How to Deal with Self-Esteem Challenges in Workplace
Have you ever wondered why some are successful while many fail miserably?
Different factors impact the performance and efficiency of every individual, leading to success or failure.
Of the many, a factor that many presume is “not so important” is the one that contributes to 99% of failures. It’s nothing but the Self-Esteem of individuals.
Yes. Self-esteem plays a meaty role in your growth and offering quality services to others.
Statistically, people with high self-esteem tend to perform exceptionally over others.
Now, let me ask you a question. Is your self-esteem high, low, or healthy? If your answer is low, then this post is exclusively for you.
Low self-esteem impacts your overall personal and professional activities and sidelines you from living a happy and peaceful life like others. Sometimes, feeling you’re unworthy can even lead to suicidal thoughts or suicide itself. So, realizing the significance of self-esteem and knowing your worth is super important.
Most often it is the workplace where your self-esteem is tested and tampered.
The result of tampered self-esteem often reflects on your personal side too.
When I say personal side, it includes both your health and personal routine.
No matter what it takes, it is important to boost your self-esteem for improving your overall performance, efficiency, and success rate to live a peaceful life.
Before diving deep into the tips to boost your self-esteem, let’s understand what self-esteem is and how it can impact your day-to-day operations in the workplace, and how to deal with it.
Table of content
1. What is self-esteem
2. Self-esteem types
3. Why self-esteem
4. Self-esteem significance in workplace
5. Drawbacks of low self-esteem in workplace
6. Tips to improve self-esteem in workplace
7. Summary
What is self-esteem
Put simply, it is all about what you think about yourself, i.e., your views about your worth, credibility, appearance, etc.
There are 3 types of self-esteem.
· High self-esteem: Overpowering others. High self-esteem people are often arrogant, and self-indulgent.
· Healthy self-esteem: Accurate and balanced self-view.
· Low self-esteem: Giving in to others’ command or feeling inferior to others.
Of the 3, it is always better to have healthy self-esteem as it can contribute to a peaceful and blissful life.
Why is it significant
Self-esteem is vital because it impacts your personal and professional decision-making abilities. It motivates you to perform your day-to-day chores remarkably without any impact on efficiency and productivity. And, low self-esteem can significantly impact your daily productivity and efficiency.
Significance of Self-esteem in the workplace
Though self-esteem and self-confidence are different, they do overlap. Low self-confidence affects self-esteem and vice versa. It is critical to boost your self-esteem to increase your self-confidence and produce better in the workplace.
Everyone needs some kind of motivation and your self-esteem is extremely important to motivate yourself when you’re down. Low self-confidence results in a lack of motivation, leading to below-par productivity and efficiency.
This adversely impacts your performance in the workplace leading to low increments compared to your teammates. Again, this again will be a huge blow to your self-confidence and subsequently self-esteem.
Factors that affect self-esteem in the workplace
The challenges don’t have to be from your colleagues. Even personal confrontations or problems can impact your morale and esteem badly. If you’re someone who doesn’t think too much about your personal problems in the workplace, chances are you will perform better.
Let’s take the next case, what if your self-esteem is hurt due to your colleagues or teammates, or management? Most often, a common reason for low self-esteem in the workplace is due to criticism from others.
If you don’t have a big heart it’s hard for you to take up criticism constructively. Taking others’ feedback personally will tamper your self-esteem leading to low self-confidence, impacting your productivity, and efficiency.
8 Practical Tips to overcome self-esteem Challenges in workplace
1. Your “designation” isn’t the “real you”
When someone asks you the question — “who are you?” — 8/10 will say your role or designation. Let me explain — the answers will be I am a marketer, I am a lawyer, I am a doctor, etc. But, is the designation or role really you? Spare a second thought.
Your designation at the workplace is just one of the many roles you play in your day-to-day life. You can be a father, mother, sister, friend, brother, etc. But, most often we don’t share this with others when someone asks who you are.
The reason is quite obvious, our society is all about jobs, designations, and associated salaries. To maintain your status in society you have to share your salary and designation details, and not so surprisingly most people around you only care about that and value you based on this information.
The moment you consider your job is everything, anything that impacts your professional life will take a massive impact on your personal life significantly.
Also, if you’re into a role that is lucrative it mayn’t go well with the questioner. It might hurt your sentiments and mood too. So, there are chances that it can hamper your self-esteem and confidence.
Don’t fall into this trap. Next time when someone asks you who you are, just say your name and move on. Share your designation with them only when they ask what you do for a living.
So, you’re just “you”. Don’t add anything to it. Say you’re just “YOU” and not xxx of yyyy, an MD, CEO, or Doctor, etc.
2. Feedbacks aren’t always perfect
Before considering the feedback seriously, it is quintessential to ensure where it’s coming from. If there is someone who doesn’t know a dime about your work commenting on the tasks you’ve done, you don’t have totake them seriously.
If it is coming from someone who wants you to fail as they see you as an obstacle in their growth, then just laugh and move on.
But, if it comes from someone you always look up to playing a meaty role in your growth, then you can listen to them.
Whatever the case it may be, don’t take the feedback directly. Listen to them, sit back, relax, and apply some logical thoughts over that. You will discover ways to overcome or overturn it.
By this way, you will never have your self-esteem down.
3. Practice self-care
Body shaming is part of work life. Many employees go through such incidents and they are wary about employees that hurt them with their body shapes and sizes.
If someone can’t match your performance or skills, the most obvious way they’ll try to hurt you is by targeting your personal traits or appearance.
Start loving yourself. Don’t worry about what others say. Just believe you’re unique and you’re skillful. Always back yourself up and love yourself no matter what happens around you.
With such an approach your self-esteem will always be balanced.
4. Realize your strength & weaknesses (performing a SWOT is recommended)
One of the many ways of hurting you is targeting your weaknesses to bring your self-esteem down. Never share your weaknesses with anyone. Those who really love you won’t worry about your weaknesses.
Before they realize your weaknesses, you have to realize and visualize your strengths and weaknesses. The best possible way to achieve this is by performing a personal SWOT (Strength Weakness Opportunities Threat).
Evaluating your strengths, and weaknesses by collecting data from people you often speak to and spend time with will help you improve your personal self. By knowing your weaknesses, you can set up some plans or activities to convert them to strengths, and in due course you can easily become a more powerful person than you already were.
5. Set goals and slowly work towards a milestone
Sometimes being aimless can affect your self-esteem. As you’re not engaged with something and don’t have any immediate goals, you can easily get disengaged from life and this could real pressure on you after some point in time. So, it is always good to have some short goals leading to a milestone as this will keep you engaged and lively.
Also, achieving success in short goals will improve your self-esteem and confidence leading to a better success rate in anything you do in the future.
6. Don’t react to situations (just observe)
Most of us are circumstance bound and take momentary decisions that affect our lives. Oftentimes, reacting to an incident or situation leads to deep impacts on your mood and health.
Shouting at someone, arguing, or picking up fighting with someone can dampen your spirit and distract you from your goals for some time. Isolating yourself from everyone can take a toll on your mental and physical health too.
To avoid this, it is always better to be an active listener and observer rather than reacting to others or situations. By doing so you can apply logical thoughts about the scenario and can discover some techniques that can help you avoid such problems in the future.
Also, you won’t feel depressed or exhausted after the incident as you didn’t take anything to your heart.
7. Don’t stop learning at any point (both personal and professional)
Just carrying on with your routine without upgrading your mental and physical health can impact your self-esteem badly. Be it professional or personal front, equipping you with the latest information is critically important to live a better life.
Frequent upskilling will help you improve your performance in the workplace and learning a lot other than your work will help you improve your personal life standards.
In this way, you won’t feel let down at any point of time as you’re always with the flow.
8. Take time for yourself
It is a fast-paced life and most of you think and care about your job for more than 8 hours a day than worrying about your health. Being a workaholic is a great idea but not at the cost of sacrificing your health.
If you’re focusing only on the professional front and completely ignore taking care of your body and soul, chances of facing unexpected health conditions may arise in the future.
As the adage goes, “If health is gone everything is gone,” it is vital to take care of your body and soul to excel in whatever you do. Remember, you have both worlds — professional and personal to look after. By taking time to nourish your body and soul, you could easily improve your confidence in work and subsequently your self-esteem.
You take a break for a vacation with family or take up exercising on a daily basis or indulge in meditation every day to pamper your soul and body. Understanding the significance of your health matters and by taking care of your physical and mental health you can achieve a lot of things you have never dreamed of.
Summary
To conclude, maintaining healthy self-esteem is recommended to live a healthy and peaceful life, both in the professional and personal worlds. Know your worth and value and don’t take others’ perspectives about you and don’t hurt your self-esteem.
Remember, everyone is unique and so are you. So, be happy with what you’re doing and never compare yourself to others, and don’t let others compare you with them. Focus on improving both your mental and physical health as they play a critical role in managing healthy self-esteem to achieve greater things in the future.
