Self esteem

Here is a piece I wrote for my friend Silvia's site on women and employment.

Self esteem is a fundamental requirement for a successful life.   As social beings, we derive much of our self worth and self esteem by mirroring those around us.  The feedback can be both positive and negative.  Some of us are lucky enough to have been brought up in an environment where the positive far outweighs the negative.  It is a superhuman task to set about changing your mindset about who you are in a positive way.  It can come about through small successes and accomplishments which build self confidence. The setbacks and failures only make us stronger as we discover hidden reserves to deal with obstacles.   

Having a job, being able to support yourself as well as a family goes a long way towards giving someone self esteem and dignity.  I volunteer for a charity Dress for Success www.dressforsuccess.org/london that helps women to start on that road to confidence and dignity.  We work with women from diverse backgrounds who due to circumstances find themselves out of work.  We help the long term unemployed, those recovering from mental health issues, soon to be parolees, every woman is unique.  Many of them are single mothers and for them to be in employment affects everyone in their family.  When these women have a job interview scheduled, they come to us where we outfit them with clothing appropriate for the interview and position.  We talk to them about the interview process, but mostly we make them feel good about themselves.  By the end of our session, the client is feeling much more positive about the whole interview process and confident of their success.  Over and over we hear,  “now I don’t need to worry about what how I look” and “I look the part now”.    Once they are successful, they come back to us and we give them further outfits to help them go to work everyday.  It is an incredibly simple model and it works really well.  I love helping our clients and to see the transformation in them at the end of a session is truly rewarding.  For our clients, getting the job is the easy part; they will have to fight everyday to learn new skills, new people, and new systems.  But if they can stay with it, then those accomplishments and the confidence gained along the way can be something they can turn to when things aren’t going so well. I hope there comes a time when everyone who wants to work can have a job as there is nothing more demoralising then having the desire to work and being denied an opportunity.