In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at about amazon.ca This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 2316, the six elements of self-esteem building by Brian Tracy of BrianTracy.com and I'm Justin Mogg. I'm going to jump right into today's post as we optimize your life. The six elements of self-esteem building by Brian Tracy of BrianTracy.com.
To perform at your best and to feel terrific about yourself, you should be in a perpetual state of self-esteem building and maintenance. As you take responsibility for your level of physical fitness, you need to take complete responsibility for the content and quality of your mind. I've developed a simple formula that contains all the critical elements of self-esteem building and you can use it on a regular basis to assure maximum performance. This formula is comprised of six basic elements.
They are goals, standards, success experiences, comparison with others, recognition, and rewards. Let's take them one at a time. Element 1 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, it 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 aren't 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're doing what they really care about and believe in themselves.
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.
It's very active 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. We'll say that you set a goal to sell a certain amount or earn a certain amount of income at a given year. If you break that down into monthly and weekly goals and 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, you'll feel encouraged and enthusiastic about the next challenge. The fourth element of self-esteem is comparison with others. Leon Fessinger 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'll 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 to 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 co-workers, 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 an even better 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. You just listened to the post titled The Six Elements of Self-esteem Building by Brian Tracey of BrianTracy.com. That said, if you create a goal way outside your reach or one that's not really a great fit for you personally, but sort of attach that outcome to your self-esteem, I think there's a possibility of it doing more harm than good, so it's really important to be realistic.
Then when you do hit those goals, or not even that, but just take a small step in the right direction, make sure to implement element six for sure, reward yourself, and do reward yourself somehow just for listening today. That's the step in the right direction in my book. Just reading these articles to you has improved my life in countless ways, so being here with me daily will surely improve yours as well. And of course, if you want to help someone else out sharing this show with them, telling them about it really goes a long way.
That's how I've been able to keep the show going for so long, it's with your help sharing this show. So thank you for doing that and spreading the word. And with that, have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you tomorrow for the Friday show, where you're optimal life. I'll wait.