Self-esteem in life is a cornerstone building block for a healthy, well-balanced life. Self-esteem in business is also important and is only achieved through being real and being honest.

You have seen people just like I have that when you meet them, their eyes don’t match their words and their face. There is something that is wrong, and you can see it when they speak. A child can read deceit in a person and back away as well as a dog can tell if you are trustworthy.  If we really listen to our hearts, we can also read deceit.

Allow me to give you a mental example of self-esteem. I believe your self-esteem in business is like a fragile egg; when you are honest and do what you are supposed to do, it adds a layer of hardening lacquer to the egg. After years of doing what is right, your self-esteem, in our example the egg, will not break and will not be fragile if dropped. When you lie and are deceitful, it strips a layer of the lacquer off and one day, maybe not today, but one day your self-esteem will suffer a break.

It is not always true, but many times the people that operate day in and day out with deceit usually end up losing what they so desperately tried to hang on to.

There is no place in business for a “slick” factor. People who are slick really believe others cannot tell and cannot see it. They are incorrect. It can be hidden for a short while, but just like the egg example above, the layers eventually come off and are exposed for what it really is.

I had a friend in my line of business that started at the same time as I did in the early ’90s. We actually ran parallel paths for many years as we both grew in the business. When the last financial crash happened, our businesses were struggling. This friend had a huge financial overhead and had made the choice to operate dishonestly to survive the downturn. Without telling too much of what happened, he basically lost his business and his credibility.

See, what you compromise to keep you usually will lose; in the case of this friend, that is what happened. He compromised his ethics and lost what he was trying to save. When you conduct business honestly, it is always easy to remember the facts because they are the truth. It is when we lie and use deceit that the remembering part becomes a problem.

Self-esteem is one of the greatest gifts you will ever have in business, but many people don’t even know it is a gift until they lose it. So my friends, choose what you want the next five years of your life to be like and choose to do it right because self-esteem is something of great value to obtain. KT