Yes, it isn’t easy to really understand a human being. And, to understand others, we need first of all to understand ourselves and to gain self-esteem and confidence.

How can we do this? There are ways to work on this and we can do it in the comfort of our home if we don’t want to attend evening courses in self confidence and self-esteem and meet others in similar situations.

Some tips: * Write down your positive achievements, all that you can remember; educations, jobs, loves and relationships (even if they ended, you still achieved them), friendships, children, driving licence… Look at what you already have and realize you have done rather well.

* Write down good things that others have said about you. Read through old documents from former employers or teachers that state all your strong sides. Maybe you forgot you had them?

* Make plans. Ask yourself what can be done. What can you change to make things better? Write down precise goals and write a step-by-step plan on how you intend to achieve your goals.

*Decision. Make a decision that tomorrow you will start dealing with the first step of your plan.

When you read what you have written you will realize that you have grown and developed over the years. That also means that you can grow and develop further.

One of the greatest crimes to mankind is that our childhoods are often so messed up.  Few parents really know how to teach their children about how to earn self-esteem through hard work, tenacity, and successfully accomplishing our goals.  We aren’t taught how to self-manage, self-monitor, self-discipline, and create a sense of self-respect that holds strong regardless of what naysayers may think of us.  Most of us did not have parents who sat down with us on a regular basis to show us examples of everyday average looking people finding other everyday average looking people to fall in love with.  We were left to define love, romance, sexuality, and ourselves according to our peers, television, movies, and fashion magazines.  Is it any wonder that very few young adults start out with a healthy positive self-esteem?

It only takes a handful of unexplained or lame rejections before an average guy assumes there must be something very unappealing about him.  Why else would all of these girls be turning him down?  It only takes a handful of men playing the field pretending to be interested in more than just sex, before a woman thinks that all men are creeps or that she isn’t worthy of anything more than a one-night-stand in the eyes of men.  Nobody wants that kind of pain and rejection.  Most of us have just enough self-respect to say, ‘I’m not going to do that again’ and then we shut down, no longer asking anyone out and not accepting anyone’s invitations to begin dating.  Studies show that we are moving towards a nation full of single adults all living alone.  More and more children are being raised in single parent households with no role model of what a marriage of any kind would even look like on a daily basis.  Our isolation and fear of rejection is being taught to our children.  Protect yourself at all costs, don’t let anyone get close enough to hurt you.  It’s just not worth the effort to even try anymore.

Mankind is a social animal.  We were never designed to be hermits in a big city.  We become depressed and physically ill as we become more and more lonely, isolated, and disconnected.  Even a deep connection to a source of spirituality higher than ourselves isn’t going to heal our broken hearts.  If anything, it just makes us long for heaven where angels and gods must love us.  Mankind must learn to connect with each other on a deeper heart to heart level.  Shallow superficial marriages are never going to be acceptable again.  That may have been okay for generations past, but we don’t have to get married to have sex any more.  We don’t have to get married to have a man provide food and shelter for us anymore.  We don’t have to get married to have children anymore.  We can argue all day long as to whether or not it was better back when those taboos existed, but the simple fact is they don’t exist anymore and we aren’t going to embrace them ever again.  We want our relationships to be about something far more important than society says we are naughty if we aren’t married.

So now what?  How do we begin to date again, to build real unions of the heart, how do we make ‘happily ever after’ into a part of our reality?  We are all so broken and flawed, or so we think.  Remember this, most people are far more insecure than they let on.  There’s a reason that the search engines show phrases like ‘improving self-esteem’ and ‘building self-confidence’ are such popular topics.  We need to learn more about who we really are, what we really need as opposed to what we simply want, and what gifts do we have to offer a companion.  Really get to know yourself as a beautiful mix of characteristics, traits, flaws, and gifts.  Set some goals that are just beyond your reach and work hard to accomplish them.  Then do it again with a little bit tougher goal.  Find real self-esteem, real self-respect, and your real inner beauty as a soul of substance inside that body of yours.  Learn how to take care of your body.  It’s a gift you want to share with your future partner, isn’t it?  Become the kind of person that your ideal partner would want to be with for the rest of their life.

Once you are feeling strong and beautiful, then go out and begin looking for other people who have the glow of someone who feels strong and beautiful.  Don’t just look for visually attractive people.  Look for people with that glow and inner light that comes from inner beauty.  Find it inside of them and ask those people if they want to date you.  Say yes you will give it a try when those types of people ask you out.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.  Those are the people who will be kind and honest even if the two of you decide that it is not the perfect match.  They won’t be hurtful and ugly about breaking up and neither will you.  You will find that if you are at your best and you feel good about yourself, you will become a magnet to all kinds of people, especially those who are not feeling very good about themselves.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with physical beauty, it’s about an inner light that shines for all the world to see.  We as a species have always loved those people with that glowing energy of inner peace and inner beauty.  Do it for yourself, role model it for the children, and do it for that special someone out there who is searching the globe for someone just like you.  Do it because your soul longs for it.

You could be angry or revengeful, but that won’t actually make you feel wanted and admired.  Quite often it can bite you in the rear end too.  You may have been a really close #2 for that promotion at work.  The girl who turned you down for the date might have been in the middle of breaking up with someone and was thinking that you would be a good companion later on down the road.  Your boss may actually like you a lot and it may be his boss who told him that he was being too nice during the performance evaluations and that he needed to be tougher.  You don’t always know for sure why you are being criticized or why you were rejected.  If your gut response is to do something vengeful, there’s a good chance that you’re closing the door on any future acceptance by those same people.  There’s no long-term benefit in alienating others who might have cared about you or admired your work at a later time.

You could just assume that the other person is stupid or wrong and completely ignore them and their opinions of you.  The problem with this approach is that you may have been able to find nuggets of truth in their criticisms that you could have used for personal growth.  Not all criticism is meant to be destructive and mean.  Constructive criticism can be hard to take but extremely useful.  My daughter had heard that a dear friend of hers was being made fun of at school because he had bad breath and the kids thought he was homosexual because of some clothing choices.  She wrestled with the decision for a long time before she finally decided to come forward and tell him what was being said behind his back.  He was mortified but he was also able to make some changes in his personal hygiene and his wardrobe choices.  Ultimately he chose to take the course of self-improvement and succeeded in drastically changing his public image for the better.  The same can be true if the criticisms are coming from a coworker, a best friend, a boss, a family member.  The key here is to consider the person who is offering the criticism.  How are they saying it?  What is their real heartfelt intentions behind delivering a criticism.  If you trust them and believe that they genuinely mean well, then consider what they are saying and whether or not they may have a valid point.  A bit of constructive criticism can be horrible to swallow but ultimately the best thing that can happen to you.

You could obsess over what they’ve said.  I have had readers write in to tell me that my articles stink.  One in particular hated an article I wrote about picking and choosing a couple of good causes to donate your time to rather then trying to do it all.  She obviously didn’t read the article because she thought that I was saying that I personally could single handedly save the world, healing it of all it’s problems.  The whole point of the article was to find balance between our desire to do it all and the realities of what our talents, assets, and overall lifestyles would really allow us to fix.  My gut response was to be very hurt and angry at the reader’s harsh words and her ugly assessment of me as a person and as a writer.  The truth is, she obviously didn’t read the article.  If she had she would see that I absolutely agreed with her that I can not fix all of the problems of the world all by myself.  To obsess over her criticism of my article would have ruined my entire day and would have kept me from being able to get anything done.  Her letter is a perfect example of the idea that sometimes you have to completely ignore the person who is rejecting you.  Some times people have problems or issues of their own and what they are doing is venting at you and criticizing you without even considering what they are saying or who you really are.  You have to ask yourself, “Is this particular person’s opinion of me accurate?  Does their opinion of me really even matter?”  Sometimes the answer is no.  “No they don’t know what they are talking about and no I really don’t care what they think of me.”  If this is one of those times, then there is really no reason for you to obsess over what they’ve just said to you.

For your own sake, I would recommend taking your emotional heart out of the situation.  Do not allow your heart to make the evaluations as to whether or not the rejections or criticisms in your life are valid or not.  From a logical position you can ask the person who turned you down why they made that choice.  Was the other person more qualified for the job?  Did the kids at school catch you picking your nose in public?  Were they having a bad day?  How can you improve yourself so as to safeguard yourself from future criticisms and rejections?  Stand up straight, walk tall, and don’t let them see you sweat!

How many times have you heard someone in a conversation admit that they were misinformed in the past saying, “Oops, I lied.”  Lying by definition is a deliberate and sometimes malicious intent to deceive another.  If you were wrong, misinformed, or made a bad assumption, but honestly believed you were giving factual information at the time, then it was NOT a lie.  You are not a liar.  You did not deliberately deceive the other person.  Do not use a negative term like “lied” to describe yourself.  Say, “Oops, I misunderstood.”  “Oops, I made a bad assumption.”  Or, “Oops, I was wrong.”  Unless you actually did it on purpose, it’s not a lie and you shouldn’t call yourself a liar.  It amazes me how many people say “I lied!” repeatedly during normal conversation as if they are habitual liars or something.  It’s a derogatory word.  Don’t use it unless you really meaning it.

My daughter was telling me about a friend of hers that she was talking on the telephone with the other night.  They were going over a tough homework assignment together.  Every time my daughter’s friend realized that she had written down the wrong answer, on autopilot she would say, “Oh, I’m stupid.”  Over and over without even realizing it, she kept calling herself stupid.  She said it ten or fifteen times within an hour long conversation.  Funny thing is this girl isn’t stupid, she just thinks she is and acts accordingly.  If she was my daughter, I’d make her quit saying that all of the time.  My children were taught never to call themselves such things.  My daughter’s friend is really quite normal.  I’m always hearing people say that or they’ll say the equivalent, “I’m dumb” or “that was dumb” in reference to themselves.  Stupid and dumb are interchangeable.

Sometimes the negative comments are disguised as humor.  “I’m just a stupid guy,” “Oh well, what do you expect from a dumb blonde,” or “I think my mom dropped me one too many times as a baby!”  The fact that they feel a need to make excuses for themselves means that they have low self-confidence.

It’s a subtle and difficult pattern to break.  A lot of people do it without noticing that they’re even doing it.  It’s said with the same automatic presentation as the “Fine, thanks.” That always follows “How are you?”  I would recommend that you ask someone to help you with it.  For example, in speech classes they will get on you for saying things like um, ya’ know, or soooooo.  These are fillers that we put into speeches to fill the gaps when we’re nervous.  We don’t know we’re doing it until we have someone point it out to us consistently.  After awhile, the speech students begin to hear themselves and stop themselves from saying these filler phrases.  I would recommend doing the same thing to help each other out of conversational negative self-talk.

My daughter came home from school a couple of months ago and every other word was ‘like.’  Like there was this kid at school and like they were like so out of control!  The teacher like had to like send them to the office because like they wouldn’t sit down and like respect the class.  I giggled to myself as I stood there fixing dinner and listening to her 13-year-old lingo.  I asked her if she knew how much she was saying ‘like.’  She argued that she wasn’t saying it.  Just like a lot of people would argue that they aren’t’ guilty of negative self-talk.  So, as she carried on her conversation for the next few minutes, I just said, “like” right after she did.  Over and over, I’d just quietly say, “like” until we were both able to laugh together.  She was quickly able to alter her speech patterns once she was forced into awareness.

It can really be that simple.  Offer to help your friend to overcome their automated negative comments by playing the same game with them.  If they are guilty of saying a particular derogatory statement repeatedly, then offer to help them to break the pattern.  If you can admit to yourself that you are one of those people who says negative things about yourself without even really thinking about it, then ask someone to help you to stop.  You would be amazed at how quickly you can stop the behavior if someone will just make you take notice.  Self-awareness is the key to ending negative self-talk.

If you are too embarrassed to ask for help, or you don’t have anyone that you would trust enough to help you, then you’re going to have to make a huge effort to become more aware of the words you speak during casual conversation.  It’s much more difficult, but still doable.  Imagine that the negative statements are cuss words.  You wouldn’t want to throw those kinds of words out around your boss would you?  You wouldn’t want to use them around children would you?  You wouldn’t use them around your grandma would you?  Attach the same ‘no way!’ attitude to those negative self-talk statements.  Start really listening to yourself.  There’s really no need to beat yourself up when you catch yourself rattling off these statements, just take notice and make a promise to yourself that you’ll stop.  Keep noticing, until you do stop.

How can we go about increasing our self confidence,
when we find it decreasing? There are a number of things we can do. One
thing that often helps people who are feeling low, is making a list of
the things that they do like about themselves. By making a list like
this we can sometimes rediscover those very likable qualities about ourselves
that we often take for granted. Another thing we can do when we are feeling
low is to take some time to do something nice for ourselves, something
we find enjoyment in. We can take the time to treat ourselves with fondness
and kindness, as we would a dear and valued friend.

Another interesting thing is that it is easy to forget
that there are things that we do well. Continued frustration or attempting
things that we have difficulty with can lead to feelings of clumsiness
and inadequacy. It doesn’t take long when we experience these feelings
to find our self confidence seems to have decreased. One thing we might
do at this time is to make a list of the things that we do well and to
do one of these things on the list everyday. It has been shown that although
this method of increasing our self confidence sounds simple, it is often
very effective.

One of the things mentioned earlier is very important
to watch out for. When our successful or our good feelings are dependent
upon others approval of us, we are placing all of our value in someone
else’s hands. This means our self confidence is totally dependent
on how other people feel or act toward us. This is what children do out
of necessity, because they don’t have the inner resources as we
do as adults. But as adults, we can begin to learn how to give ourselves
confident feelings and to maintain them. Being aware of what a vulnerable
thing it is to put our whole self worth into someone else’s hand,
might help to avoid this pitfall. Maintaining our self worth or self
confidence might also require reminding ourselves of the things that
we value in ourselves, keeping in mind those qualities we really appreciate.
Sometimes it helps going to a long and trusted friend or spouse and talking
over our feelings of discouragement. In the process of talking with someone
else, we might begin to recall the valuable things about us or be reminded
of them by our friend.

Finally, another way to rebuild our self confidence
is to try doing and risking things that we’ve never tried before.
It’s always a little bit of a challenge in doing new things and
just the act of accepting these challenges, some little and some big,
whether we are successful or not, often increases our self confidence.

What about people who have already tried these things
that were mentioned and who still have questions or concerns about their
self confidence? Temporary fluctuations in our feelings of self confidence
are fairly common, they happen to most of us. However, if our self confidence
is low for a prolonged period of time or our mood shifts quite often,
it might be very important to seek professional help. One thing that
might be happening is that we never really developed a good, solid concept
of ourselves as we were growing up and so as result, we don’t have
a firm, positive concept of ourselves to build on. A mental health professional
can be very helpful in our establishing a positive self image. There
are mental health agencies in your community you may wish to contact
if you would like to further discuss the area of self confidence. If
you are a student or student spouse at the University of Florida, you
can call or come into the University of Florida Counseling Center, located
at 301 Peabody Hall. Someone will be happy to talk with you about your
concerns.
Note: This document is based on an audio tape script developed by the University of Texas, Austin. With their permission, it was revised and edited into its current form by the staff of the University of Florida Counseling Center http://www.counsel.ufl.edu/selfHelp/selfEsteem.asp

1. Correctly do 25 pushups, 50 sit-ups, or 1 cartwheel.

2. Learn all of the words to a fun new song on the radio and sing it aloud while driving down the road.

3. Open up your cookbook to a completely new recipe and learn to cook it well.

4. Learn how to say, “I love you” in two different languages other than your own.

5. Teach someone how to read, how to fish, or how to play a musical instrument.

6. Look inside a thesaurus to find new ways to say the same old things.

7. Find three funny jokes and learn to tell them really well.

8. Get a makeover, new hairstyle, or all new socks & underwear.

9. Learn how to say, “I’m sorry” and mean it.

10. Look into the eyes of strangers and hold their gaze long enough to see the insecurity in all of us.

· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their work performance. This means that people with low self-esteem are just as good at doing their jobs as people with high self-esteem and vice versa. The studies did not show that a higher sense of self-esteem makes you better at doing your job. Your opinion of yourself doesn’t necessarily match your coworkers and your boss’s opinion of you.

· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their academic abilities. Kids with higher grade point averages did not necessarily have high self-esteem and kids with lower grade point averages did not necessarily have low self-esteems. Students did not necessarily perform at a level that correlates with their grades. Teachers’ evaluations of students’ abilities didn’t always correlate with the students’ performance nor with their sense of self-esteem. Your opinion of yourself doesn’t necessarily match your academic abilities.

· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their appearance. That means that plenty of good-looking people still had low self-esteem and plenty of average and even ugly looking people have high self-esteem. They did not find that high self-esteem even made you more inclined to care about your appearance. Your opinion of yourself doesn’t necessarily match how others rate you on physical attractiveness.
· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their popularity. Plenty of folks with high self-esteem were not popular nor even liked by their peers. Plenty of folks with low self-esteem were very well liked and admired. Your opinion of yourself doesn’t necessarily match how much others like you.

· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their ability to get along with others. When roommates and family members were asked to rate those being studied on their ability to communicate and to work through interpersonal issues, it was found that people with low self-esteem were just as good at connecting and working through issues as those with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem were just as capable of screwing up relationships and upsetting those around them.

· There was no correlation found between a person’s sense of self-esteem and their attitudes towards premarital sex. People studied did not have more or less premarital sex based upon their sense of self-esteem. They actually found that teenagers with an extremely high sense of self-esteem were more likely to have premarital sex then any other group.

· There was no correlation found between drug and alcohol use with regards to the user’s self-esteem. Sometimes people with a high sense of self-esteem consume these substances from a belief that they are invincible and it’s part of the wild and recklessness that can result from an extremely high self-esteem. Other times it’s a drowning of sorrows that results from low self-esteem. It can also be a simple curiosity that starts someone down the path and they simply get sucked in by the addictive qualities of the various substances. Why someone does or does not start doing drugs or drinking alcohol can have nothing to do with their self-esteem.

· They found a direct correlation between bullies and self-esteem. For years we’ve been told that bullies are really hurting and suffering from low self-esteem, that their aggression was a form of overcompensating. Turns out that isn’t at all true. Bullies ranked as having very high self-esteem and the higher their self-esteem went, the more aggressive and violent they were willing to become.

· They did find a direct correlation between self-esteem and eating disorders. Regardless of gender, low self-esteem definitely plays a huge factor in this particular area.

So what good is self-esteem? If our opinions of ourselves can be so different from how everyone else sees us? Too much self-esteem seems to promote promiscuity and bully type behaviors and too little can create dangerous issues regarding body image. What does it matter where we are in-between these two extremes?

The overwhelming trait for those with a positive balanced sense of self-esteem is a sense of well-being and happiness. It was shown in the studies that those with a higher self-esteem would walk away from bad relationships and unhealthy circumstances. They were not as inclined to stick around if things weren’t in their own best interest. They were found to have more self-confidence and initiate more conversations, more dates, more sales contacts, etc. They are not afraid to step up to the plate and get into the game of life. It was not a superior quality that made these people more successful in their occupations, academics, and interpersonal relationships, but simply a desire to stay happy and to not be stopped by negative internal dialog.

Success and self-esteem are something like the chicken and the egg… which came first? Will a handful of successes build one’s self-esteem? Often, but not always. Does self-esteem lead to success? Often, but not always. The two do seem to go hand in hand more often than not. A moderate to high sense of self-esteem appears to do little more then give us the confidence to tackle life with gusto. It doesn’t guarantee us friends, love, money, or success. A low self-esteem serves no purpose other than to talk us out of even trying to achieve friends, love, money, and success. There are no guarantees regardless of your sense of self. Improving your self-esteem won’t make you better looking, smarter, or wealthier. It will however make you stop agreeing to those behaviors, people, and choices that keep you from succeeding.

Years ago, my son was four years old and starting preschool. He had been begging to go for about a year and was thrilled that he was finally there. He had longed to play on their playground. He really loved all of the noise and commotion of such a large day care center. He was fascinated by the sight of all those other children running around laughing and playing. He was so excited to dive in and start hanging out with those other kids. He was naturally outgoing and energetic, and had wonderful social skills so I knew he’d get along just fine. I was a bit surprised when he came up to me after a few weeks and said that he was really struggling because as ‘the new kid’ he didn’t have any friends.

“How do I get some friends to play with me?”

I told him that every week I would give him a new assignment. I explained to him that you don’t want to run through these steps too fast because it makes people nervous and they’ll push you away. You want to give them time to adjust to you as you go through these steps.

For the first week all he had to do was smile a nice big smile and say, “Hi!” He needed to walk around saying ‘hi’ to teachers and students alike. Whoever seemed cool in his opinion. He didn’t have to be a geek about it and say ‘hi’ to everyone, just those he thought seemed kind of interesting. This gives people the impression that you’re an upbeat positive person, but not too pushy. Greet them everyday with a smile on your face.

For the second week, he had to start adding their names to the cheerful greeting. When you see someone you like, smile real big and say “Hi Joey!” or “Hi Suzy!” or “Hi Anthony!” Just start learning their names and adding it to your hellos. This way they’re already used to your pleasant greetings and it just personalizes it a bit. Greet them with a personalized greeting everyday.

For the third week, I told him to give them an honest compliment along with the greeting. Don’t make it something big and embarrassing, but something small and comfortable for them to hear you say out loud in front of others. “Hi Joey! I love your Ninja Turtle T-shirt!” or “Hi Suzy! I really like the way you color within the lines, looks great!” or “Hi Anthony! Nice haircut dude!” The key to this step is honesty. You have to find something you truly like about the person to compliment. People get an odd feeling and on some level can sense when others are being fake or insincere with them. Be honest, be upbeat, and personalize the greeting and the compliment. Again, do it every day. Consistency really matters. You’re not just making them feel good about themselves, but creating a public image of yourself as a consistently upbeat positive person.

For the fourth week, I was going to have him include an invitation to play with him in with his greetings, but he never got that far. He was having such a good time with all of his new friends that he never really bothered with any more lessons. He was very popular and well loved from that point on.

Every time he’s changed schools or neighborhoods or started going to a new church or gone away to camp or whatever, he has always used that same system to make new friends. It’s foolproof and always works for him. He’s just started high school this year and is incredibly confident in his ability to make new friends. Now, he simply walks up to strangers, flashes them his best grin, in a charming and almost clown like manner he greets them with a big hug, and will tell them he loves them before he even introduces himself. He just hams it up like a beloved comedian and delivers whatever silly greeting will make kids laugh. It’s beautiful to watch him. There isn’t a shy bone in that kids body!

Can we as adults do the same thing? I know that if I really look at my own behaviors, the times that friends have seemed a bit scarce were when I wasn’t doing a lot of reaching out and greeting them. If I wasn’t personalizing my conversations towards them and I wasn’t handing out the compliments, then new people didn’t seem to stick around and develop into friendships. Most people are a lot more insecure and shy then they let on, and they really feel good when someone else notices them enough to learn their name and to greet them with a real compliment. It usually makes them feel comfortable enough to respond and to begin opening up.

It’s a really simple exercise… consistently greet them, personalize the greeting, and then add a compliment to the greeting, if you aren’t friends by then, offer an invitation along with the greeting. People love to feel likeable. This system lets them know that you think they’re likeable without making you feel like an uncomfortable nerd. It’s slow enough paced to not be forced, unnatural, or pushy. We humans have funny little behavioral rules and rituals that we follow instinctively and red warning flags pop up when someone doesn’t approach us just right. Deep down, I think we’re still just as skittish and easily spooked away as the first cavemen. Give them time to check you out. It’s amazing how beautifully this works.

One of the toughest things to learn during those failure years is the self-esteem that comes with it.  Self-esteem doesn’t come from having everything come easily and effortlessly.  Real self-esteem comes from having worked yourself until you’re almost in tears and then having someone tell you that you’re working too hard and ought to just quit.  Real self-esteem is explaining to your folks for the umpteenth time why you’re still poor and struggling at self-employment instead of getting a ‘real job’ and making lots of money as a salesman like your baby brother does.  Real self-esteem is deciding to learn from your mistakes instead of giving up and quitting.  Real self-esteem is being financially bankrupt and giving it another try anyway, because you just know that this time you’re going to make it all come together.  

These are the types of events that form good businessmen.  Ladies, you know I’m including you in this too.  Real self-esteem is when you tell your husband that you are not going to give up on your silly little dream and that it’s not just a stupid hobby, it’s your company and your career aspirations.  These types of events give us the backbone it takes later to be able to make the tough business choices that make the difference between breaking even and making a profit.  These types of events teach you how to stand up for yourself and what you believe in.  Self-esteem is not having to justify your business decisions.  You know what’s best for you and your company and you really don’t need anyone else’s blessing, approval, nor support.  If you can’t do it without someone cheering you, then forget it.  It’s not called other-esteem or coach-esteem or friend-esteem.  It’s called self-esteem because you have to muster it up all by yourself.

You don’t have to have a lot of self-esteem when you launch into self-employment, but you’ll learn it along the way or else you’ll never make it to that luxurious lifestyle that keeps floating through your daydreams.  To get started, you just have to really believe in your product.  Nobody can really be 100% positive that they are going to succeed at their first attempt at self-employment.  After you have had a few years of failures and some successes, you start realizing that you actually know a thing or two compared to the newbies coming into your industry behind you.  There will always be someone who knows more then you and someone who could learn from your experience.  Self-esteem comes from knowing that you can learn and that you will continue learning until you get it right.  Don’t expect to feel perfectly confident all of the time.  It’s all a big game and you have to find the rule book while trying to master the game.

I once opened up a fortune cookie while struggling with the decision of whether or not to launch my own company or not.  The message inside the cookie read, “The world needs your gift as much as you need to give it.”  That little fortune has since fallen apart and been thrown away, but I always have a newly typed up version of it scotch taped to my computer monitor.  It has reminded me many times over, that I do this not for the money, but because it is who I am.  What else would I be doing if not running this little company of mine?  

Sometimes, we entrepreneurs keep going simply because it’s who we are.  We are a different breed and it’s part of how we define ourselves.  The way that others are musicians, or politicians, or teachers, or doctors at the very depth of their soul, we are at the depth of our soul entrepreneurs.  We must play at that particular game because it’s what we do.  Sometimes we have a spiritual mission behind it, or a vision of the world being better off for having purchased our environmentally safe product, or a deep belief that people can be helped and nurtured by the services offered by our company.  It’s who we are, it’s what we do.  Self-esteem shows up later as a result of reflecting on just how far we have come in our attempts to accomplish such an important goal.

Self-esteem isn’t knowing that you will succeed.  It doesn’t come from having all of the perfect craftsman’s skills and the perfect level of education before starting your own company.  It’s knowing that you can acquire whatever skills and knowledge you don’t yet possess.  It’s knowing that you are capable of working hard and tenacious enough to see it through to the end.  It’s knowing that as much as you appreciate the cheerleaders in your life, that you’d keep going even if nobody else believed in you.  It’s knowing that you don’t know everything you need to know but that you are capable of learning more.  It’s knowing that the world needs your gift as much as you need to give it.

Teens have a double-edged sword in their hands.  On the one side, they have none of the adult wisdom that comes from making their own choices and seeing for themselves what does and does not work for them.  On the other side, they have serious hormone levels which by design gives them the feeling of strength and immortality.  You see it in boys especially.  There’s nothing quite like a heavy dose of testosterone to give a previously insecure boy the belief that he can tackle the opposing football team or even ask the most popular girl out on a date.  Hormones foster a temporary manic form of self-esteem in teens that often gets them into more trouble then good.  

They think their new can-do attitude is enough to get them through life, but the truth is, those hormone levels eventually mellow out and their original lack of self-esteem will come back.  Often you’ll see young adults in their early to mid-twenties undergoing a depression as the reality of their limited belief systems drift back into their awareness.  It’s like the tide just came back in.  From this place, a lot of folks decide that nothing they do ever really matters and they resign themselves to a dull uneventful life.  They put their dreams up on a shelf and most never bother to try again.  Remember back in your own life, when did you give up on your dreams?  

We need to educate our teens in advance that the superman complex will wear off and that they will go back to being normal people again.  That doesn’t make them failures, it just makes them human.  It should be taught in the health curriculum along with defining the upcoming body changes, that when all of that stabilizes, they will no longer feel invincible.  That would help them to not go through a withdrawal type depression later in life.  “When I was young, I always dreamed of being a _____ when I grew up.  Now I’m just answering phones on this customer service hotline being yelled at everyday by irate customers.  This is definitely not what I had in mind when I pictured ‘happily ever after’.”

Yes, we should teach them self-esteem from the time they are born.  Yes, we should teach them how to create a balance between self-obsession and caring about others’ needs.  And yes, we should teach them that there is a time and a place for immediate gratification and a time and a place for delayed gratification.  But what is often missed is the basic core belief that they are capable of doing anything they set their minds to.  Teens should be taught that it takes hard work and determination to make the big important dreams come true.  It’s fun to dream of becoming an overnight success as a rock star or as an athlete, but that behind the scenes their heroes did work hard to master their craft and to become noticed by people who had the ability to promote them.  Teach them that luck is something that rarely finds you, you often have to go looking for it.  We have to teach our teens the nuts and bolts of how to make their dreams come true.  

We have to talk to them and find out what their goals are.  Then we have to help them plot a course that is exciting and adventurous.  Help them understand that they can accomplish a lot towards fulfilling those goals now, but that there will come a day when nature dictates they will slow down and the fire in their belly will become a quiet ember.  They need to be forewarned so they will stay focused now and can get a lot of the hard work done before hand.  That’s why they need to go to college as soon as possible, or train as apprentices now, or practice their craft until they can perform inside out and upside down in their sleep.  They have to work hard while they have the youthful drive to do so.  Encourage them to run with their dreams in a positive logical direction that will actually get them where they want to go.  Show them how to look backwards over their shoulder once in a while to see just how far they have come and that they may not be at their ultimate finishing point, but they’ve made wonderful progress so far.  

Don’t let them tell you that they don’t have any goals and that there is nothing they are good at anyway.  Somewhere in their grumpy little hearts is a dream, make them find it.  Self-esteem doesn’t come from someone else telling us that we are capable.  Self-esteem comes from fighting, scratching and digging our way towards something.  It’s that little voice somewhere in the back of our minds whispering, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…” and that doesn’t come from Mommy and Daddy.  That comes from pushing ourselves beyond our easy comfort zones.