Healthy Self-esteem Leads to Quality performance

There is no doubt that one’s self-esteem affects one’s performance and productivity. How you feel about yourself affects your performance and results and can stand in the way between you and your success. Poor self-esteem breeds pessimism and lack of self-confidence. It kills imagination and initiative. It makes one to feel unworthy of success or great results even when such person has the skills to do so.
A healthy self-esteem produces the opposite. People with healthy self-esteem take pride in their abilities, skills and have the confidence to use it at any given opportunity.
Self-esteem can be defined as an objective respect for or favorable impression of oneself. It is also a confidence and satisfaction in oneself. It is how you see yourself
What Determines Our Self-esteem
Our life experiences particularly the ones in our child hood stages to a great extent influence our self-esteem.
The way we are treated by people around us (especially the ones we look up to) at this early stages of our lives e.g having attention and affection, recognition and commendation of successes and acceptance of mistakes and failures all help to create our self-esteem.
For instance, a child that enjoyed attention and affection will grow up with a good self-image and consequently a healthy self-esteem. In the same way a child that grew up hardly receiving any positive affirmations. Finding him or herself in an atmosphere that lacks affection and is abusive will grow up with a low or poor self-esteem.
Steps to build a Healthy Self-esteem
You may have developed a poor self-esteem due to your child hood experiences but that does not mean it can’t be changed. Change always comes when we desire it and make efforts to see the change we desire. Below are steps to follow to build a healthy self-esteem;
Know Yourself
Take the path of self-discovery to find meaning and purpose in life. This gives you an understanding of your worth and value to the world. Through self-awareness and consciousness discover your strengths; your uniqueness. Discover your special gifts and abilities – the things you can do well. A clear understanding of your uniqueness makes you contented and appreciative of whom you are instead of desiring to be someone else which is one thing people with low self-esteem always do because they feel everyone else is better than they are.
Love Yourself
Love who you are. There may be things you may not like about yourself; accept them If it is not something that can be change like your looks. See them as part of your uniqueness. Stop comparing yourself to others. Do not hopelessly criticize yourself based on your weaknesses whether real or perceived or based on opinion of others rather focus on your strengths. Don’t allow negative feelings to linger for long. Understand that not reaching perfection is not failure. Forgive yourself when you make mistakes. We all make mistakes. Be grateful about everything that you have; people in your life, job, relationships, material, etc. Gratitude keeps your heart open to love.
Give Yourself
Give yourself towards doing something that will create value for or benefit others. There is a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes when we know that a life is better because of something we have done. This boosts our self-confidence and consequently our self-esteem. The more things we do to make others better the more self-confidence we build and the healthier our self-esteem.
Renew Yourself
Change your mind set by letting go the negative beliefs and ugly events of your past. Failure is an event not a person. Renew your mindset by thinking positively because as a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Improve your thinking and actions by reading; learning new things and acquiring new skills.
Challenge Yourself
Get out of your comfort zone and try new things and do something you are scared of doing. Set goals outside your usual routine and make every effort to get them accomplished. You may make mistakes or fail out rightly but don’t give up. Excellence is not an act but a habit and one thing I Know about habits is that they take process to develop. So constantly push for excellence.
Connect Yourself
People with low-self-esteem usually isolate themselves from people. Learn to connect and mix-up with others. However, do all you can to avoid negative-talkers they will do more harm to your self-esteem. Surround yourself with confidence builders. People that think, talk and act with confidence. The presence of confidence is contagious and so is its absence. People we move with are huge influences on us.