The World May See You Differently

One of the most important things we work on with our students at Carrington College is improving your self-confidence. Professional confidence can come from building your knowledge and your skills, but personal self-confidence, or your self-esteem, is sometimes harder to build.

Many of our students, and you might be one of them, come to Carrington College with a low level of self-esteem. The reasons for this lack of confidence can be many and varied. No previous career direction. No support network. No one to tell you – ‘yes you can do this’. A feeling that you don’t matter to the world. We’re here to tell you that ‘yes, you can do this’, and ‘yes, you do matter to the world’.

Self-esteem is often directly connected to your social network, and we don’t mean Facebook or Twitter. Your real social network is the people you surround yourself with; your friends, family, classmates. Your self-esteem is also linked to the things you do, and the way you do them, as well as what you hear about yourself from others.

Your level of personal self-confidence can vary dramatically in different environments; most of us are much more comfortable in one place than another. Our goal is to help you overcome any discomfort or shyness, and bring you out of the shadows. We’ve spoken with many graduates who tell us that they were a ‘completely different person’ when they graduated to the person they were when they enrolled. Hearing that positive change really makes our day!

Self-esteem can all too often be linked to body image and physical health. While browsing our own YouTube channel, we discovered a very interesting ‘social experiment’ that a well-known personal care brand recently performed. You may have seen it, as it’s been making the rounds online, but we wanted to share it with you.

This simple experiment explored how women view themselves in contrast to what others see. Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. In this short 3 minute video a number of women describe themselves to a forensic artist, and then others describe what they see in that person. The results are amazing, and we encourage you to watch it.

This video shows that the way you see yourself is not necessarily the way others see you. We’re not just talking about your physical appearance. We are our own biggest critic, and we can sometimes be too hard on ourselves. Here are a few quick tips on how you can start to build your own personal self-confidence.

• Face your fears – Fear can be paralyzing, it limits your potential. Usually the fear of something is worse than the reality; face your fears and you’ll feel stronger for it.

• Create goals – Establish small goals that you know you can accomplish, then set out to achieve them. You’ll gain more confidence achieving small goals, before you move on to larger goals.

• Don’t be afraid to fail – We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Failure is not the end of the world; it proves you were brave enough to have taken a chance

• Avoid self-criticism– Criticism can be constructive, but self-criticism isn’t. It leads to a feeling of inferiority and a lack of self-confidence. Don’t compare yourself to others – focus on you.

• Build on your strengths – Everyone has strengths; make a list of your talents, abilities & positive traits. Consider what you know you do well, or what others have told you, and build on them.

 For comprehensive consumer information on our programs, please visit carrington.edu

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