Natalie Lue writes...
As women we often heard the words “self esteem” and “empowerment” but knowing the words and living their meanings are two very different things. Self-esteem is about having confidence in ones self and believing in you and your abilities. Empowerment is enabling yourself through internal and external factors to build your confidence in your own capacities. Hence with one comes the other.
The trouble is, you don’t just wake up one day and say “Ooh, I’m confident in who I am and what I represent forever more.” Social conditioning and messaging whether that’s from our parents, our peers, society, or the media has ensured that being confident in yourself is not a given. You need to fight for it and if you don’t, you get caught in the vicious circle of the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’ve grown up believing that you’re not good enough and you’ve derived this from your family or your friends, it won’t matter that you may have drawn this conclusion incorrectly because it’s now what you believe.
When you keep hearing social messaging that says you need to be skinny, men don’t want women who are too confident or ambitious, you’re not desirable if you’re over a certain size, that beauty comes in model looks, that the epitome of success for a woman is being with a man (any man) and getting that ring on her finger and knocking out a few kids whilst being the perfect housewife, and a whole host of other things that are fostered on women, it’s unsurprising that you start to doubt what you have to offer yourself and to others. All it takes is one person to perpetuate one of these messages when you’re feeling a bit off and hey presto, you’re on the path to self-doubt.
Whilst some may believe that self-esteem and the ability to empower yourself is overrated, have you ever tried to be or do something that you don’t believe in? It doesn’t yield very positive results.
This is the trouble. When we forge relationships and actions from a negative place, we end up miserable. Often in trying to stem the tide of insecurity we find ourselves being someone that we don’t recognise, being with someone who perpetuates what we already feel about ourselves, or doing things that we constantly question and cast doubt over.
It doesn’t matter how hard you work at your job if you don’t believe in your abilities and the contribution that your actions create. You won’t sell yourself as well to the people you work with and if you doubt your abilities, you won’t be the best that you can be. How can you be promoted if you won’t promote yourself? How can you reach for your goals if you’re too afraid to even acknowledge what they are? When you don’t believe in your abilities, it is not unusual to find yourself doing a job and chasing a career that you don’t actually want.
What about when we feel insecure about ourselves and our ability to be loved and then seek relationships? This leads to engaging with people in search of what you think is missing, in an effort to boost your confidence from these external sources. If you fear that you aren’t good enough, aren’t loveable enough, is it surprising to find yourself around people that perpetuate that doubt? Even if you feel this way and you’re around someone who believes in you, it often doesn’t make any difference. You need to believe it in the first place in order to appreciate it.
It’s not about being a happy clapper that goes around declaring to all and sundry that you love yourself, it’s about being real about who you are. I know women who struggle to find one good thing that they can say about themselves even though I could think of twenty things about them at a click of the fingers. You have to be objective and feel that even if you’re not that keen on your nose, that you actually have lovely eyes and/or mouth. Find things that you love about yourself and embrace them, and if you can, accentuate them.
Most importantly you need to challenge what you believe about yourself. Is Denise that sits two seats down from you really a much better candidate for promotion, or do you have valuable skills and assets to offer? Are you really that crap at presentation and public speaking? Do you really think that people tell you that you did something well when you didn’t? Isn’t it possible that people in your past have projected their own insecurities on you and that what you believe about yourself and see in the mirror is actually different and skewed?
If you’re not living the life that you want to live and loving the skin you’re in, it’s down to you to start making changes so that you can get to a happier you that is confident that she can be and do what she wants most of the time. If you don’t, you’ll find that unless you start acknowledging your strengths (and your weaknesses – we all have them!) that what you believe and what you live will become one.
Natalie Lue is currently on maternity leave, using her spare time to write several blogs and contribute, when she should probably be doing some housework…