Creating Positive Self-Esteem in the Workplace

You can't touch it, but it affects how you feel. You can't see it, but it's there when you look at yourself in the mirror. You can't hear it, but it's there every time you talk about yourself. What is this important yet mysterious thing? Self-esteem.

Self-esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect on a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of their own worth.

As we continue to discuss careers this month, it is important to reflect on self-esteem in the workplace. 2 out of 3 people suffer from low self-esteem, due in part to the fact that we don't fully understand where it comes from.


If you're looking to develop positive self-esteem, here are some useful exercises to help you along the way.

Exercise 1: If you split up the two words, we can start to see how self-esteem impacts us not only at work, but in every aspect of our lives. What does self have to do with esteem?

The reason we have the esteem we do is due in great part to the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Now, most people within the self-improvement industry speak a lot about beliefs--if you are one who knows a lot about your beliefs and are looking at it as “I've already got this”, then I encourage you to come from a place of not knowing; we can learn so much from ourselves if we come from a place of not knowing. For those of you who are hearing this for the first time, then you are in the perfect place to explore!

Exercise 2: What do you believe about yourself?

Make a list of all the wins and losses that you have experienced within your life. Split it up into segments: start with the age of 0-5, then 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, and so on. For those of us who are older, keep going in segments of 10 years until present age.

Once you are complete with each age group, look for patterns. What patterns do you see within each category? This will lead you to the belief you hold and how you created your self esteem.

Exercise 3: Freedom to fail

It's inevitable in work and life that sometimes we will fail, but what's important to developing positive self-esteem is to allow yourself the freedom to. So how exactly do you do that?

Scrutinizing over failures will get you nowhere, but it is important to learn where you went wrong. Review your failures and think of them as an opportunity to be better at what you do.

Be grateful for failures!
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By doing the above exercises, you can acknowledge the wins you have had in life, and by acknowledging them, you can now create some thing to take with you to work: create a collage of a picture within a poster that represents all of the wins you have had in life. A collage is a great way to avoid beating yourself up for “not being good enough” or “failing” at something.

Also, remember to always treat yourself with kindness! You are in a constant conversation with yourself--do you know how you are speaking to you? It's time to find out.