Imagine waking up in the morning with a full bucket of self-esteem. You feel great. Then you start thinking. The cares and concerns that were erased overnight come back and that bucket turns into a sieve. Some days we can feel like our self-esteem has been depleted and that can have a direct affect on your confidence.
When I was a teenager, a hairdresser in a salon in a strip mall in Duluth MN said to me, “Wow, you have a really high forehead.” That concerned me. I became very self-conscious. That comment dictated my hairstyle for the next 33 years. I would wake up in the morning and feel pretty good about myself until I started to get ready. Any time I thought about wearing my hair off my face I caught myself and remembered that I have a really high forehead and some of my self-esteem would pour out that sieve.
One beautiful Spring day, in an uncharacteristically bold move, I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment in Duluth with my hair pulled off my face to soak up the sun. As luck would have it, a newspaper photographer happened to be walking down my street and asked if he could take my picture. “Sure”, I said without thinking. Next thing you know my really high forehead was plastered across the Duluth News Tribune and distributed all over northern Minnesota. Despite there being no terrible consequences of exposing my really high forehead to the public, the hairdresser’s comment haunted me and I continued to keep that thing under wraps.
When I started traveling a lot I got sick of hassling with my bangs and I came to my senses. I freed the forehead! I have never felt more confident in my life. My confidence has nothing to do with how I look and everything to do with how I feel. I plugged up that hole in my self-esteem bucket.
Are you letting someone else’s judgment about how you look, what you wear, or what you do affect your self-esteem? Plug up the holes in that sieve and fill up your bucket!
Liz Uram is a keynote speaker who helps people turn their great ideas and good intentions into real results!