How much you like and respect yourself is directly affected by your goals. The
very act of setting big, challenging goals for yourself and making written plans of
action to achieve them actually raises your self-esteem, which causes you to feel
much better about yourself.
Self-esteem is a condition you experience when you are moving step-by-step
toward the accomplishment of something that is important to you. For that reason,
it’s really important to have clear goals for each part of your life and to continually
work toward achieving those goals. Each progressive step causes your self-esteem to
go up and makes you feel more positive and effective in everything else you do.
The second element in self-esteem building is having clear standards and values
to which you are committed. Men and women with high self-esteem are very clear
about what they believe in. The higher your values and ideals are, and the more
committed you are to living your life consistent with those values and ideals, the
more you will like and respect yourself, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Lasting self-esteem comes only when your goals and your values are congruent—
that is, when they fit into each other like a hand into a glove. Much of the stress that
people experience comes from believing one thing and trying to do another. But
when your goals and values are in harmony with each other, you feel a wonderful
surge of energy and well-being, and that’s when you start to make real progress.
Many people tell me that they are unhappy with their job because they can’t
seem to achieve success no matter how hard they try. I always ask them if they are
doing what they really care about and believe in. In many cases, people realize that
they are not happy with their job because it is the wrong kind of work for them.
Once they change jobs and start doing something that they really enjoy, something
that is more consistent with their innermost convictions, they start to make real
progress and get a lot of satisfaction out of their work.
The third element in self-esteem building involves having success experiences.
Once you have set your goals and standards, it is important that you make them
measurable so that you can keep score of your small and large successes along the
way. The very act of setting up a goal, breaking it down into smaller parts, and then
completing those parts makes you feel like a winner and causes your self-esteem to
go up. But remember that you can’t hit a target you can’t see. You can’t feel like a
winner unless you clearly lay out the standards by which you are going to measure
your success and then achieve those standards.
Let’s say that you set a goal to sell a certain amount or earn a certain amount of
income in a given year. If you break that down into monthly and weekly goals, and
then you achieve the first of those goals, you will feel great about yourself. Each
time you reach another milestone, your self-esteem and ability to perform will
increase, and you will feel encouraged and enthusiastic about the next challenge.
The fourth element of self-esteem is comparison with others. Leon Festinger of
Harvard University concluded that in determining how well we are doing, we do not
compare ourselves with abstract standards, but, rather, we compare ourselves with
people we know. To feel like a winner, you must know for sure that you are doing as
well as or better than someone else. The more you know about how well the others
in your field are doing, and the more favorably you compare with them, the more
you will feel like a winner, and the higher your self-esteem will be.
Successful people continually compare themselves with other successful people.
They think about them and read about them and study their performances, and then
they work to surpass them one step at a time. Eventually, successful people reach
the point where they compete only with themselves and with their past
accomplishments. But this comes after they have moved to the top and left many of
their competitors behind.
The next element for self-esteem is recognition of your accomplishments by
people whom you respect. To feel really great about yourself, you need the
recognition of people you look up to and admire, such as your boss, your coworkers,
your spouse and people in your social circle. Whenever you are recognized and
praised for any accomplishment by someone whose opinion you hold in high regard,
your self-esteem goes up, along with your eagerness and enthusiasm to do even
better on the job.
The final element of self-esteem involves rewards that are consistent with your
accomplishments. You may work in a field where you receive financial bonuses,
status symbols—larger offices, bigger cars—or even plaques and trophies for
superior achievement. All of those symbols can have an incredible impact on raising
your self-esteem and causing you to feel terrific about yourself.
If, however, your existing situation does not offer the tangible or intangible
rewards that are necessary for you to build and maintain your self-esteem, you must
create rewards for yourself. One of the smartest things you can do is to design a
system for giving yourself rewards for both small and large accomplishments as you
move progressively toward your goals. For example, people who do telephone
prospecting will often treat themselves to a cup of coffee after every 10 calls. After
25 calls, they will reward themselves with a walk around the building or the block.
After 50 calls, they will go out to lunch. Each of those rewards serves as an
incentive that motivates them to repeat the performance. The end result is success,
enthusiasm, and high self-esteem.
Whether or not your current environment provides the six elements of self-
esteem building—goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others,
recognition, and rewards—you need to establish your own structure and take full
responsibility for building yourself up on a regular basis.
Of course, it is possible to like yourself in the abstract, to think of yourself as a
valuable and worthwhile person, but this tends to be a very shaky form of self-
esteem that is easily knocked down by a negative experience or a temporary
disappointment. The only real way for you to absolutely know that you are a valuable
and worthwhile person is for you to make the effort, overcome the obstacles and pay
the price to bring these elements into your life. When you have that foundation, you
will experience a form of mental fitness and unshakable optimism that will sustain
you through failure and propel you to success.
Empowering Others
By: Brian Tracy
Once you know how to empower people, how to motivate and inspire them, they
will want to work with you to help you achieve your goals in everything you do. Your
ability to enlist the knowledge, energy and resources of others enables you to become a
multiplication sign, to leverage yourself so that you accomplish far more than the
average person and in a far shorter period of time.
There are three types of people that you want to and need to empower on a regular
basis. They are, first of all, the people closest to you: your family, your friends, your
spouse and your children. Second are your work relationships: your staff, your
coworkers, your peers, your colleagues and even your boss. Third are all the other
people that you interact with in your day-to-day life: your customers, your suppliers,
your banker, the people with whom you deal in stores, restaurants, airplanes, hotels
and everywhere else. In each case, your ability to get people to help you is what will
make you a more powerful and effective person.
Empower means “putting power into,” and it can also mean “bringing energy and
enthusiasm out of.” So the first step in empowering people is to refrain from doing
anything that disempowers them or reduces their energy and enthusiasm for what they
are doing.
With regard to the first group, those people closest to you, there are several simple
things that you can do every single day to empower them and make them feel good
about themselves.
The deepest need that each person has is for self-esteem, a sense of being
important, valuable, and worthwhile. Everything that you do in your interactions with
others affects their self-esteem in some way. You already have an excellent frame of
reference to determine the things that you can do to boost the self-esteem and
therefore the sense of personal power of those around you. Give them what you’d like
for yourself.
Perhaps the simplest way to make another person feel good about himself or
herself is your continuous expressions of appreciation for everything that person does
for you, large or small. Say “thank you” on every occasion. Thank your spouse for
everything that he or she does for you. Thank your children for their cooperation and
support in everything that they do around the house. Thank your friends for the
smallest of kindnesses. The more you thank other people for doing things for you, the
more things those other people will want to do.
Every time you thank another person, you cause that person to like themselves
better. You raise their self-esteem and improve their self-image. You cause them to
feel more important. You make them feel that what they did was valuable and
worthwhile. You empower them.
And the wonderful thing about thanking other people is that, every time you say the
words “thank you,” you like yourself better as well. You feel better inside. You feel
happier and more content with yourself and life. You feel more fully integrated and
positive about what you are doing. When you develop an attitude of gratitude that
flows forth from you in all of your interactions with others, you will be amazed at how
popular you will become and how eager others will be to help you in whatever you are
doing.
The second way to make people feel important, to raise their self-esteem and give
them a sense of power and energy, is by the generous use of praise and approval.
Psychological tests show that, when children are praised by the people that they look
up to, their energy levels rise, their heart rates and respiratory rates increase and they
feel happier about themselves overall.
Perhaps the most valuable lesson in Ken Blanchard’s book The One Minute Manager
is his recommendation to be giving “one-minute praisings” at every opportunity. If you
go around your home and through your social relationships praising and giving genuine
and honest approval to people for their accomplishments, large and small, you will be
amazed at how much more people like you and how much more willing they are to help
you achieve your goals.
There is a psychological law of reciprocity that says, “If you make me feel good
about myself, I will find a way to make you feel good about yourself.” In other words,
people will always look for ways to reciprocate your kindnesses toward them. When
you look for every opportunity to do and say things that make other people feel good
about themselves, you will be astonished at not only how good you feel, but at the
wonderful things that begin to happen all around you.
The third way to empower others, to build their self-esteem and make them feel
important is simply to pay close attention to them when they talk. The great majority
of people are so busy trying to be heard that they become impatient when others are
talking. But this is not for you. Remember, the most important single activity that
takes place over time is listening intently to the other person when he or she is talking
and expressing himself or herself.
Again, the three general rules for empowering the people around you, which apply
to everyone you meet, are appreciation, approval, and attention. Voice your thanks
and gratitude to others on every occasion. Praise them for every accomplishment. And
pay close attention to them when they talk and want to interact with you. These three
behaviors alone will make you a master of human interaction and will greatly empower
the people around you.
It’s certainly possible for you to get the cooperation of others by threatening or
brow-beating them, but you will only get minimal cooperation, minimal output, and
minimal assistance. To move to the top of your field, you must appeal to people’s inner
motivations and drives, their deepest emotions.
What motivates people in the world of work? The biggest motivator is clarity.
People need to know exactly what it is that they are supposed to do. They need to
know why they are supposed to do it and how it fits into the big picture. They need to
know how it will be measured, and when it is due. They need to know what standard of
quality is expected and how their efforts affect the work of others. The greater the
clarity that a person has about his or her assignment and the order of priority in which
it is to be done, the happier and more empowered he or she feels right from the start.
On the other hand, the biggest demotivator in the world of work is not knowing
what is expected. It is being in the dark about what is supposed to be done and in
what order of priority. People are especially demotivated when they don’t know why
they are doing a task or how it fits into the overall goals of the company or department.
The more time you spend talking to your people and inviting their feedback and
comments on the work, the more empowered they will be to do the work well. The
word we are talking about in empowerment in work is the word “ownership.” Your job
is to transfer the ownership into the heart and mind of the employee. When he or she
feels personal ownership for a job and the responsibility for doing it well, he or she will
be completely empowered. This is one of the most important aspects of the art of
management.
Another major motivator at work is consideration. Employees report that the best
managers they ever had were people who cared about them as people and as friends.
These managers took the time to ask them questions about their lives, and to listen
