I just need to write this down, so I apologise if this is in the wrong place!

I have recently realised that I have been suffering from low self esteem for a number of years, I think since childhood really! I am seeing all the ways it affects my life, I have gone through periods where I would tell lies so I would appear more interesting to other people to doing some very crazy things so I would seem interesting and I have recently noticed that I would also try to mimic other peoples lives, for example if I read a book and I liked the main character, I would then try to mimic her personality traits in my life, the same with shows and such like!
I realised that I have done all this as well as keeping my interests to doing things that I think other people will be able to think I am 'cool' or something. It seems that a lot of the choices I have made it is all about how it will look to other people when I tell them about it, all ways of making me feel like I am 'in'.
Obviously I know that I can not fix this just by knowing it is there, but it feels so nice to sort of understand a little bit of why I am this way! I don't know the exact reasons for it and to be honest I am not exactly sure that I NEED to, I believe it will stem from having ginger hair (here it is kind of socially wrong!) so i was always 'different' from the other people and also I think I am just a lot more sensative and I think it is a kind of natural thing and I was never one for talking about my feelings and kept everything more bottled up, so i think it all stems from that but you know, now that I understand all this I am really going to work at changing it for the better.

Does anyone have any particular ways of doing this? Are there any books which can be of help?

Thanks!!