Recently I complimented a young lady at work, and she started saying that she didn’t feel beautiful at all, that her friends were much cuter and that she’s always had low self-esteem. Someone else was close to us and she joined the conversation saying the same thing.
I understand a lot about low self-esteem. As I was growing up, I had curly brown hair and freckles. I dreamed of waking up one day with straight and brunette hairstyle. That was before flat iron hair tools, so I would wrap my hair around my head, and it would make it straight for a while, but not too long. It didn’t help it that when I was in first grade, older kids were singing a bad hair song every time I passed by, or that I didn’t know what to do with the curly hair. In addition, I always enjoyed sun bathing, which increased the number of freckles I had. Since there weren’t many people around with freckles, except in my family, I dreamed that someday I would have so many freckles they will join together and I’ll have a brown skin color and no freckles. I still remember when I was at school in 5th grade, and a boy asked me if I was really this ugly or if I had eaten a frog. Not a great self-esteem booster, is it?
The more you are able to love yourself, to appreciate who you are, to own your power, and to value yourself, the further your business can grow.