When I was growing up, I had a fairly large community of people involved in raising me and my two siblings. My parents both owned businesses and worked long hours, so my grandmother moved in with us to help out, and we often had an uncle or two crashing with us as well.
Read MoreIf you've been wondering how to be confident, I've got a strategy that works.
What does it actually mean to be confident? Confidence has to do with self-assurance. Essentially, you need to believe in yourself- in your own character and abilities- to be confident. And to achieve that, you've got to know yourself and what you have to offer. Ultimately, the answer to how to be confident is to be sure of who you are.
Read More"Without self-acceptance, self-esteem is impossible" writes Dr. Nathaniel Branden in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
What is self-esteem and why does it matter? Self-esteem is the way in which one experiences themselves. A person with healthy self-esteem experiences themselves as capable of handling life's basic challenges and as being worthy of love and happiness. A person with unhealthy self-esteem experiences themselves as being incapable of handling life's difficulties and as being unworthy of joy and love.
Read MoreIf you’ve ever felt a lack of confidence in your own abilities or have felt unworthy of some kind of positive outcome, then you’ve experienced less than optimal self-esteem.
Self-esteem is not static, and even people who generally experience themselves as capable and worthy will at times experience dips in their self-esteem. Being overlooked for a promotion, losing a job, or getting broken up with can cause such a dip for most anybody.
But some folks live in a perpetual state of self-doubt and unworthiness. Experiencing themselves as generally incapable and unworthy, people with low self-esteem live in an overwhelming and painful state of self-consciousness and anxiety. They want nothing more than to be liked and accepted, yet struggle terribly to like and accept themselves.
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