CAREER DEVELOPMENT, GOALS, SUCCESS UNIVERSITY

Perhaps one of the most important questions in your mind is how to improve your self-esteem.

It makes no difference whether you pursue it actively or unconsciously, what matters is the effort to work on improving your self-esteem. However, the problem lies on where you want to begin. Seemingly, you are working on the outside indicators.

Here are ten tips on how you can improve your self-esteem:

1. Increase your self-esteem. Try to come up with a list. What aspects of your self do you really want to change? Work on one aspect at a time. Find out how you are doing before proceeding to another aspect.

2. Be optimistic. Do not think negatively about where you are right now. Always project self-confidence in where you might end up in the coming days.

3. Set concrete goals in all your dealings. Write your goals and desires. Consider how people you will be interacting with can help you accomplish your goals. Afterwards make a decision on how you will deal with each person appropriately. Do this regularly and you will see some changes.

4. Be proactive. Do not wait for things to happen, instead make things happen. Fuel your determination. Let other people know in what aspect they can help you. Success comes to individuals who get down to business.

5. Make each person feel that he is significant. Eventually, you will see amazing results.

6. Expand your social networks. Join social clubs or organizations. In effect, more contacts will be added to your list of friends. Social contacts can give you an assurance that you can depend on others in times of crisis.

7. Learn a sport or hobby. Indulging in sports or hobbies can help improve your self-confidence. Likewise, it can help you maintain good health. Good health leads to a sound body and a healthy mind. A sound body and a healthy mind play a major role in improving your self-esteem.

8. Enroll in self-improvement classes. If your main problem lies in not knowing where to begin, attending classes or seminars on self-improvement can provide you with step by step knowledge on how to improve your self-esteem. If that proves too burdensome to you, you may also read some books on self-esteem. There are also plenty of CDs and tapes focusing on the topic of self-help that you may want to consider.

9. Have a change in atmosphere. If the current environment you are living in causes you to have low self-esteem, consider moving to another location. You may also want to do some changes in your current environment. A change in environment can provide you with several benefits. It can add versatility to your personality and more importantly, it can contribute in changing the way you look at your self.

10. Be contented and happy. Failures and disappointments can result to low self-esteem. When your goals and objectives are not met, chances are you get frustrated and you become negative about your capabilities. Being contented and happy may fuel your determination to succeed. Determination may help in boosting your self-esteem.

Improving self-esteem does not happen in a wink of an eye. It would take a while before you notice some changes happening. The process will go beyond tips and pointers that you read in books or internet. It requires constant practice to see some improvements.

In the end, you will realize that an improved self-esteem will benefit you in all aspects of your life. You will experience change in your relationships with your family, dealings with friends, and more importantly, improvement of yourself.

Posted by Leon Edward at 06:46 PM | Permalink

So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you.  So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned.  Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”  

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change  changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline.  Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

Posted by Leon Edward at 08:28 PM | Permalink