Self-Esteem (Caution Lengthy Post)

Self-Esteem is an idea that some psychologists fear in being trivialized. This is going to be a lengthy read for a blog post, but I promise it has strong potential to impact your life positively.

"There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself." - Andrew Carnegie –

 "Let me say here that self-esteem as I understand it is not a free gift that we need only claim: its possession over time represents great achievement." – Nathaniel Branden

Let’s take a look at what a prominent psychotherapist has to say at the first ever International Conference of Self-Esteem. In direct synopsis, Nathaniel Branden, founder of the Self – Esteem Movement:

"A human being cannot hope to realize his or her potential without healthy self-esteem. Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life. More specifically, self-esteem is (a) confidence in our ability to think, confidence in our ability to cope with the challenges of life; and (b) confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to respect our needs and wants and to enjoy the fruits of our efforts. Later I will refine and condense this definition. 

Lacking positive self-esteem, our psychological growth is stunted. Positive self-esteem operates as, in effect, the immune system of consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life’s adversities is diminished. We crumble before vicissitudes that a healthier sense of self could vanquish. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy; negatives have more power over us than positives. If we do not believe in ourselves—neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness—the universe is a frightening place.

If we do have a realistic confidence in our mind and value, if we feel secure within ourselves, we tend to experience the world as open to us and to respond appropriately to challenges and opportunities. Self-esteem empowers, energizes, motivates. It inspires us to achieve and allows us to take pleasure and pride in our achievements. It allows us to experience satisfaction. 

In their enthusiasm, some writers today seem to suggest that a healthy sense of self-value is all we need to assure happiness and success. The matter is more complex than that. We have more than one need, and there is no single solution to all the problems of our existence. A well-developed sense of self is a necessary condition of our well-being but not a sufficient condition. Its presence does not guarantee fulfillment; but its lack guarantees some measure of anxiety, frustration, and despair.

To the extent that we are confident in the efficacy of our minds—confident of our ability to think, learn, understand—we tend to persevere when faced with difficult or complex challenges. Persevering, we tend to succeed more often than we fail, thus confirming and reinforcing our sense of efficacy. To the extent that we doubt the efficacy of our minds and lack confidence in our thinking, we tend not to persevere but to give up. Giving up, we fail more often than we succeed, thus confirming and reinforcing our negative self-assessment. 

High self-esteem seeks the stimulation of demanding goals; and reaching demanding goals nurtures good self-esteem. Low self-esteem seeks safety of the familiar and undemanding; and confining oneself to the familiar and undemanding serves to weaken self-esteem.

The higher our self-esteem, the better equipped we are to cope with adversity in our careers or in our personal lives; the quicker we are to pick ourselves up after a fall; the more energy we have to begin anew. 

The higher our self-esteem, the more ambitious we tend to be, not necessarily in a career or financial sense, but in terms of what we hope to experience in life—emotionally, creatively, spiritually. The lower our self-esteem, the less we aspire to, and the less we are likely to achieve. Either path tends to be self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. 

The higher our self-esteem, the more disposed we are to form nourishing rather than toxic relationships—since like is drawn to like, health is attracted to health, and vitality and expansiveness in others are naturally more appealing to persons of good self-esteem than are emptiness and dependency.

An important principle of human relationships is that we tend to feel most comfortable, most ―at home, with persons whose self-esteem level resembles our own. High self-esteem individuals tend to be drawn to high self-esteem individuals. Medium self-esteem individuals are typically attracted to medium self-esteem individuals. Low self-esteem seeks low self-esteem in others. The most disastrous relationships are those between two persons both of who think poorly of themselves. 

The higher our self-esteem, the more inclined we are to treat others with respect, benevolence, good will, and fairness—since we do not tend to perceive them as a threat, and since self-respect is the foundation of respect for others. 

Self-esteem has two interrelated aspects: a sense of personal efficacy (self-efficacy) and as sense of personal worth (self-respect). As a fully realized psychological experience, it is the integrated sum of these two aspects. 

Self-efficacy means confidence in the functioning of my mind, in my ability to think, in the processes by which I judge, choose, decide; confidence in my ability to understand the facts of reality that fall within the sphere of my interests and needs; cognitive self-trust; cognitive self-reliance.

Self-respect means assurance of my value; an affirmative attitude toward my right to live and to be happy; comfort in appropriately asserting my thoughts, wants, and needs; the feeling that joy is my natural birthright.

They are the defining characteristics of the term because of their fundamentality. They represent not derivative or secondary meanings of self-esteem, but its essence. To sum up in a formal definition: self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the challenges of life and as deserving of happiness. 

The question is sometimes asked, ―"Is it possible to have too much self-esteem?"

No, it is not; any more than it is possible to have too much physical health. Sometimes self-esteem is confused with boasting or bragging or arrogance; but such traits reflect, not too much self-esteem, but too little; they reflect a lack of self-esteem. Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is in being who they are, not in being better than someone else. 

We know that an honest commitment to understanding inspires self-trust and that an avoidance of the effort has the opposite effect. We know what people who live mindfully feel more competent than those who live mindlessly. We know that integrity engenders self-respect and that hypocrisy does not. We "know" all this implicitly, although it is astonishing how rarely such matters are discussed.

More than three decades of study have convinced me that six practices are crucial and fundamental. When these practices are absent, self-esteem necessarily suffers; when and to the extent that they are an integral part of a person’s life, self-esteem is strengthened. When we reflect on these practices, I believe the reasons for this become almost self-evident. 

1. The Practice of Living Consciously: If our lives and well-being depend on the appropriate use of our consciousness, then the extent to which we honor sight over blindness is the single most important determinant of our self-efficacy and self-respect. We cannot feel competent in life while wandering around (at work, dealing with bosses, subordinates, associates, customers, or in our marriages, or in our relations with our children) in a self-induced mental fog. If we betray our basic means of survival by attempting to exist unthinkingly, or to evade discomforting facts, our sense of worthiness suffers accordingly. We know our defaults, whether anyone else does. Self-esteem is the reputation we get with ourselves. 

A thousand times a day we must choose the level of consciousness at which we will function. A thousand times a day we must choose between thinking and nonthinking. Gradually, over time, we establish a sense of the kind of person we are, depending on the choices we make, the degree of rationality and integrity we exhibit. This is the reputation of which I speak. 

Living consciously entails:

-A mind that is active rather than passive. 

-An intelligence that takes joy in its own function.

-Being in the moment, without losing the wider context.

-Reaching out toward relevant facts other than withdrawing from them. 

-Noticing and confronting one’s impulses to avoid or deny painful or threatening realities. 

-Being concerned to know "where I am" relative to my various (personal and professional) goals and projects, and whether I am succeeding or failing. 

-Being concerned to know if my actions are in alignment with my purposes. 

-Searching for feedback from the environment so as to adjust or correct my course when necessary. 

-Persevering in the attempt to understand, in spite of difficulties.

-Being receptive to new knowledge and willing to re-examine old assumptions. 

-Being willing to see and correct mistakes. 

-Seeking always to expand awareness—a commitment to learning—therefore, a commitment to growth as a way of life. 

-A concern to understand the world around me. 

-A concern to know not only external reality but also internal, the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives, so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself. 

2. The Practice of Self-Acceptance: At the deepest level, this is the virtue of commitment to the value of our own person. Not the pretense at a self-esteem we do not possess, but rather the primary act of self-value that is the base of our dedication to achieving self-esteem. 

It is expressed, in part, through our willingness to accept—that is, to make real to ourselves, without denial or evasion—that we think what we think, feel what we feel, have done what we have done, and are what we are. It is the refusal to regard any part of ourselves—our bodies, our fears, our thoughts, our actions our dreams—as alien, as ―"not me." Self-acceptance is our willingness to experience rather than to disown whatever may be the facts of our being at a particular moment. Self-acceptance is our refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to ourselves. 

It is the willingness to say of any emotion or behavior, ―This is an expression of me—not necessarily an expression I like or admire—but an expression of me nonetheless, at least at the time it occurred. It is the virtue of realism—that is, of respect for reality—applied to the self. Thus, if I am confronted with a mistake I have made, in accepting that it is mine I am free to learn from it and do better in the future. I cannot learn from a mistake I cannot accept having made. Self-acceptance is the precondition of change and growth. 

3. The Practice of Self-Responsibility: To feel competent to live and worthy of happiness, I need to experience a sense of control over my existence. This requires that I be willing to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals—which means that I take responsibility for my life and well-being. 

The practice of self-responsibility entails these realizations:

-I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

-I am responsible for my choices and actions. 

-I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work. 

-I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

-I am responsible for my behavior with other people—co-workers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends. 

-I am responsible for how I prioritize my time. 

-I am responsible for the quality of my communications. 

-I am responsible for my personal happiness. I am responsible for choosing the values by which I live. 

-I am responsible for raising the level of my self-esteem. To the extent that I evade responsibility for my life, I inflict wounds on my self-esteem. In accepting responsibility, I build self-esteem. 

4. The Practice of Self-Assertiveness: This is the virtue of appropriate self-expression—the willingness to put my thoughts, convictions, values, and feelings into reality. Its opposite is that surrender to timidity which consists of consigning myself to a perpetual underground where everything that I am lies hidden or still-born—to avoid confrontation with someone who’s values differ from mine, or to please, placate, or manipulate someone, or in order simply to "belong."

Self-assertion does not mean belligerence or inappropriate aggressiveness. It simply means the willingness to stand up for myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect in all human encounters. It means the refusal to fake my person to be liked. 

To practice self-assertiveness is to live authentically, to speak and act from my innermost convictions and feelings—as a way of life, as a general rule (allowing for the obvious fact that there may be particular circumstances in which I may justifiably choose not to do so—for example, when confronted by a hold-up man). 

To aspire is not yet self-assertion, or just barely; but to bring my aspirations into reality, is. To hold values is not yet self-assertion, or just barely; to pursue them and stand by them in the world, is. One of the great self-delusions is to think of oneself as "a valuer" while not pursuing one’s values in reality when the freedom to do so exists. 

Healthy self-assertion, as I use the concept here, entails the willingness to confront rather than evade the challenges of life and to strive for mastery. When we expand the boundaries of our ability to cope, we expand self-efficacy and self-respect. 

5. The Practice of Living Purposefully: All living action is goal directed. Life itself has been defined as a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. Thus, purpose is of the very essence of the life process. 

Through our purposes we organize our behavior, giving it focus and direction. Through our purposes we create the sense of structure that allows us to experience control over our existence. 

To live without purpose is to live at the mercy of chance—the chance event, the chance phone call, the chance encounter—because we have no standard by which to judge what is or is not worth doing. Outside forces bounce us along, like a cork floating on water, with no initiative of our own to set a specific course. Our orientation to life is reactive rather than proactive. 

To live purposefully is to use our powers for the attainment of goals we have selected: the goal of studying, of raising a family, of earning a living, of starting a new business, of bringing a new product into the marketplace, of solving a scientific problem, of building a vacation home. It is our goals that led us forward. It is our goals that call on the exercise of our faculties. It is our goals that energize our existence. 

To live purposefully is to live productively—which is a necessity of making ourselves competent to life. Productiveness is the act of supporting our existence by translating our thought into reality, of setting our goals and working for their achievement, of bringing knowledge, goods, or services into existence. 

It is not the degree of a person’s productive ability that matters here, but the person’s choice to exercise such ability as he or she possesses. It is not the kind of work selected that is important (provided the work is not intrinsically anti-life), but whether a person seeks work that requires and expresses the full use of his or her intelligence, if the opportunity to do so exists. 

We build our sense of fundamental efficacy through the mastery of particular forms of efficacy related to the attainment of particular tasks. Fundamental efficacy cannot be generated in a vacuum: it must be created and expressed through some specific tasks successfully mastered. It is not that achievements "prove" our worth, but rather that the process of achieving is the means by which we develop our effectiveness, our competence at living. I cannot be efficacious in the abstract without being efficacious about anything in particular. 

So, productive work has the potential of being a powerful self-esteem building activity. 

To live purposefully and productively requires that we cultivate within ourselves a capacity for self-discipline. Self-discipline is the ability to organize our behavior over time in the service of specific tasks. No one can feel fully competent to cope with the challenges of life who is without the capacity for self-discipline. 

To observe that purposefulness is essential to fully realized self-esteem should not be understood to mean that the measure of an individual’s worth is his or her external achievements. We admire achievements—in others and in ourselves—and it is natural and appropriate for us to do so. But this is not the same thing as saying that my achievements are the measure-—or grounds—of my self-esteem. The root of my self-esteem is not my achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for me to achieve—all the self-esteem virtues we are discussing here. 

6. The Practice of Integrity: As we mature and develop our own values and standards (or absorb them from others), the issue of personal integrity assumes increasing importance in our self-assessment. Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs—and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match, we have integrity. 

When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes. We respect ourselves less. If the policy becomes habitual, we trust ourselves less or cease to trust ourselves at all. When a breach of integrity wounds self-esteem, only the practice of integrity can heal it. 

At the simplest level, personal integrity entails such questions as: Am I honest, reliable, and trustworthy? Do I keep my promises? Do I do the things I say I admire and do I avoid the things I say are despicable? 

To understand why lapses of integrity are detrimental to self-esteem, consider what a lapse of integrity entails. If I act in contradiction to a moral value held by someone else but not by me, I may or may not be wrong, but I cannot be faulted for having betrayed my convictions. If however, I act against what I myself regard as right, if my actions clash with my expressed values, then I act against my judgment, I betray my mind. Hypocrisy, by its very nature is self-invalidating. It is mind rejecting itself. A default on integrity undermines me and contaminates my sense of self. It damages me as no external rebuke or rejection can damage me.

If I preach a concern with quality but indifferently sell my customers shoddy goods, if I unload bonds I know to be falling in value to a client who trusts my honor, if I pretend to care about my staff’s ideas when my mind is already made up, if I out-maneuver a colleague in the office and appropriate his achievements, if I ask for honest feedback and penalize the employee who disagrees with me, if I ask for pay sacrifices from others on the grounds of hard times and then give myself a gigantic bonus—I may evade hypocrisy, I may insist "everyone does it," I may tell myself anything I like, but the fact remains I launch an assault on my self-respect that no rationalization will dispel. If I am uniquely situated to raise my self-esteem, I am also uniquely situated to lower it.

6 Practices End 

Students of child development know that a child who is treated with respect tends to internalize that respect and then treat others with respect—in contrast to a child who is abused, internalizes self-contempt, and grows up reacting to others out of fear and rage. If I feel centered within myself, secure with my boundaries, confident in my right to say yes when I say yes and no when I want to say no—benevolence is the natural result. There is no need to fear others, no need to protect myself with hostility. If I am secure in my right to exist, confident that I belong to myself, unthreatened by certainty in others, then co-operation with them to achieve shared goals to develop spontaneously. 

Empathy and compassion, no less than benevolence and co-operativeness, are far more likely to be found among persons of high self-esteem than among low; my relationship to others tends to mirror and reflect my relationship to myself. Commenting on the admonition to love thy neighbor as thyself, longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer remarks somewhere that the problem is that this precisely is what people do: persons who hate themselves hate others. The killers of the world, literally and figuratively, are not known to be in intimate or loving relationship to their inner selves. 

Sometimes we see people who enjoy worldly success, or are widely esteemed, and who have a public veneer of assurance, and yet are deeply dissatisfied, anxious, or depressed. They may project the appearance of self-esteem, but do not possess the reality. How might we understand them? 

Let us begin with the observation that to the extent that we fail to develop authentic self-esteem, the consequence is varying degrees of anxiety, insecurity, self-doubt. This is the sense of being, in effect, inappropriate to existence (although no one thinks of it in these terms; instead, one might feel something is wrong with me). This state is extremely painful. And because it is painful, we are motivated to evade it, to deny our fears, rationalize our behavior, and fake a self-esteem we do not posses. We may develop what I have termed pseudo-self-esteem.

Pseudo-self-esteem is the illusion of self-efficacy and self-respect without the reality. It is a nonrational, self-protective device to diminish anxiety and to provide a spurious sense of security—to assuage our need for authentic self-esteem while allowing the real causes of its lack to be evaded. It is based on values that may be appropriate or inappropriate but that in either case are not intrinsically related to that which genuine self-efficacy and self-respect require. 

For example, instead of seeking self-esteem through consciousness, responsibility, and integrity, we may seek in through popularity, prestige, material acquisitions, or sexual exploits. Instead of valuing personal authenticity, we may value belonging to the right clubs, or the right church, or the right political party. Instead of practicing appropriate self-assertion, we may practice blind loyalty to our particular group. Instead of seeking self-respect through honesty, we may seek it through philanthropy ( I must be a good person, I do "good works"). Instead of striving for the power of competence, we may pursue the "power" of manipulating or controlling other people. The possibilities for self-deception are almost endless—all the blind alleys down which we can lose ourselves, not realizing that what we desire cannot be purchased with counterfeit currency. 

Self-esteem is an intimate experience; it resides in the core of my being. It is what I think and feel about myself, not what someone else thinks or feels about me. This simple fact can hardly be over-stressed. 

I can be loved by my family, my mate, and my friends, and yet not love myself. I can be admired by my associates and yet regard myself as worthless. I can project an image of assurance and poise that fools virtually everyone and yet secretly tremble with a sense of my inadequacy. I can fulfill the expectations of others and yet fail my own; I can win every honor and yet feel I have accomplished nothing; I can be adored by millions and yet wake up each morning with a sickening sense of fraudulence and emptiness.

To attain "success" without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure. The acclaim of others does not create our self-esteem. Neither do knowledge, skills, material possessions, marriage, parenthood, philanthropic endeavors, sexual conquests, or face lifts. These things can sometimes make us feel better about ourselves temporarily, or more comfortable in particular situations. But comfort is not self-esteem. 

Unfortunately, teachers of self-esteem are no less impervious to the worship of false gods than anyone else. I recall listening to a lecture by a man who conducts self-esteem seminars. He announced that one of the very best ways to raise our self-esteem is to surround ourselves with people who think highly of us. I thought of the nightmare of low self-esteem in persons surrounded by praise and adulation—like rock stars who have no idea how they got where they are and who cannot survive a day without drugs. I thought of the futility of telling a person of low self-esteem, who feels lucky if he or she is accepted by anyone, that the way to raise self-esteem is to seek the company only of admirers. 

Clearly, it is wiser to seek companions who are the friends of one’s self-esteem rather than its enemies. Nurturing relationships are preferable to toxic ones. But to look to others as a primary source of our self-esteem is dangerous: first, because it doesn’t work; and second, because we run the risk of becoming approval addicts, which is deadly to mental and emotional well-being. 

I do not wish to suggest that a psychologically healthy person is unaffected by the feedback he or she receives from others. We are social beings and certainly others contribute to our self-perceptions. But there are gigantic differences among people in the relative importance to their self-esteem of the feedback they receive—persons for whom it is almost the only factor of importance and persons for whom the importance is a good deal less. This is merely another way of saying there are gigantic differences among people in the degree of their autonomy. 

Having worked for over thirty years with persons who are unhappily preoccupied with the opinions of others, I am persuaded that the most effective means of liberation is by raising the level of consciousness one brings to one’s own experience; the more one turns up the volume on one’s inner signals, the more external signals tend to recede into proper balance. This entails, as I wrote in Honoring the Self, learning to listen to the body, learning to listen to the emotions, learning to think for oneself. 

In conclusion: It might have struck you, reflecting on my list of self-esteem practices, that they sound very much like a code of ethics—or part of one. That is true. The virtues that self-esteem asks of us are also ones that life asks of us."


The complete writing can be found at : http://www.selfesteem.org/what_is_selfesteem.htm