Perspectives That Serve # 23 - Self Confidence, Self Esteem, Self Image

Self Confidence is a kind of optimism turned inward. Like optimism, to be valuable it has to have some basis in reality. I don’t think it should be pervasive or necessarily generalize to every area of your life. Healthy self confidence should be rooted in your talent, your experience, your training, your skills. It is not egotism if you properly understand all of your talent and even the opportunity for training and experience are gifts of God.

Self Esteem is about how much you like yourself. Like self confidence, the people that appear to have it the most may actually have it the least. I was not born with a tremendous amount of self confidence or self esteem. Over time I have had to develop them. Learning that God not only loves me, He actually likes me is a first step. As Robert Schuller says, “I’m not what I think I am, I’m not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.” Read that over until you get it. It took me a while.

Self Image is about how you see yourself. When you imagine yourself performing a task, what do you see. It’s not just about the outcome, it’s about the process. I have a positive self image as a public speaker. Much of that goes back to a speech I made in 6th grade. I can still see it in my minds eye. Having a positive self image as a speaker increases my self confidence as a speaker. Self Confidence, Self Esteem, and Self Image are slightly different things but they all tie together and influence each other.

In selling, self confidence will help you make the big sales call, the tough sales call, and transfer to your customer. In other words, if you are confident in yourself, your potential customers will be more likely to have confidence in you and award you the business. Self esteem will help you feel worthy of career success and avoid self-sabotage.

Self Image will allow you to imagine successful calls and presentations in great detail, increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes. From a Servant Selling perspective it is critical that you develop the self image of a servant. You must see yourself as a representative that gives consistently high levels of customer service adding value to your clients. Again, see it in great detail with very specific behaviors. And check with your customers regularly to make sure your self image isn’t a hallucination. Some sales people are service legends, but only in their own mind.