Finding Your Self Worth

Do you measure your personal self worth based on what others think of you? Do you work really hard to make others like or approve of you? Do you find it hard to say no to people believing that others’ priorities are more important than your own? Do you lack confidence? If you answered yes to most of these questions you may have a low opinion of yourself or perhaps you just don’t consider yourself worthy. Enhancing self image will help build your confidence and your personal self worth.

5 ways to enhance your personal self worth:

1. Pay Attention to Your Posture and Your Body Language – How you hold your physical body has an impact on how others see you and on how you personally feel. Similarly, how you feel often determines your body language and your outward behavior. The two go hand in hand – body language impacting feelings and feelings impacting body language. A simple solution is to check your body language and especially your posture. Stand tall with your head held high, shoulders squared, back straight and legs solid and perfectly aligned; you will feel more in control and more self-assured. Remember the phrase “chin up”? When you hold your chin up it is much easier to stay in a positive, more optimistic mood. Make sure you are outwardly projecting a strong physical presence. Over time what you feel inwardly will begin to match your outward posture and body language.

2. Filter Your Self Talk – What is the story you are telling yourself in your thoughts or out loud in the words you choose? Are you beating yourself up with your own language? Our unconscious mind is just like a robot and takes everything we say literally and personally. Filter your thoughts and filter your words. Catch yourself when you start to spiral into negative thinking or negative language. Wear an elastic band on one of your wrists and snap it as soon as you think or say something that is negative. It will interrupt your negative thinking/speech pattern. When you catch yourself reword the negative thought or message into a positive thought or message. Here’s what that might sound like: “I’m an idiot I can’t believe I just did that”, “stop/delete”, “I could have done a better job on that project. I will use the feedback to do better next time around.” No one is perfect. Recognize that there is no failure only feedback. Learn from your mistakes and then move on.

3. Develop Your Own Measuring Stick – Know what’s important to you and take time to honor what you value most. Don’t let others influence your view of success and/or happiness. Take time out to recognize your accomplishments no matter how big or small. Keep track of your accomplishments and proud moments in a journal. If you maintain a personal journal or even a work journal, start writing in the journal from back to front keeping track of all the little and big things that happen every day that validate your successes and accomplishments. It could be as simple as “I contributed a valid point in a business meeting today” or “Two people gave me positive feedback on that sales proposal I developed”. The more you fill up your proud moments pages the more you have to feel good about when you reread what you wrote. You will also begin to develop some supporting documentation for your strengths and accomplishments.

4. Know Your Worth – Here’s a simple exercise you can do to gain a richer perspective on how you are perceived by others. Start by taking a close look at yourself and create an inventory of your unique characteristics and strengths. Who are you? What sets you apart from others? What attributes do you have that you might have taken for granted or not previously recognized? Include your personality traits, passions, experiences or areas of expertise. Then enlist the assistance of others to help you understand how you are perceived by others. Ask friends, colleagues, clients, suppliers, family to share with you what they see as your core characteristics. Ask as many people as you can within the next couple of weeks to describe you in four to six words. Once you get all the feedback, look for patterns. Choose six to eight of these essence words or phrases that really represent who you are. Notice any differences or similarities between your list and the list others came up with. What you learn about how the world sees you can be very empowering.

5. Create a Vision for the Future – Develop a vision board. Focus on what you want: your goals, aspirations and your dreams. Clip images, pictures and words of what you wish to create for yourself and pin or paste them to a corkboard. Then take a step towards something you really want by taking some action, no matter how small a step it is.
You are much more than you think you are. Stand tall, look for evidence of proud moments and accomplishments and let that be an acknowledgement of how great you really are. Determine your own measuring stick for success not what everyone else tells you it should be. Create a compelling positive vision of your future and then confidently move forward.