There will be days when you feel confident and happy and have the strength to deal with every situation. Other days you may feel something is missing. These other days are the days when that “something” may cause you to feel uncertain about yourself. You may find yourself questioning your abilities. Do you have the courage to send that proposal with the fee that represents your true value? Do you have the finances to pay employees and bill? Do you have the strength to let go of that employee that no longer fits your culture?
These days may question your confidence, happiness and everything you thought you knew about yourself. This is because you have allowed outside sources to take over what you know internally. Giving them your power. You should not be too hard on yourself when this happens. You need to learn how to correct and get yourself back on track. Strengthening your sense of self-worth will be key to better managing each day.
What is self-worth?
To have a high level of self-worth means having a favourable opinion or estimate of yourself. It is not the same as having an inflated ego. It means having unshakable faith in yourself and in your ability to follow through and get things done. Having a high degree of self-worth means feeling worthy of good things. It recognises that you are valuable because you are you; you are unique, and there is no one else like you in the world.
You can develop a healthy sense of self-worth without losing empathy for others or becoming excessively self-centered.
Self-worth is being able to feel good about yourself with no influence from another person or outside source. And, it’s something that many people, including highly successful people, struggle with. According to a US report, 85% of people struggle with having good self-worth. But thankfully, there are things that you can do to improve your self-worth, and we’ll discuss some of them later.
Why is self-worth important?
Self-worth is important because it heavily influences your choices and decisions. It serves as a motivational function by making it more likely that you will take care of yourself and explore your full potential.
Having healthy self-worth not only helps prevent poor mental health, but it also has many other positive benefits. When you value yourself no matter what circumstance you’re in or who is around you, you have the strength to strive for what you want. You can be your best and do your best. You can have the best quality of life possible for you at any given moment.
A high level of self-worth will allow you to:
• Solve problems confidently
• Make decisions more boldly
• Take on new opportunities and try new things
• Have more honest relationships
• Be more realistic in expectations
• Be more resilient and get through tough situations
Managing your own business can at times be challenging. A high level of self-worth will make it easier and allow you to be more productive.
What effects your self-worth?
There are many aspects which impact your self-worth. They can be different for everyone and may change for you from time to time. The importance here is to be as resilient as possible to negative effects on your self-worth. Also, to not punish yourself when things do impact you. We often have to get up, dust ourselves off and shake off any negative effects. Work out how to avoid these situations as best we can and then move forward.
Here are just some of the things that my impact or effect your self-worth.
• The environments in which you live, work, and socialise.
• How you believe you perform in different activities and settings
• What other people say to you?
• Perhaps most importantly: what you say to yourself
Of all the things that affect our sense of self-worth, self-talk is the one we have most control over. That means it is very important to get into the habit of replacing unhelpful thoughts like ‘I am not good enough for this new client’ or ‘Nobody likes me’ with helpful ones like ‘I am the best person for this job’ and ‘There are people who care about me’.
Low self-worth can make it difficult to accept responsibility and constructive criticism, which can hinder you from opportunities. It may prevent you from taking on new challenges in your business. It can also have a negative impact on important relationships. Low self-worth affects our emotions, our thoughts, and behaviours.
How to better manage your self-worth?
There are many and varied ways you can better manager your own self-worth. It takes effort and possibly some additional help to keep positive. Here are a few possibilities for increasing your self-worth.
Believe in Yourself
Believing in yourself is important to maintaining confidence and a high level of your own sense of self. You must trust yourself regardless of what others say or expect of you. It is important to support yourself though all of your choices and decisions. Trusting that you know what is best for you.
Live and Speak your Truth
Allowing yourself to listen to others as they tell you who you are and what you should be doing gives your power away to them in that moment. It is important to stay connected with what you believe, your values, integrity and how you want to live your life. This will help you gain confidence and courage to live for you.
Do what you Love
How you spend your time shows where your priorities are. Each day that you spend at work, you’re making a choice about what’s important to you. If you want to build your self-worth, do what you love and rest easy knowing you’re going after your passion.
Take in Compliments
The better you get at accepting compliments, the more easily you can boost your self-worth. When someone offers you a compliment, thank them and then feel the joy it provides for that job that was well done. Go on give it a try.
Stop Criticising Yourself
Sometimes, we’re so worried about being criticised that we criticise ourselves before anyone else has the chance. There is a difference between identifying areas for improvement and criticising yourself. By concentrating on improving rather than being self-critical means you can maintain a better sense of self-worth.
Find the Good in Yourself
When something goes wrong or a mistake is made, you can rebuild your self-worth by looking for the ways you are good in that role or situation. Things don’t always go perfectly. We all make mistakes. It becomes about how we mange situations when they do that help us protect our self-worth.
Keep Moving Forward
Just like you must forgive yourself, you must also forgive others and let go of the past. Let go of anything that is keeping you from being focused on the present. Allow yourself to see how far you have come and how much you have grown by getting out of your own way.
It is vital to have a strong sense of self-worth in life and in business. Seeing yourself in a positive light requires an awareness and an alignment of your thoughts and actions. It also requires discipline and consistency, so you are able to shift any self-negativity into positivity.
It takes daily work, but the results are tremendous, especially when it comes to maintaining a healthy sense of self-worth.
