Today I will talk about self-esteem - what it is, why it is important and how high self-esteem differs from low self-esteem in practice. It will also be about what areas you need to pay attention to in order to effectively build and strengthen self-esteem.
Naive self-esteem
Recently, I have been observing a fairly naive approach to self-esteem, which is more about telling yourself that you are worthy than actually understanding what it means, what it comes from not feeling like this, and how we can change it. In part, this is due to the popularization of simple solutions and well-being, which is to solve all problems, even those that require deeper reflection. This particular topic can only do harm, it is too important and too much depends on it not to take a closer look at it.
Self-esteem and self-image
Self-esteem has to do with your self-image, which is broader and involves more than just your self-esteem. Self-image is what we hold to be the truth about ourselves. If I think I'm ugly then that's my truth about myself. On the other hand, if I find myself attractive, that is my truth about me. In addition, if I believe it, it becomes the same fact to me that 2 + 2 is 4. That's why trying to build self-esteem by talking to yourself in front of a mirror - you are wonderful, beautiful, and wise - when you feel and think about yourself otherwise, it may improve your well-being for a while, but it's not enough to build high self-esteem.
That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. For people who are not able to say something like that to themselves in the mirror, this may be the first step, an impulse thanks to which they will really begin to build their self-esteem on solid foundations. It is worth trying an experiment and seeing if it will go down your throat or not, but hoping that it will change what you really think about yourself will definitely fail in the long run. Self-esteem cannot be separated from the actual facts that prove it, so telling yourself something you don't believe and see won't work. It will only help to understand how self-esteem works, what it consists of, and the ACTION that will strengthen and nurture it.
Influence on self-esteem
Self-esteem is influenced by a lot of things, including those that we ourselves had little influence on - e.g. our childhood experiences, the nature of the relationship with our parents, and their relationship with us, but I will not touch on that today. I want to focus on areas that we can influence as adults today. How we can use the knowledge about them to build our self-esteem and understand when we destroy it and when we strengthen it.
Everything I will say today is related to my own experience of building self-esteem and to Nathaniel Branden's book - The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about it.
What is high self-esteem?
There are two things that contribute to high self-esteem:
- Belief in our own effectiveness - awareness that we will cope with the requirements that everyday life places in front of us. The feeling that we can think and face whatever life brings us - finding a job, supporting ourselves, our relationships, problems. In short, it's about trusting yourself and your own mind.
- Self-respect - the belief that we have the right to happiness and success, we are valuable, and we deserve what we want. It is also achieving what is important to us and the ability to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.
Inner Experience
Self-esteem is an inner experience, something we feel and think about ourselves, and it has nothing to do with others. Only we have the power and the ability to work on this through practice that is consistent in several areas that Branden calls pillars of self-esteem. Nobody is able to build our high self-esteem for us, and when we make our self-esteem dependent on others, it is a bit like believing that we will be in shape when someone else will run for us and go to the gym.
Self-esteem and our choices
High self-esteem is directly related to how we act, with our choices. If we choose to deceive someone for our own benefit, even when no one else sees it, we are destroying our self-esteem. If we run a company whose value is environmental protection and we stealthily discharge sewage into a nearby river, we destroy our self-esteem. That doesn't mean you should identify with your behavior and say to yourself - I'm a cheat - that is, make your identity out of it. It's more about seeing what I say, do and think in a realistic way, and knowing if it sticks together - that is, consistency.
Why does inconsistency damage our self-esteem even when no one but us knows that we are doing wrong? Because we squeeze our own stuff and lying to ourselves leaves a mark. Such things accumulate in our psyche, even though we are not aware of it, and since self-esteem is the result of consistent choices for us, incoherent choices necessarily hit our self-esteem. So what if others do not know that you are cheating or polluting the environment, if you know it and act against yourself, you betray yourself. It must affect how you feel about yourself. Your self-respect suffers.
Why is high self-esteem important, and how is it different from low self-esteem?
Healthy self-esteem is associated with ambition, the need for self-expression, an honest approach to oneself and others, an open mind, respectful relationships, kindness, willingness to help and goodwill, flexibility in responding to what happens to us, the ability to learn and build your self-confidence on that basis. All that is necessary to intentionally pursue our goals in line with our values. Healthy self-esteem gives you joy not only in achieving them but also in what you learn as you achieve them. It allows you to really enjoy it without neurotic motivation and attempts to fill your inner void with external achievements and successes. High self-esteem gives you a life without irrational fear, a life full of inspiration.
We persistently pursue our goals with high self-esteem, and striving for them strengthens our self-esteem. This is an interesting paradox because the manifestations of high self-esteem at the same time strengthen it, it is a self-propelling mechanism. Healthy self-esteem protects us from the negative influences of the outside world and gives us the strength to deal with adversities. When we have high self-esteem, we are able to enjoy the successes of others, support them, and give them motivation and strength, because we do not feel threatened by them, we also appreciate our successes and perceive them as valuable. This is because high self-esteem comes from striving for something, not fear. Self-esteem is a condition and, at the same time, the result of any success.
Low self-esteem is due to the fear that we are not good enough. The goal of a person with low self-esteem is to build a sense of security, that is, to protect themselves from something rather than strive for something. The problem is that staying on a defensive level leads to a further weakening of self-esteem. No matter how much success we achieve with such self-esteem, we will not be able to fully enjoy them. Because we feel we don't deserve them. We feel failures much more than successes and remember mainly what we have achieved.
Low self-esteem is also evidenced by arrogance and bragging about successes, such behavior is sometimes confused with high self-esteem, but it proves exactly the opposite. You can also achieve success with low self-esteem, but it will not be considered a success anyway, and achieving it will be backbreaking work instead of a natural extension of ourselves.
6 pillars of self-esteem
Nathaniel Branden has identified 6 basic areas that we can take care of in order to raise our self-esteem - the practice of conscious living, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, assertiveness, purposeful life, and righteousness. When I will briefly talk about them, I suggest you define yourself on a scale from 1-10 on how you evaluate yourself in each of these areas - 10 is excellent, and 1 is terrible. The exercise is about knowing what your self-esteem looks like now, whether it is close to high or low, whether you are somewhere in the middle, and what area you might want to take care of.
1) The practice of living consciously
It is nothing more than being aware of what is the reality of the here and now and acting according to that awareness. If I know that I feel bad at work, but I avoid thinking about it, I run away from it, and I don't live consciously. When I know my relationship sucks, but I get stuck because I'm afraid to be alone, I lie to myself. If I know that drinking and smoking are destroying my health, but ignoring it - it is destroying my self-esteem. I betray my mind this way because I know something, but I pretend I don't see it. I'm fooling myself. Conscious life is about respect for reality. It is not just knowing what is the right choice, but making those choices. The practice of conscious living is also about adjusting the state of mind to the context. For example, when you are riding a motorcycle it is dangerous to be in a dream, you have to adjust your state of mind to the situation in this way you strengthen your awareness. How do you rate your level of conscious life on a scale of 1-10?
2) Self-acceptance
It is recognition of your right to exist by yourself. Self-acceptance is experiencing your feelings, desires, and thoughts without pushing them away from you, in this way you give yourself the right to exist because these things are part of you. Accepting, for example, that you do not want to start writing a business plan, it will be paradoxically easier for you to do it, because there is no lie or fraud in it, there is no telling yourself that you want to. It gives us a much greater willingness to act and allows us to better control our own actions, despite feelings that can sometimes discourage us from doing so. Self-acceptance also has a second function - if you do something you're not proud of, you won't be able to forgive yourself for it without accepting the fact that you actually did it. Again, just like the practice of conscious living, self-acceptance is context-based, so it allows you to understand why you did something stupid in that particular situation, where you made such a decision right now, which does not mean that it justifies your action. It allows you to learn from these experiences without building self-hatred. How do you rate your level of self-acceptance on a scale of 1-10?
3) Responsibility for yourself
Two weeks ago I made a recording about taking responsibility for myself and my life. There, I talk in more detail about why this is important. I will put a link in the description, it's worth watching this movie also in the context of self-assessment. Taking responsibility for ourselves and our life gives us a sense of control over it. It is necessary for high self-esteem because it makes us aware that we ourselves are responsible for our happiness, for our choices, for the implementation of our goals, we do not leave them to chance. This awareness is very liberating and energizing. Responsibility also implies something else - by taking responsibility for ourselves, we recognize that others are not obliged to take care of us, they do not live to meet our needs, and we do not live to satisfy them. It makes our relationships real, not self-interest. What is your level of taking responsibility for yourself on the scale?
4) Assertiveness
It is learning to cooperate with others and not giving up your own standards and beliefs. It means respecting your own desires, needs, and values and expressing them wisely. It has been established that being assertive only means being able to say no, but equally, it is also being able to say yes whenever you want to. Assertiveness is also asking questions, doubting, and questioning the old order and authorities. Sometimes assertiveness is being ready to confront, for example, when our values and beliefs need to be defended. People are often afraid to be assertive because they are afraid of being excluded, they are afraid that they will be left alone, but the truth is that our self-esteem will not get better because of accepting others, it is our inner game. How assertive are you on a scale of 1-10? How often do you say no when you want to say yes and vice versa?
5) A purposeful life
It is about setting goals and striving for them. Without it, our lives are ruled by chance, we become reactive, not active. We wait for something to change, but somehow it does not occur to us that in order for something to change, we have to do something and strive for something. The very pursuit of goals broadens the perspective and allows you to believe that much more is possible for us than we expected. Achieving goals and striving for them confirms our sense of effectiveness. But how our goals look is not insignificant. To achieve them, you need to know exactly what you want, what you should do, and what you shouldn't do. It forces awareness and action according to this knowledge, the end of which is the achievement of the goal. We build our internal capital in this way. Even if we achieve the goal, but then lose its fruit, thanks to internal capital we know that we can achieve this goal a second time. We know how to do it. This is why people who have made and lost their fortunes are often able to rebuild their wealth. What is your situation with purposeful living on a scale of 1-10? What are your goals? Do you have them at all?
6) Righteousness
In short, it is about acting in accordance with our values. To talk about righteousness at all, you need to know what is good and what is bad, and this can be judged precisely by our values. Therefore, knowing what is important to us and why is essential. Sometimes, in order to be a righteous person, we will have to question the standards that have been instilled in us by our culture or our parents. And that's okay because we're doing it to raise our own standards. And in a world of rather low standards, that's true courage. It is definitely worth it, because when we act contrary to what we believe and do it, we will often have less and less respect for ourselves with time, and thus worse and worse behavior will become possible for us. Lack of integrity is another example of how we act against our self-esteem and ourselves. How do you rate your level of integrity on a scale of 1-10? Are you acting primarily in line with or against your own values?
Success condition
To these 6 pillars of self-esteem, I want to add one thing without which it all sounds nice, but it won't help. I mean the courage to act and look at yourself objectively, sometimes the courage to argue, sometimes the courage to say yes. Without it, nothing will change.
As you can see, building self-esteem is not as simple and sweet as it seems and there are no shortcuts here. Building self-esteem requires consistent consistency, which is conditioned by understanding and courage. But living with these principles instead of telling yourself and pretending to do something really changes your self-esteem.
What's your self-esteem now?
See what your results look like? Do you have low, medium, or high self-esteem? Low is 0-4, medium 5-7, and high is 8-10. At what point did you rate your self-esteem as the lowest, and at which point was it the highest? What can you do TODAY to raise them, taking into account what you already know about each pillar? What will change for the better in your life by increasing your self-esteem?
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