Building-confidence-and-self-est

The Women Lighthouse Podcast aims to inspire purpose-driven women to live their dreams and aspirations. In this episode, the host discusses the importance of building self-confidence and self-esteem as a woman. She explains that having confidence allows for better decision-making, taking risks, effective communication, and handling stress. Building self-esteem is important to avoid settling for less, second-guessing oneself, and feeling fulfilled in life. Factors that can affect self-esteem include childhood experiences, poor performance, ongoing stress, poor treatment in relationships, trauma, and medical illnesses. The host shares five practical techniques to build self-esteem, including practicing self-care, setting small goals, learning new skills, challenging negative thoughts, and surrounding oneself with positive influences. Hello everyone! You are welcome to the Women Lighthouse Podcast. This is a community for purpose driven women who desire to live their dreams and aspirations. Our mission is to inspire you to live your dreams one day at a time while serving as a beacon of hope and guidance. We will be addressing various issues related to womanhood. Join me as we explore our journey of life together. I am your host, Wime Hamilton. Hello ladies! You are welcome to another episode of the Women Lighthouse Podcast. Today I will be sharing with you about building confidence and self-esteem as a woman. When we talk about building self-confidence, it's very crucial and it's very important at every stage of our lives as women. So during the course of this episode, I'll be sharing with you the importance of self-confidence and building our self-esteem and some practical tips that you can engage in to boost your confidence and your self-esteem as a woman. Whether you're a young woman just starting out your career or you're a more experienced professional looking at taking your skills to the next level, this episode is for you. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of confidence and self-esteem. You're welcome back. Confidence and self-esteem are crucial qualities that women need to cultivate to be able to succeed in various aspects of life. And it's important to build your self-confidence because when you have a great self-confidence, you make better decisions. It affects the quality of decisions you make. It also helps you to be able to take calculated risks, not necessarily settle for less or limit yourself to being in your comfort zone. It helps you to also be able to communicate effectively with people around you, communicate confidently and handle stressful situations in the right way. So you see how important it is to build your self-confidence as a woman. It can also have a positive influence on the quality of relationships that you develop and gives you a more positive outlook to life. So with all this, why won't you want to build your self-esteem? If you don't build your self-esteem, it means you would be willing to settle for less. You would be second-guessing yourself at every step of the way. You won't be able to stand amongst your peers or among people and be confident about whatever you're involved in or who you are as a woman. And in the long run, you won't live a fulfilled life. You won't find fulfillment in whatever you are doing. So you see that ultimately, self-confidence and your self-esteem are essential ingredients to be able to succeed and be happy. And for women who possess these qualities, they are better equipped to navigate the various challenges that life brings their way. So when we talk about a low self-esteem, what are some things that could cause a low self-esteem for us as women? Let's begin from having an unhappy childhood. Depending on what your background may be, there may be some occurrences or some incidences that you may have gone through while growing up as a child. And that may have had an impact on your self-esteem. The kind of foundation that you experienced may have been faulty. And also, when you're going through poor performance, either in your career or in your business or if you're schooling, in your education, or even in responsibilities as a wife or as a mother, it tends to affect your self-esteem when you're seeing that you're not working or performing up to expectation. Also, when you're going through ongoing stressful situations, you know, stress is a normal part of life. So when you're going through stressful situations, it can put you under so much pressure that you begin to second-guess yourself and you begin to wonder if you're good enough. Then, when you experience poor treatment in relationships, you begin to second-guess yourself and wonder if you're worth loving. If you go through trauma in relationships, either relationships with your partner or family relationship or generally with friends, so that can also affect your self-esteem. And if you also have a medical illness, a fairly mental illness such as depression or anxiety or a chronic illness that requires you being under close medical monitoring, that can also affect your self-esteem. For me, in recent times, I've experienced a low self-esteem in my career advancement because after I got married, shortly after I got married, I became pregnant. And you know that once you become pregnant, it has a way of slowing you down in achieving certain things you may want to achieve for yourself. So I have experienced a low self-esteem when I saw that I wasn't advancing career-wise the way I would love to because I had to start a family. And also, I've experienced a low self-esteem postpartum after delivery where I gained some weight. So everyone, if you look at how I was before I got married and after I got married and having two kids, the difference is clear. And people that had known me while I was single and they would see me and they would be, wow, I can't believe you could add weight. All those kinds of comments also had a way of messing up with my mind and I began to feel uncomfortable about where I was. Sometimes I began to second-guess myself and I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. This and many more are certain things that can affect our self-esteem as women. So we see why it is important for us to build self-esteem and also self-confidence as women. So with this, I want to share with you five practical techniques that have helped me through my journey of building my self-esteem as a woman. First, I've learned to practice self-care. Taking care of myself physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally is very crucial for us as women to take care of ourselves. Most times we get carried away with taking care of every other thing other than ourselves. I've had my own fair share of that experience. I remember after I gave birth to my second child, the first year was so challenging because I was transitioning from one job to another. So the demand of mixing up with nothing, her, doing exclusive breastfeeding, adjusting to my new place of work and all that. So those periods, I wasn't prioritizing self-care. I wasn't taking care of myself physically. I was also experiencing burnout. So emotionally, most times I was down emotionally. But a time came where I had to review and really look at it and say that actually paying attention to myself would be more beneficial to those around me than I could ever imagine. And I had to reevaluate and make decisions to prioritize self-care. So there are certain things you can do to prioritize your self-care. You can talk about taking care of yourself physically, your looks, your appearance, exercise, eat well, sleep well. Sleep, very important. Many women, we don't sleep. We don't sleep. I know I had that challenge too because of the nature of my job. Sometimes we're up at night taking calls and all. So my sleep pattern, I can't sleep during the day. Even if I couldn't get enough sleep at night, sleeping during the day is so challenging. But when you see that this is a priority, there are times you have to be intentional about making sure that you do what you need to do to prioritize your self-care. Also, another tip that has helped me in building my self-esteem is setting small goals. It's not about the big things you do. It's about the little things you can do and be consistent with it. Set small goals. How do you set small goals? What is the end goal you want to achieve? If you want to take, like for me, I want to lose weight so I could have a better body image. I want to lose weight. What can I do to lose weight? I want to be well-rested. What can I do to be well-rested? So setting small goals, the priority is to accomplish something no matter how small. And that is enough to boost your confidence as a woman and your self-esteem as a woman. So be ready to set small goals and be consistent with those goals. Another thing that I've done to help me is to learn a new skill based on my interest. Like I mentioned, I had a poor self-esteem with regards to my career advancement. So even while I was pregnant with my second child, I knew that I can't put my career on hold. Yes, it may be at a slow pace, but what can I do at this phase of my life to still advance myself career-wise so that when opportunities present itself, I am marketable and I am more skilled? So I had to start taking short courses that would help. So within the space of one year, I was able to take two short courses, and I was able to learn new skills in my career space. So what can you do? What new skill can you learn based on what you are interested in that will help boost your self-confidence? How can you identify those skills? Begin by what's the end goal? In this area, what do I want to achieve? OK, in order to achieve this, what skill do I need? You can do some research online and find out the certain skills you may need. Write them down. Then in order of priority, begin to plan towards achieving those skills. And fourthly, I learned to challenge my negative thoughts. You would always, when you're doing something new, you would always experience negative thoughts. Or even when you're doing something you've been doing over time, but you're trying to upscale, there are times you begin to feel, am I good enough? Or will people really listen to me? Do I really have what it takes to be able to compete at this level? So there will be so many times that you will experience negative thoughts. But one thing you need to ask yourself is, these thoughts that are coming in my head, are they really true? Or am I just doubting myself? Then when you identify if these thoughts are true or not, you can now begin to work towards replacing those negative thoughts with positive affirmations. You look yourself in the mirror and you speak to yourself consistently, and you tell yourself the opposite of those negative thoughts. I have what it takes to succeed in my career space. I have what it takes to be healthy, live a healthy life, keep fit, and feel good. You keep speaking to yourself, and the more you keep speaking to yourself, it comes to that point where you believe those things and it becomes a reality. And lastly, what I do to help boost my self-esteem is to surround myself with positive people. If I want to advance, I'm using myself as an example now, if I want to advance in my career space, I surround myself with people that are already succeeding in the capacity I want to succeed in. I'll surround myself with peers that will challenge me to strive towards achieving what I want to achieve, not people that will begin to demean me or make me second-guess myself. And now, not just physical people, but also your social media space, because now we are in a tech world, so we can't devalue the importance of social media, and also the negative effects that social media can have on our self-esteem. One thing you need to understand is you have the choice of who to follow on social media. So ensure that even on the social media space, you are surrounding yourself with positive people that will strive to push you towards your aspirations, and not people that you will not begin to compare yourself with and make you feel like you are not worth it. So it's very important to surround yourself with positive people, because being around negative people will bring you down and erode your self-confidence. So before I draw this episode to a close, we need to know that in the path or the journey of building our self-esteem as women, you would have to deal with criticism and embracing feedback. There would definitely be a point where you would be criticized, either positively or negatively. So how do we handle criticism and also embrace feedback in order to build up our self-esteem? One of the things that we should do is learn to listen actively. Don't be quick to be judgmental when a feedback, either positive or negative, is given to you, or even unsolicited advice or solicited advice. First, listen and understand the person's perspective. Try not to interrupt. Try to be calm and ask yourself questions. What this person is saying, is it true, and of what benefit is it to me? Secondly, you have to learn to avoid taking things personally. Learn to choose what you allow to have an impact on you and on your self-esteem. So when feedback is given to you, you separate the feedback, beneficial, non-beneficial. The ones that are beneficial, you receive it with love. The ones that are non-beneficial, thank you, I appreciate it, and you put it aside. At the end, you have the choice to make on what is beneficial and non-beneficial, and that's it. So don't take it personally. Thirdly, learn to look for the truth in whatever feedback or criticism is brought your way. Like I said, beneficial, non-beneficial, what is the truth? What can I learn from what this person is saying about me, and what can I improve on? So that will be of help to you in building your self-esteem. Also, learn to reflect on your own action. The journey to building self-esteem is more of a reflective process and an internal process than an external process. So you ask yourself if there is something you could have done differently, or what can you do to improve on moving forward. Then you also have to learn to take actions. Address any issues that may need to be changed. So you don't just receive feedback or criticism, and you just put it there. When you assess what is beneficial and what is truthful in it and what you can work on, back it up with action. With that, your self-esteem improves. But if you just receive it and you put it aside and you keep doing things the way you've always been doing things, you would not improve. Remember, this is a journey towards becoming the best version of yourself. Who you are in 2023, or who you were in 2023, shouldn't be who you are or who you want to become in 2024. You must learn to strive towards becoming a better version of yourself. Also, you must be ready to seek out feedback. There are some times that criticism may not come to you or feedback may not come to you unsolicited. You have to be the one to search for it. You have to be the one to be open to learning and growing and ask people, what do you think I need to improve on? Okay, I've been struggling with this lately. What do you think I can work on? Is there an area of my life in this aspect? You think I need to improve on? Because there's a quote that my husband commonly says that a masquerade that is dancing doesn't see his back. It is those that are watching him that sees his back. So sometimes we may be doing things, but we don't necessarily know the impact it may be having on those around us or the true situation of things. So sometimes it's always good to seek for feedback from our mentors or from our close peers or from our families. These are people that have close relationships with us and will be able to give us constructive feedback. And lastly, learn to practice self-compassion. Learn not to be hard on yourself. Remember, it's one step at a time towards perfection. So we are making progress. The priority should be making progress, not necessarily, I want to be perfect. But what progress am I making towards the end goal of perfection? So with this, if you can factor in all the things I've shared, they would help you through your journey of building confidence and self-esteem as a woman. To conclude this episode, I want you to always remember that building self-confidence as a woman takes time. It is a process and it is a journey. So learn to be patient with yourself. Learn to celebrate your successes, no matter how small they may seem. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Women Lighthouse Podcast. I hope you were inspired to keep taking steps towards living out your dreams. If you enjoyed this episode, we encourage you to share it with other women and leave us a review on our social media platform, which is in the description box. Also, feel free to subscribe to our channel to get notified of new episodes. Till I come your way on our next episode, keep living, keep dreaming. Bye for now.