Self Development - What is it?

by Startacus Admin

Joanne Bushby; Personal Development & Employability Coach, Stress Management, Usui Reiki Master Teacher & Energy Therapist (phew) asks "Self Development - What is it?"

Self development is about raising yourself awareness, self esteem and self confidence all the things that are essential to being successful when taking the jump to setting up your own business. It is no good having a great idea and being a wallflower waiting for praise from other people to tell you how good your service is or how fantastic your products are. You have to BELIEVE it yourself!

Confidence and Self Esteem

Confidence is being aware of your abilities to do something well and being successful within your chosen business, task, project and so on. Being an expert in your market, your services or products can raise your confidence, to become a source of knowledge is invaluable, this status can raise your confidence. Recognising, respecting and valuing yourself will encourage you to raise your aspirations, enabling you to reach your goals. People who believe their business will be successful and believe in their abilities will more likely achieve what they set out to than someone who doubts their abilities or has negative thoughts about their future success. It is not just about thinking positively it is about having sincere positive thoughts.

Some people who are full of confidence can suffer from low self esteem which can ultimately be a factor that leads them to failure, although failure is not a bad thing it is a learning curve to success. There are many successful entrepreneurial business people out there who have suffered some form of failure. The art is to have the confidence to learn from the failure and build upon it.

As a baby when we learn to walk, we crawl or bum shuffle, find our legs, begin to climb, wobble, stagger and fall down often many times with a big bump. Do the hard falls, bumps and bruises stop us? NO! We push ourselves, get back up and keep going. As babies we are not afraid, we only see success of walking ahead of us, we do not embrace fear, we haven’t experienced many years of conditioning to a certain mindset neither have we had our self esteem knocked. There is no self doubt, the focus is on the goal we wish to achieve and that is walking.

Building your confidence works hand in hand with self esteem low self esteem eats away at many people silently for periods of time, almost like a disease encompassing our souls, preventing us from achieving our dreams and fulfilling our goals. Low self esteem could be that silent voice in your head telling you not to do something because you can’t, because you will fail, you are not good enough, clever enough, rich enough, pretty enough and so on, yes all of these factors do apply in business.

Many people have this image that you have to look a certain way to be successful, speak in a certain way or have a certain social or economic background. Why? What right does another person have to damage your self esteem just because you don’t meet their specific idealistic image of success. If you value yourself so will others, people treat you badly only if you let them! Other people’s perception can affect your self esteem in such a way leading to the make or break of success in your business. You have a choice! Take personal responsibility by boosting your self esteem and self confidence rising above elements of doubt that seep into your mind carve the dream into realism.

There are many things you can do to boost your self esteem and self confidence, of course improvements don’t happen overnight, it can be a slow process which requires a lot of work, patience and effort.

Action: Identify your strengths, any areas in your life where you feel you produce good results, have confidence in your own abilities and believe in you. 

Activity: Take some time to examine and consider your strengths, list those areas along with the feelings you experience to support the words you use. For example I am a really good cook because I enjoy cooking, the food always tastes great and my family enjoy it!

By Joanne Bushby, Inspire Your Lifestyle Oct 2012 (Cheers Joanne - a good read) 

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• #self development
• #mindset

Published on: 11th November 2012