I once paid off $5,000 (US) in debt in Boston, MA in a space of 3 months just by raising my self-esteem, which gave me the courage to double my coaching fees and go after a new clientele.
Until the day I doubled my fees I’d never believed that I was worth that price or that those clients would take me seriously.
I always believed that people would laugh at me behind my back for even marketing to them.
A study by Timothy Judge and Charlice Hurst in found that people with higher self-esteem earn more money, have greater job satisfaction and occupational status than people with lower self-esteem.
People with high self-esteem attain success at an early age.
You’re either wasting time or maximizing time
Every time I listen to my negative internal chatter I second guess myself and start making bad financial decisions.
I start to doubt my very existence and start asking thinking:
Should I even be on this planet?
Should I have written a book?
Should I be writing anything?
Is there something wrong with me?
These thoughts take up hours of my day because I’m too busy judging myself, instead of enjoying the new opportunities that are opening up for me.
In those hours I could’ve written something amazing, cooked lunch, gotten booked for a speaking opportunity or landed a new coaching client.
I could have created financial value in my life.
But I couldn’t do any of that because I was too busy doubting my ability to create anything.
How to improve your self esteem
1. Take action even when you’re scared
We increase our confidence by repetitively doing the things that we’re scared of every day without fail and facing that fear until it becomes our norm.
When I started out as an entrepreneur I couldn’t sleep, I suffered from panic attacks and had constant acid reflux from the fear of being homeless, starving and failing.
But I just kept at it even when I was homeless (which was often), starving and walking 2 miles in the snow (I lived in the USA and had no transport money).
Fast forward a few years - I’ve starved, failed and been homeless so often that I’ve started to see failure as a myth.
2. Focus on the small wins
Every goal is made of small wins along the way and it’s important to celebrate these victories along the way.
Go out to dinner, call a friend, do a victory dance. It helps a lot to focus on your wins when you start to doubt yourself.
This is exactly what I do to pull myself together: I make myself recount all the things I’m doing right in my life despite my self-doubts.
3. Ditch your perfection issues
Most of us have a little voice in our head that judges us.
The key to dealing with this voice is to acknowledge it, write everything it tells you down on paper and question it.
4. Love yourself by being kind to yourself
Cut yourself some slack and relax.
If things don’t go the way you planned, take a deep breath and remind yourself that today is just a day in your life.
You’ll create a lot more opportunities in the future.
Even if you have 1 day left to live, it’s still 24 hours and that’s a lot of time to spend being mean to yourself.
In the words of Audre Lorde: “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies of me and eaten alive.”
How has self-esteem impacted your finances?
Let me know in the comments section below.
