To raise your self-esteem in a group together with others who also want to raise their self-esteems is both fun and effective. In a group you can support each other and lift each other up. Raising your self-esteem is supposed to be fun and easy so working together with others is the perfect way to raise your self-esteem.

Here are six exercises that you can do in a group to raise your self-esteem:

1: One of my favourite group exercises is this one: Sit in a circle, each person with a piece of paper in front of you. Write your own name on the top of your paper. Then, send your paper to the person to your right. Everyone should do this at the same time so that everyone now has the paper belonging to the person on their left. On this paper, write a about the things that you like about this person. It can be a short paragraph or just some words. When you're done, fold the paper so that the next person will be able to read the name on the top of the paper but not the text that you have written. Pass the paper on to the person on your right, and receive the next person's paper from the person on your left. Write about the things that you like about this person and then fold the paper so that nobody can see what you have written again. Continue to pass the papers around and write on them until eventually you get your own paper back. Now, unfold your own paper and read what everyone else in the group likes about you!

2: Make a competition out of writing down as many positive qualities that you have as possible within a pre-decided time frame, let's say one minute for example. If there are just a few of you, you can all compete against each other. The person with the most positive qualities written down is the winner. If you are enough people to make teams you can have two or more teams competing against each other. Having teams can be great fun because then you can help each other to come up with positive qualities that you possess in the team as a whole. If one of you is very intelligent – write it down on your team list! Not everyone in the team has to possess that quality for you to be allowed to write it down. When you work in teams you will help the others in your team to think of the positive qualities that you possess, and you will help the others think of their qualities. The game can thus turn into a big compliment-giving event!

3: A simplified version of this competition is to simply practice giving each other compliments. Sit in a circle and decide whom you will start with. Start to tell this person lots of compliments. Go round the circle so that everyone gets to tell the person who is in focus a compliment. You can go round and round many times so that each person gets to say several different compliments. Then move on to the next person and start the same process of giving compliments to this new person.

This exercise will not only make you feel good because you get to hear so many positive things about yourself, but it is also good for practising how to receive compliments. The person who is in focus for receiving compliments should reply by saying "Thank you" or "Thank you, you make me very happy by saying that". This will help you to practise to accept compliments rather than disown them.

4: Instead of saying good things about each other you can also practise saying positive things about yourselves. Again, sit in a circle and take turns to talk. Tell the others of things that you are proud of, things that you do well, and personality aspects that make you a wonderful person.

This exercise will help you to feel comfortable about thinking and feeling positively about yourself. Many people find it very difficult to speak positively about themselves because they are afraid that others may think that they are bragging.

5: It is difficult to feel like a valuable person if you feel that others don't care about you, don't respect you, or are not interested in you. The best way to help each other feel cared about is to listen. In each meeting of the self-esteem courses that I lead I usually begin by asking each participant to tell the others of something that they want to congratulate themselves for that they have done or been since the previous meeting. I do this, both in order to make them practise thinking of and saying positive things about themselves, but also to give them a chance to be heard by the others. The power of listening can be especially strong when somebody dares to share something that they have not dared to share with others before. When others listen in a supportive and loving way, the person who opened his or her heart will feel cared about and valued.

6: When you work on raising your self-esteem on your own it is easy to slide off track. You may have decided to do certain self-esteem exercises every day, but your motivation sinks and other things come up. It is so easy to slip out of the habit of doing self-esteem exercises. If you work on your self-esteem in a team you can motivate each other to keep going with the self-esteem exercises that you have agreed on. You can meet up and do exercises together just like you might go to the gym together. You can also discuss the self-esteem exercises after doing them. Simply knowing that somebody else expects you to do certain self-esteem exercises gives you more motivation to do them.

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/.