Personal Success

Self Confidence

People who have strong self-confidence seem to be magnets for success and happiness. Good things come into their lives regularly, their relationships are longstanding, their projects are carried to completion, and they have a way of enjoying the pleasures that the day brings. I feel that a person's success in business, friendships, sports, love, or nearly everything else in life is in large part determined by his or her self-image.

So why do so many people in this world have so much self-doubt and feelings of inferiority and inadequacy? I believe that much of it lies in a person's childhood or adolescence. Most people acquire healthy self-images from their parents, but it's when they venture away from home and begin to associate with their peers that much of this self-doubt is put into them.

Since our culture assigns worth to people in unfair ways, we have to recognize that some of our early failures may not have been completely our fault. Some of us began to dislike aspects of ourselves very early on as the result of humiliating failures that resulted from feelings of inferiority.

Without question, the most highly valued personal attribute in our culture is physical attractiveness. Children don't have to be very old to discover whether they're good-looking or homely, and this can make an enormous difference in how they view themselves. As adults, we need to think back to some of our earliest experiences with our bodies. We probably jumped to negative conclusions much too soon, before we realized how little our looks have to do with who we really are.

Our status as children has a very strong influence on most of us. Many of us were misguided in letting our parent's social status cause us to feel either superior or inferior. Unfortunately, it's hard to distinguish our self from our surroundings in those formative years. And for many of us, it's still a problem for us today.

Our popularity as a child also has an enormous impact on the self-image we have of ourselves today. Some of us were popular when we were growing up and others were not. Other factors, such as the houses we lived in, the crowds we hung around with, and even our desires to please others and our isolated failures, contribute to our current self-image.

We need to look back and analyze the early standards by which we were judged and learn to judge ourselves by what we bring to the table today. Only then can we make corrections in our faulty thinking. To establish a sense of self-worth that's independent from our status, it's important to keep things in perspective: You're not defined by your parents, your possessions, or your social standing. Your true value comes from who you are as an individual.

Many of us began confusing our personal value with our production very early in life. We learned from authority figures that it is not enough to simply be someone, rather we had to do a great deal to be accepted. We grew up with an idea that we're of value only for what we do, not for who we are. Without question, there are many of us who define ourselves by what we do. We try to compare ourselves with others by the kinds of jobs we have, how much our children are achieving, and how well we've done financially.

But we need to realize that we all have worth simply by existing. Because when a person feels valuable and loved by virtue of who they are rather than what they do, this gives them added self-confidence and makes them want to accomplish all the more.

People will have a strong self-image only when they identify their talents and use them to the fullest. Because our accomplishments are the result of our intrinsic worth.

Copyright(c)2005 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.