In my last blog post, I spoke about how changing the viewpoint I took on my life, and my accomplishments helped to build my self-esteem. Taking a long-term view of my progress over a 10-year period showed that my trend, like that of the stock market, was upwards and to be celebrated. There's another example of changing my viewpoint that helped my self-esteem get stronger that I will share today.

Life eventually taught me that changing my view could help my self-esteem and let me feel better about myself. My self-esteem suffered for many years because my view was focused firmly on the things I didn't accomplish. There was no way to deny that I didn't finish this thing, and never started that thing, and failed to reach my goal at the other. With my mind's telescope pointed only at my disappointments, I could come to no other conclusion than I was not worthy of respect from myself or others.

It's December, and it's the perfect time to plan for the next year by setting resolutions to help you reach all your goals, including building self-esteem. I made my living as a project planner, and today, I want to share my process for looking ahead at the changes I want to make and creating clear and realistic New Year resolutions that can help in the journey to stronger self-esteem.

When self-esteem is low, we often think we need to work harder and get more done to be a valued person, but the truth is, your self-esteem will grow when you find the beauty of doing less, not more. When I learned this lesson, nobody suffered from me doing less, and my self-esteem blossomed because I was more likely to successfully fulfill my commitments.

It's important to learn to move on after failure because we aren't going to succeed at everything, and failure can damage our self-esteem. Yet building self-esteem can require us to stretch beyond our limits, even though, sometimes, our efforts may not bring us the results we hope for. When our self-esteem is poor, it's hard to keep ourselves motivated and positive. How do we continue to move forward after failing?

Sometimes building stronger self-esteem is about letting go of things that have been with us for much of our life. In addition to adding new skills to our tool kit, it's important to look carefully at the people, things, and attitudes that we carry with us from the past and decide if they are still relevant to who we are today and who we want to be in the future.

This Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I am focusing on my self-esteem. On this holiest day for the Jewish people, we ask for absolution from wrongs we have done against others, but it is granted only if we first ask those people for forgiveness. Only then can we be forgiven on a higher level. Today I will ask myself for forgiveness for the ways I have wronged myself by allowing poor self-esteem to color my days.

Having a well-crafted set of life goals helps me on my journey to build self-esteem, but it's the baby steps that lead to those goals that make me feel successful. Completing a life goal's final steps may be years away, and focusing on that can be detrimental to healthy self-esteem. Changing my focus to the baby steps I take improved my self-esteem.

Your journey to stronger self-esteem can take as little as 10 minutes each day. If you feel you have poor self-esteem but don't know what to do about it, try this simple exercise that takes five minutes in the morning and five before bed. Simply by committing to this small amount of time on yourself, you are building healthier self-esteem.

I started doing monthly check-ins a couple of years ago when I first recognized that I had a self-esteem issue. Poor self-esteem often keeps us stuck in the past with regrets or pinned to the future with hopes and dreams. My monthly check-ins keep me grounded in the present and give me a realistic view of my accomplishments and productivity level, which keeps my self-esteem healthy. Before I started doing monthly check-ins, I lived with a never-ending to-do list which made me feel like a failure and less than enough.