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How do you cure loneliness and build self esteem?
The only time in my life that I felt really lonely was when I first moved to London at the age of 20. I lived alone in a small bedsit and although I met people at work, I spent most nights on my own and did not have friends because I was very shy and found it difficult to communicate with strangers. I felt disconnected.
Loneliness is all about disconnection.
- Disconnection from the community
- Disconnection from yourself
- Disconnection from your core identity Read more
Confidence
If you are unemployed you need confidence building techniques to help you land a new job.
Today thousands of contract workers at oil and gas plants in England and Wales are staging unofficial strikes in protest over the use of foreign labour. During times of recession workers feel very insecure about losing their jobs. The use of immigrant workers is seen as a threat to employment.No matter what side of this situation you are on:
- the workers who feel threatened by immigrant workers
- the management who defend the use of foreign workers
- the situation highlights the lack of job security that people feel.
What if you have lost your job recently?
Are there times when you lack confidence and feel that you need to improve your self esteem?
Many years ago my self-esteem was very low to the extent that I felt inferior to most people I knew. I was rarely assertive and chose girlfriends were even more lacking in self confidence than I was.
So how did I improve my self esteem?
It was a gradual thing. A few key moments in this process were:
- Playing darts in a pub with university students and suddenly realizing that I was just as bright as they were
- Successfully completing training as a teacher (after leaving school early with few qualifications)
- Writing a computer game and getting it published
- Realizing who I was through meditation
For me, becoming a confident person took a few years. It does not have to take that long for you…
You normally associate confidence with positive thinking, positive attitude and a strong will power. People often miss out a vital ingredient in their confidence building strategies.
I used to lack confidence. This meant that there were several situations that I found extremely uncomfortable:
- Finding myself in a room of complete strangers.
- Giving a presentation to a room full of people.
- Attending a job interview
- Asking a girl out on a date
Gradually I learnt how to build confidence and now, though I am still a little shy, I can cope with most social situations.
How do you start to build your confidence? Some people start with positive thinking.
Though positive thinking plays a part, you can start by trying a much simpler technique.
Do you practice goal setting? If not, do you know what advantages goal setting can do for you?
Like the person in the following story, I didn’t used to bother about goal setting.
The chief executive of a large supermarket chain in the UK was interviewed on television. He said that his career path was never planned. He worked hard and opportunities just came his way as if by accident! The way he related the story implied that he aimlessly wandered through life and then one day he was invited to have dinner with the chairman of the company who asked him to be the new CEO.
I used to have this philosophy. I worked at my job and opportunities just seemed to appear. The difference though was that I did not always consider carefully if it was the right direction to go in. A job opportunity arose and I took it.
This resulted in me taking one or two jobs that I was not really suited for and with bosses who turned out to be nearly insane! I was fired from one job because the boss and I just could not get along. I should have known this from what was said in the job interview. She was a control freak and I am a person who likes to be left alone to do the job.
The more my boss kept checking up on my work progress, the more mistakes I made. This led to a lack of confidence and self esteem.
Maybe the wait to see-what-turns up approach works for you.
I found that goal setting is a better way to help me be more successful in life. Here is why:
I think that we all suffer from lack of confidence at one time or another. It is relatively easy for you to develop a confident lifestyle when you are doing the things that you are comfortable with. But what about the things that you are not used to doing?
Many years ago I got a job in a call centre. The two week training period included lots of role-playing exercises where my colleagues pretended to be the clients. However, these exercises only had limited value when faced with the real thing.
