How you think about yourself and what you think of yourself determine your self-confidence. People who grow up with a lot of criticism and negative suggestions from their immediate environment suffer from a damaged and false self-image, self-esteem and self-confidence.

If you are one of those people who were bullied and mistreated a lot in your childhood, your thinking about who you are, what you are like and what you are capable of has been distorted to such an extent that you don't have much confidence in yourself. The more criticism you experienced in your childhood, the more susceptible you are to any negative suggestions from outside in your adult life. 

People who are used to hearing negative things about themselves from an early age learn to see only the bad things about themselves and develop a very poor opinion of their self-worth. This tends to make them feel bad about themselves when they actually make small mistakes, but they do not learn to reward themselves for successes. 

Your opinion of yourself is the most important opinion. So you should start to appreciate and like yourself for who you are. Learn to see your positive sides and develop a good opinion of yourself. This will make you stronger, and the stronger you are, the less negative criticism from others can affect you. 

No matter what you are thinking as you read this post, you are just as valuable as any other person on this planet and you deserve to love yourself.

It is really important for your self-esteem to learn to dominate your inner voice. You should pay less and less attention to that voice that tells you how many mistakes you have made and instead allow the voice that praises your good points and recognises your successes to flourish. Your inner voice is the path to greater self-confidence, because it reflects your opinion of yourself. 

So when your life is going less well, remember that the voice that tries to convince you that you have failed is not the real you, but only your distorted self-perception.