It is very easy to lose your self-esteem when you lose your job. Being fired, for whatever reason, is a big blow to most people's self-esteem. You feel incompetent, unappreciated and rejected. It is especially easy to lose your self-esteem if you have been job-hunting
for a long time without any success. If you have applied for many jobs but been rejected every time, it is difficult to not generalise you job failure to feeling like a useless person in general.

At the same time, the lower self-esteem you have the less likely is it that you will get employed. People with high self-esteem write better applications
and give a better impression at interviews. If you want to get a job you therefore need to raise your self-esteem or make sure that you keep your high self-esteem during the time that you are job-hunting.

So how can you as unemployed keep up your self-esteem? You simply need to continue (or start if you haven't done it before) to do self-esteem exercises. If you don't have any income and no saving it might be difficult for you to hire a self-esteem coach, unless you live in a country where there is a system in place for providing free coaching for the unemployed such as in Sweden. You can however easily take a self-esteem course, either locally or online. You can also read self-esteem books and work on your self-esteem on your own. Choose a book with practical advice of what to DO (such as "The Self-Esteem Toolbox"), not just text about what self-esteem is. There are also self-esteem home study courses and self-esteem games that you can play with yourself, your friends or your family.

If you are unemployed it is important that you don't compare yourself with other who have jobs, but instead with other people who are in the same situation as you. Otherwise you will easily feel bad about yourself and lose your self-esteem. It's great to meet others who are also unemployed and share experiences and tips. This will help you to feel supported and help you from feeling lonely. Make sure that you build up and maintain the social network that you need.

Just because you don't have a specific job to go to every morning it doesn't mean that you have to stay home the whole day. Stay active! Do the things that you love doing so that you can continue to feel competent, productive, happy, appreciated and creative. Losing your job is a perfect opportunity to do all the things that you never have time for when you have a job. Challenge yourself and try something new! Staying active will help you to keep your self-esteem up and it will make you into a more interesting and attractive person at the job market.

Make sure that you take good care of your own body. If you don't take care of your body you tell yourself that you as a whole person is unimportant. On the other hand, when you do care about your health you show yourself that you are a valuable and important person who deserves to feel good. Taking good care of yourself will of course also make you look better and you will radiate energy at every job interview that you go to.

Liv Miyagawa, The Self-Esteem Coach, helps people all over the world to raise their self-esteem and to reach their personal goals. She opens people's eyes to their own strengths and helps them to figure out what it really is that they want to get out of life. Liv helps people to find out exactly what steps they need to take to reach their goals, and she supports them and motivates them on their journey towards a more fulfilling future. Build higher self-esteem with Liv Miyagawa http://www.livmiyagawa.com/.