Raising Your Self-esteem To Have A Better Career

Most of your frustrations and struggles during your job search have to deal with insecurity. How you feel about yourself will either spawn motivation and energy or will severely hurt your chances for a great career.

When you increase your confidence level, you are able to interview more effectively, negotiate higher salaries and, subsequently you will receive a wider number of offers. Conversely, when you fail to do so, you are going to be paid less, given fewer responsibilities and will end up accepting a position that you are overqualified for.

Insecurity is like a leash that tethers you to a finite number of job options. Because of self-doubt, distrust and insecurity, you’ve become estranged from your true source of power. Luckily, there is nothing stopping you from changing.

You can train yourself to begin to feel more confident both in life and when interviewing. It doesn’t happen overnight, though with practice it will happen and it will change your career.

To help, I’ve listed some basic exercises for you to implement in order to gain key self-esteem and momentum during job transitions:

1. Begin refuting the thoughts pertaining to your negative self-image

In order to begin to raise your self-esteem, you must learn to refute the destructive thoughts you have about yourself.

Stop focusing on what you don’t like about your personality, abilities or qualifications. Begin to replace those thoughts with the aspects that you do admire.

Stop calling yourself names, it’s counterproductive. Instead, focus on what you like about yourself. Forget failures. Rather, think about prior achievements, positive qualities and difficulties you’ve overcome in the past.

2. Learn to effectively deal with disapproval and failure

People who have a high self-esteem have a superior ability to cope with failure. On the flip side, those who have a low sense of self-worth will allow outer circumstances such as the decision of a hiring manager to control their lives and how they feel about themselves.

It’s not always about you – that’s unrealistic thinking. On the contrary, as an executive recruitment specialist, I can tell you that interviewing rejection can spawn from dozens of other variables. Just because you take something personally, doesn’t mean you’re correct. Insecurity often distorts reality.

3. Think in action oriented terms

When people who have a high self-esteem run into hurdles, they don’t waste time prostrating and they keep at the job until it is finished.

For instance, instead of worrying about how a resume is not up to snuff, take action and make it better. Don’t stop until the job is done. People with a high self-esteem don’t make excuses and remain resilient consistently setting goals for themselves.

4. Stop worrying

Worrying about your job search is counterproductive and will magnify your insecurity. Worrying leads to stress, anxiety and panic which carries over to your interviews.

Even though the majority of the things that job seekers worry about never happen, they find themselves utter victim to this thought process. The most effective remedy is to live in the moment. Let life unfold and begin to believe that there is more to life than fretting and “what-iffing.”

The right mindset will significantly boost your overall state of being and performance. When you think positively and believe in your abilities, you’ll recognize success.

Since low self-esteem can spiral out of control and seriously effect your ability to find the right position, it’s crucial to begin improving your self perception asap. Once this is successfully done, you can start to interview at the level you should and will find the right position in a more timely, constructive manner.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kensundheim/2013/10/30/raising-your-self-esteem-to-have-a-better-career/

Why Bragging Is Not A Bad Thing

I used to think bragging was bad. That it was arrogant and was evidence of an overly-developed ego.

That idea was reinforced growing up. The message I got was that it was better to appear humble and not make a big deal of your achievements. The underlying Greek superstition was that if you talked too much about something good, you were going to give it the evil eye and everything would go to hell in a hand basket.

I've always been such a good student that I carried what I learned through most of my adult life. What that meant in my career was that as good as I was externally promoting my value, I wasn't as good internally in the companies I worked for. In my naïveté, I believed what had been ingrained inside of me from childhood: that I didn't have to. My value would be recognized. I would be rewarded without having to point out why. Plus, I was a woman. Bragging was something men did. Nice girls don't brag.

I can almost LOL reading that line back to myself.

My opinion about bragging changed 10 years ago when I met Regena Thomashauer. Bragging, in her book, is a celebration of who you are and what you create. It's owning those milestones, big and small, and allowing yourself to physically feel the full effect of what you've accomplished.

The Internet is full of so many people touting and promoting themselves that its easy to see why bragging is still seen as a bad thing to so many.

But when you brag from a place of truth and not made-up hype and gobbledygook jargon, it lands differently.

You get to feel your worth.

You're reminded that you actually have accomplished an awful lot -- even though you were not taking the time to notice.

You get ready for more.

It's not easy to do in the beginning, but like so many exercises, the more you practice, the better you get.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-tombrakos/why-bragging-is-not-a-bad-thing_b_3784732.html

12 Body Language Tips For Career Success

When properly used, body language can be your key to greater success. It can help you develop positive business relationships, influence and motivate the people who report to you, improve productivity, bond with members of your team, and present your ideas with more impact. Here are a dozen tips for using body language to project confidence, credibility, and your personal brand of charisma:

1. Stand tall and take up space. 

Power, status, and confidence are nonverbally displayed through the use of height and space. Keeping your posture erect, your shoulders back, and your head held high makes you look sure of yourself.


2. Widen your stance. 

When you stand with your feet close together, you can seem hesitant or unsure of what you are saying. But when you widen your stance, relax your knees and center your weight in your lower body, you look more “solid” and confident.


3. Lower your vocal pitch. 

In the workplace, the quality of your voice can be a deciding factor in how you are perceived. Speakers with higher-pitched voices are judged to be less empathic, less powerful and more nervous than speakers with lower pitched voices. One easy technique I learned from a speech therapist was to put your lips together and say “Um hum, um hum, um hum.” Doing so relaxes your voice into its optimal pitch. This is especially helpful before you get on an important phone call – where the sound of your voice is so critical.


4. Try Power Priming. 

To display confidence and be perceived as upbeat and positive, think of a past success that fills you with pride and confidence.


5. Strike a Power Pose. 

6. Maintain positive eye contact.

You may be an introvert, you may be shy, or your cultural background may have taught you that extended eye contact with a superior is not appropriate, but businesspeople from the U.S., Europe, Australia (and many other parts of the world), will expect you to maintain eye contact 50-60% of the time. Here’s a simple technique to improve eye contact: Whenever you greet a business colleague, look into his or her eyes long enough to notice what color they are.

7. Talk with your hands. 

Brain imaging has shown that a region called Broca’s area, which is important for speech production, is active not only when we’re talking, but also when we wave our hands. Since gesture is integrally linked to speech, gesturing as you talk can actually power up your thinking. Whenever I encourage clients to incorporate gestures into their deliveries, I find that their verbal content improves, their speech is less hesitant, and their use of fillers (“ums” and “uhs”) decreases. Experiment with this and you’ll find that the physical act of gesturing helps you form clearer thoughts and speak in tighter sentences with more declarative language.


8. Use open gestures. 

Keeping your movements relaxed, using open arm gestures, and showing the palms of your hands — the ultimate “see, I have nothing to hide” gesture — are silent signals of credibility and candor. Individuals with open gestures are perceived more positively and are more persuasive than those with closed gestures (arms crossed, hands hidden or held close to the body, etc.) Also, if you hold your arms at waist level, and gesture within that plane, most audiences will perceive you as assured and credible.


9. Try a steeple. 

You see lecturers, politicians and executives use this hand gesture when they are quite certain about a point they are making. This power signal is where your hands make a “steeple” — where the tips of your fingers touch, but the palms are separated. When you want to project conviction and sincerity about a point you’re making, try steepling.


10. Reduce nervous gestures. 

When we’re nervous or stressed, we all pacify with some form of self-touching, nonverbal behavior: We rub our hands together, bounce our feet, drum our fingers on the desk, play with our jewelry, twirl our hair, fidget — and when we do any of these things, we immediately rob our statements of credibility. If you catch yourself indulging in any of these behaviors, take a deep breath and steady yourself by placing your feet firmly on the floor and your hands palm down in your lap, on the desk or on the conference table. Stillness sends a message that you’re calm and confident.


11. Smile. 

Smiles have a powerful effect on us. The human brain prefers happy faces, and we can spot a smile at 300 feet – the length of a football field. Smiling not only stimulates your own sense of well being it also tells those around you that you are approachable and trustworthy.


12. Perfect your handshake. 

Since touch is the most powerful and primitive nonverbal cue, it’s worth devoting time to cultivating a great handshake. The right handshake can give you instant credibility and the wrong one can cost you the job or the contract. So, no “dead fish” or “bone-crusher” grips, please. The first makes you appear to be a wimp and the second signals that you are a bully.

Handshake behavior has cultural variations, but the ideal handshake in North America means facing the other person squarely, making firm palm to palm contact with the web of your hand (the skin between the thumb and first finger) touching the web of the other person’s hand, and matching hand pressure as closely as possible without compromising your own idea of a proper professional grip.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2013/08/21/12-body-language-tips-for-career-success/

Start Building A Healthy Self-Esteem Today

Building a healthy self esteem can do wonders for your life. The way you deal with people on a personal and professional level are all affected by how you perceive yourself. Having a low level of self confidence may greatly affect your life; you end up having a harder time performing at work, maintaining healthy relationships, and enjoying life.

Your perception of yourself will dictate how you live life as a whole. You may feel unable to confidently face problems and make sound decisions. You may also begin to notice that the people around you are also losing confidence in you and your skills; the way you perceive yourself will dictate how people will see you and interact with you. Yes, your self esteem means so much more than you realise.

Having a healthy concept of yourself must come from within you and not from what others say about you or your physical appearance. Self-confidence is learning how to appreciate and accept yourself as you are. If your self esteem is only dependent on how people see you and what they think about you, then your confidence will be short-lived. You will have self doubts the moment people start saying negative things about you. You need to learn how to be happy and proud of yourself, your achievements, and experiences even if others are not there to cheer you on. Once you learn to do this, then you will have a healthy self esteem no matter what the situation is.

You never know what life will throw at you, but you need to start building your self-confidence to face life's toughest challenges. You need the self-assurance to make sound decisions and navigate through life on your way to success.

Here are a few simple tips to help build your self-esteem:

• Recognise your strengths, talents, and abilities and empower yourself with them. Learn to accept your weaknesses without allowing them to pull you down into a spiral of depression. Instead, work on developing and improving yourself.
• Conquer self-defeating thoughts. Stay positive and fill your mind with good things about yourself, people, and the situation you are in. Even if things seem really bad right now, focus on how things could be better and the small steps you need to take to make that happen.
• Be honest to yourself and others. Don't try to put up an image of yourself that's not real; don't project someone you're not. Allow people to accept you for who you are and not someone you just created to please others. No one is perfect, even if sometimes they appear to be. Perceptions of people can be deceiving as you only ever see a fragment of the whole person.
• Take responsibility for your actions and decisions. Empower yourself to make important decisions about life and your future. Stop allowing others to dictate the course of your life. Think about what it is that you really want to achieve. Even if that means you need to do something that would normally make you feel a little selfish. Remember that it's your life, not theirs. Who will suffer if things go wrong because you let others run your life? In all likelihood, you will suffer the most. The people who keep trying to control your life won't be directly affected by what happens to you.

Building self confidence isn't something that can be done over night. You need to work on it every day and the best way to do that is one step at a time, the smaller steps the better.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/paul-bailey/self-esteem-building_b_2971836.html

5 Weird Confidence Building Exercises

Imagine for a minute if you were totally confident in yourself……………..

What would you do today that you were not doing yesterday? What could you achieve if you were completely self confident?

Now, I don’t mean you have to be good at everything, but you’re willing to give everything a go, just try it and see what happens, and if you fell flat on your face you would either walk away from it having tried it, or you would try again until you got it right.

Well, there’s a few things holding us back from being confident, and believe me, every single person reading these words right now has the ability to have total confidence in themselves. What’s holding us back? It’s your thoughts, beliefs, habits and actions.

If I were to say to you ‘Let’s climb Mount Everest for charity’ what would your immediate thoughts be – maybe it was ‘I could never do that’, ‘I’m not fit enough’, ‘I don’t like heights’, ‘I don’t like the outdoors’, ‘I don’t like the cold’, but someone who was totally confident and they were interested would probably say ‘Okay, let’s give it a go’ or ‘When do you want to do it’. Wouldn’t that amount of confidence in yourself be amazing.
3 Attributes of truly confident people:

1. They don’t mind trying new things, even if they’ve never done it before.
2. They don’t let what others may or may not think influence their decision to do something.
3. They have let go of their inhibitions and don’t mind letting their guards down.

I’d like to share with you 5 weird confidence building exercises

1. The Wrong Shop exercise

• This exercise will give you a strange sense of power and control over yourself and make you really drop your guard to feel confident.
• Walk into any type of shop and ask for something totally weird, that the shop does not sell. For example walk into a newsagents and ask if they sell the latest 42 inch flat screen TV, or go into an Apple store and ask for a PC, or McDonalds and ask for a KFC Bucket.
• The aim of this is to let go of your inhibitions and get over yourself, be willing to make a fool of yourself and learn to not care what others may or may not think about you. This is an exercise I tried myself on a number of occasions a few years ago and it’s totally liberating. I first heard it from Jamie Smart who was coaching some telesales people who were anxious about cold calling.

2. Ask for a hug

• Stand in the middle of a busy street, hold up a plackard asking for a hug for a special occasion and get someone to film it.
• Overcome that fear of rejection and to release your inhibitions. Watch the video below to learn more.

3. Be wrong on purpose

• A lot of us are so hung up on always being right and feel really self conscious when we have been found out to be wrong about something, and can feel really embarrassed. This exercise is designed to let go of that altogether.
• Whenever someone asks you a question about anything, give them the wrong answer on purpose, but make it so wrong that the other person knows it’s wrong as well, for example If someone asks you ‘Oh who was that actor in that film’ you might say ‘Oh! that was Christopher Columbus’ You’ll most likely get strange looks.
• If you do this often enough it will get you over always feeling the need to be right. Of course when you are wrong always admit it and drop it.

4. Radical Honesty

• Whenever someone asks for your opinion on something, be totally honest with them. However, when you first start being completely honest, always say to the person ‘Do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to say what you want to hear?’ that way it takes them off guard, but they will always say honest opinion.
• People come to nice people for an opinion when they know what the answer will be, but people go to honest people when they want a valued opinion.

5. Learn to feel uncomfortable

• The only way to grow as a person is when you are outside your comfort zone. Nobody ever grows inside their comfort zone.
• The next time you are asked to do something, or think about doing something that you feel uncomfortable with, say yes to it immediately. For example if a friend asks you to a party that you know will make you feel uncomfortable say yes immediately to it. You don’t have to stay all night, but show up, feel that uncomfortable feeling and then leave shortly after.
• If you can do this all throughout your life, you will never be afraid to try anything.

http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/5-weird-confidence-building-exercises/

How To Boost Your Confidence Easily

Do you want to boost your confidence?

Confidence is a skill that many folks want to master, but have a hard time acquiring. Have you ever wondered why? Let me inform you that you were born confident, you just allowed external sources such as your parents, friends, relatives, society, and media affect your level of self-esteem and self-worth.

Perhaps you were talked to negatively as a child or maybe you were rejected many times. Whatever the case is, know you can change all of that and you can begin to improve your self esteem and build confidence today.
How to boost your confidence?

1. Act as ifBegin to act as if you are confident. Act as the person you would want to be like. This requires you to know how a confident person looks like. Surround yourself with people who you think are confident and have high value. Begin to think and behave like them. You will learn so much from observing other confident folks.

2. Improve your positive self talkOne of the most areas that you need to pay attention to is your self-talk. Your thoughts about your capabilities and self-worth need to be positive and encouraging. When you start to program your mind with uplifting words and start believing you are a worthy human being, your confidence in yourself will become stronger.

Whenever you notice that you start thinking to yourself negatively, pause and take a moment, and shift your focus to something that can help you feel better about yourself.

             http://tiny.cc/iejiyw

3. Be optimisticLet me ask you, whenever you encounter an undesirable situation in life, do you start lamenting and beating yourself or do you trust that everything will be ok? Do you stay focusing on the problem or do you shift your focus to the various solutions you have available to you?

Optimism is an important aspect in boosting your confidence and it must be cultivated. Train yourself to trust that everything will be all right whenever you encounter an undesirable issue in life. This positive outlook on life helps you not only to improve your self esteem, but also to succeed in all areas of your life.

4. Go after your goalsIf you are really serious about building self confidence, you need to identify your goals and go after them. The more you add to your accomplishments, the more confident you will feel about your abilities and skills.

When you begin to achieve goals that you are passionate about, you begin to trust your inner self more and you begin to appreciate yourself more.

By using these four steps to boost your confidence, you will be on the path to enhancing your self esteem and self-worth.

http://www.2achieveyourgoals.com/how-to-boost-your-confidence-easily/

7 Life Improving Benefits of Yoga

You've heard the perks of regularly hitting the mat, yet 70 percent of you still aren't prone to pose, a Self.com poll reveals. Take a closer look at how health and happiness go up with every Downward Dog.




A Sunnier OutlookThere really is something to the "happy yogi." Doing one hour of asanas —a sequence of standing, sitting and balancing poses - helped avid posers raise their levels of the brain chemical GABA (low levels are linked with depression) by 27 percent compared with a group who read quietly, a study from Boston University School of Medicine and McLean Hospital 

Aches Erased!Put nagging lower-back pain behind you. Sufferers who did two 90-minute yoga classes a week for about six months eased soreness by 56 percent, a study in Spine shows. Those given treatments like pain meds and physical therapy lessened the hurt by only 16 percent. Posing improves posture and strengthens back muscles to keep aches at bay, researchers say

Better, Longer Zzz'sInsomniacs fell asleep 15 minutes faster and slept an hour longer each night after two months of doing a 45-minute series of yoga poses daily before bed. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital speculate that regular practice helped people relax, making it easier to switch off. No trouble hitting the hay? Doing three weekly sessions at any time of the day may still help 

Steamer Sex
You can amp up your desire and ensure an O-mazing time between the sheets by practicing daily asanas, a study from The Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests. The love connection: Yoga helps reduce anxiety, increase body awareness and even speed the release of hormones that rev arousal. All of that translates to a boost in libido, lubrication and ability to achieve

Crazy-High ConfidenceYoga could be your ticket to body love, research from the University of California in Berkeley finds. Women who practiced regularly rated their body satisfaction 20 percent higher than did those who took aerobics, even though both groups were at a healthy weight. The secret may be that yoga asks you to tune in to how your body feels and what it can do—not how it looks.

Top-to-Toe Toning
Smart yogis know dumbbells aren't the only way to sculpt. "Yoga is strength training," says Loren Bassett, an instructor at Pure Yoga in New York City and creator of Bassett's Boot-camp, a vigorous, athletic-style yoga class. "You're using your body weight to move from posture to posture, and in certain poses, you're lifting every pound of it." For sure fire firming, focus on muscle-
A Sense of Calm
Namaste the stress away! Women who had gone to the mat at least once a week for two years or more released 41 percent less of a tension-triggered cytokine (a type of protein) that can make you feel tired and moody compared with yoga newbies, a study in Psychosomatic Medicine notes.

http://www.self.com/fitness/2012/03/benefits-of-yoga-slideshow