Self-esteem is built up throughout life. To learn to love ourselves we need to feel loved by others and shown that it is OK (and good) to express love and respect towards ourselves. We need self-esteem at all ages, but our specific self-esteem needs change between different ages.

Infants: Infants will not understand if you tell them that you love them and that they are great. However, they do feel the difference between being loved and not loved. To create a good start towards high self-esteem, infants need to receive love and get all their basic needs met.

Children: Children are often praised and scolded for what they do rather than what they are. This makes it easy for them to believe that if they do something bad it means that they are bad people. Of course that's not true because in that case we would all be bad people because we all make mistakes. Adults who were always praised for what they did as children are often outwardly very successful (they may for example be highly paid lawyers or doctors) but inwardly they feel rubbish because they lack self-esteem. To help children to get a healthy self-esteem at the same time as encouraging them to be successful, you need to praise them for both what they do AND who they are. Children need to learn that they are loved regardless of what they do.
Childhood is also the age at which it is easiest to adopt good self-esteem habits that will help you to keep your self-esteem high for the rest of your life. Show your children that it is ok (and even good) to speak positively about themselves by being a good role model and not telling them off whenever they do say something good about themselves. Also show them that it is ok to show emotions, both positive and negative, so that they will learn to accept all parts of themselves. You can also introduce self-esteem exercises such as playing self-esteem games or asking them self-esteem coaching questions.

Teenagers: Teenagers are in a tricky situation because they are sometimes treated as children and sometimes expected to behave as adults. The best way to support them and their self-esteem is to always respect them as adults but support them as children in situations when they need your support. The most important lesson that teenagers need to learn is to respect themselves, and they can only learn this if you show them respect in the first place.

Young adults: When a person arrives into early adulthood his or her self-esteem has become more robust (whether it is low or high) and it will take more than just respect from others to raise their self-esteem. At this stage, it is important to create good self-esteem habits such as determining what ones boundaries are and not letting others go over these, determining what one wants and who one wants to be and setting up a "strategy of how to work towards these goals, and creating a lifestyle that supports their self-esteem rather than pulls it down. This includes only exposing oneself to positive music, films, TV programs and magazines, socialising with supportive people who have a high self-esteem themselves and saying no to everything that they do not want to do.

Middle-aged: Many people have unfortunately by the time they come to their middle-ages collected a lots of scars from the past. They might have been hurt and let down by others or they may have sacrificed themselves for others over and over again so that they have totally forgotten how it is to spend time on what they want to do. These people need to remind themselves of who they want to be and what kind of lives they want to live. Many people need to break free and start caring about themselves rather than caring about everyone else.

Old: Of course you can always raise your self-esteem but it gets more and more difficult the older you get unless you stay open-minded, curious, motivated to make the most of your life, and committed to constantly develop yourself. Getting new influences and motivation from books, people, societies, media or wherever you can find it is important to not stagnate.

Liv Miyagawa - The Self-Esteem Coach

Liv Miyagawa, The Self-Esteem Coach, helps people all over the world to raise their self-esteem and to reach their personal goals. She opens people's eyes to their own strengths and helps them to figure out what it really is that they want to get out of life. Liv helps people to find out exactly what steps they need to take to reach their goals, and she supports them and motivates them on their journey towards a more fulfilling future.
http://www.livmiyagawa.com.