or letting others see your weaknesses (because you’re not worrying about how they might judge you). This can be a really difficult task.

Be OK with that process and know that your own growth is worth it.

It’s fine to feel anxious about it or challenged by it. I love what Dr. David Schnarch taught—sometimes we need to tolerate discomfort in order to grow.

Do you think it was easy when you learned to walk?

Nope. I bet you fell down a lot.

But you kept trying. Do the same now to reach your goals now. Work for the things you want and be ok with it when it feels hard. Keep going. 

Acknowledge that it might be challenging to change your mindset and your way of living…then do it anyway. Treat yourself with self-compassion, which means being gentle with yourself but also caring enough about yourself that you push yourself to do things that matter.

A Strong Sense of Self Is Not…

Sometimes people learn about strengthening their sense of self and mistakenly believe it means kicking other people’s input to the curb entirely. They think they’ve got to start bulldozing their way through life without regard for the people in their path.

That is not what having a strong sense of self is about.

What having a strong sense of self does mean is deciding for yourself who you want to be…and sometimes that means taking input from trusted others about things that need improvement.

And not feeling threatened by that.

Someone with a strong sense of self is willing to self-confront a bit, to see areas of weakness and challenge them because they can tolerate that kind of invalidation.

That allows them to develop strong relationships with family members and friends because good relationships involve a lot of self-reflection and willingness to confront personal shortcomings. 

It also means they can be their authentic self, which means they see both positive aspects of who they are and negative ones and are willing to work on them. 

Strengthening your sense of self is such a crucial step to thriving in your relationships, having higher levels of connection with your people, and feeling lasting self-love in who you are. It can also help you combat mental health challenges like depression and anxiety. If you’ll work at this you’ll be amazed by the changes.

But it doesn’t come over night.

It takes baby steps to build your sense of self.

Ready to start working on that?

To help you make these changes, to help you take small, doable steps back to yourself, I’ve designed a 30-day challenge that I think you’re going to LOVE!

Want Help? Check Out These 2 Resources