Changing whatever we need to to be the best we can be has everything to do with our belief that we can. Believing in our potential and capacity for change is immensely connected with self-esteem. Who we are and how well we regard ourselves is influenced by a number of areas, both external and internal, what we internalize and act in concert with however, comes from within us. If we can begin to think of our abilities to change with the notion that our brain is telling us everything we think and do, we can alter negative fixed ideas we have about ourselves and raise our self-esteem. Similarly, we can let in positive information we have about ourselves to nourish our esteems. A great self-esteem not only leads to feeling better about self, it’s related to success on the job and in many other areas, including stress reduction. The next few sections will provide information about putting our brains to work on concrete and not so concrete areas that can build self-esteem, and are job related.
Having the skills and resources you need to do your job effectively and how well you Believe your doing has an impact on how well you perform. How well you believe your doing and knowing the areas that challenge you, or not, will also have a huge impact on how well you perform at your job. A question you can ask yourself for the job you may have right now or the promotion you would like to have, or the new job is, “Do you have what it takes?” It all depends on how you answer that question that will determine the next course of action. Now the very next question which I might say is even more important and a good distinction to have, is to ask yourself, “Do you believe you have what it takes?” Everything starts here. Having a belief in yourself in a general way is one thing, and that is called confidence. Having a belief in yourself in a specific area that is called self-efficacy. There’s a great article in Mindtools which is a great resource that is jammed packed with information that I made mention of earlier and it asks, and can answer, “How Self-Confident Are You?” It provides a questionnaire to determine your confidence levels and also speaks to building your self-efficacy with Bandura’s theory.
The key to boosting your confidence is by improving self-efficacy and Bandura’s theory emphasizes four areas you can work on. They are:
1) Mastery Experiences
2) Vicarious Experiences
3) Social Persuasion and
4) Emotional Status.
The article (click on How Self-Confident Are You above) is worth reading and points out that the more success you have achieving actual goals, that you actively set out to achieve, the more self-efficacy you will have, the more confidence you will have. The authors suggest that you must know that this or that was successful because of something YOU did. For additional information, “Building Self-Confidence” offers a step by step approach to “Preparing yourself for success” also from Mindtools. The authors suggest you first:
1) Prepare, review the successes you have had, highlighting strengths
and identify goals …
2) Begin to set out to achieve those goals slowly and
3) Once achieving some of the goals, you will have a few successes
moving you towards more success.
This is a very brief summary. The article includes a few important steps you don’t want to skip over and includes additional helpful information. It also ties nicely into “Always do your best” from “The four Agreements” and one of the eighteen things to do to “Get a Seat at the Table“, and “What won’t kill you will make you stronger.”
