Guest blog by Shivani Gupta: Women need to love themselves more

 

Learning to love yourself helps women grow in all areas of their life.

 

I have been running workshops for corporate women for the past ten years to help them learn to become more passionate about their work and also to love themselves as part of getting their work life-balance right. We are all looking for balance in our busy lives and haven’t got a lot of time to achieve it.

 

The starting point for achieving balance and success in your personal life and career is to love yourself. You can’t ask people to love you or your work if you don’t love yourself. (Love yourself and maybe everyone else’s love isn’t as important as you thought.)

I suggest people focus on four key areas. Learn to love yourself in your work and relationships, learn to love your body as well as to nurture your soul. Particularly in business, you should take steps to have a work-life and a personal life, but your personal and work lives impact on each other, so you need to address both.  

When you love yourself you help to make sure that you are not the barrier to achieving your goals. You start to be able to break recurring negative patterns. You start to be a hero and not a victim, taking charge of your life rather than waiting for things to happen.

When you love yourself it is easier to learn to relax and take some “me time”. You learn to say “no” to non-priority work and family issues. I include friends and staff here. Sometimes you can get caught up in always solving other people’s problems, being there for them but getting nothing in return, that business suffers. The time you have to devote to growing new business, developing new products, improving your efficiency or boosting highly productive staff to achieve more disappears.

Saying “me first” sometimes is not selfish, it is essential. In the safety demonstration on a plane they sensibly tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. You need oxygen to be a better business person and a mother or father or partner or friend.  

When you love yourself you get clear on what you are worth and take steps to charge appropriately, without guilt. It helps you to market yourself properly.   

When you love yourself it is easier to learn new communication styles, be more assertive, deal with challenging people and let unhelpful emotion go.

Do you love yourself enough?

Start by saying “I love myself” every day, including when things get in the road of you achieving your small business goals. Write down three things you are going to change because you love yourself and act on them.

Shivani Gupta is the Chief Passion Officer from the Passionate People Institute - www.passionatepeopleinstitute.coms. She will be speaking at our upcoming Attract and Retain Working Women Conference, coming to Sydney on 29th September - 1st October to discuss strategies to increase female participation.

 

Shivani is Australia’s leading authority on unlocking passion and promoting tough love in organisations.  She has also devoted much of her career researching and helping women in particular to love themselves more so they can be better leaders, employees, mothers and partners.

 

As the Founder and Chief Passion Officer of Passionate People Institute, Shivani has coached many male and female leaders and managers, from blue chip companies to small businesses, to be more loving, passionate, productive and effective. She also runs other successful businesses that largely employ women. Prior to starting her own company she worked in senior executive roles for a major multi-national corporation. That means she brings you practical, real world experience.