Positive Self-esteem

What do we mean when we claim that self-esteem is an essential human need?  If it’s a fundamental human need that makes it an important contribution to the life process, thus crucial to normal and healthy development. When we lack positive self-esteem, our emotional growth is held back. Positive self-esteem function as the immune system of consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for renewal and growth. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life’s difficulties is weakened. We collapse before change that a healthier sense of self could overcome. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy and we allow negatives to have more power over us than positives. If we do not believe in ourselves—neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness—the universe becomes a very frightening place.

This does not mean that we are necessarily incapable of achieving any real values. Some of us may have the talent and desire to achieve much, in spite of a poor self-concept—like the highly productive workaholic who is driven to prove his worth to, say, a father who expected he would amount to nothing. But it does mean that we will be less effective or less creative, than we have the power to be; and it means that we will be crippled in our ability to find joy in our achievements. And we will feel like we aren’t good “enough.”

If we do have a realistic self-confidence in our mind and value, if we feel secure within ourselves, we tend to experience the world as open and wonderful to us and to respond appropriately to challenges and opportunities. Self-esteem does indeed empower, energize and motivate. It inspires us to achieve and allows us to take pleasure and pride in our achievements. It allows us to experience fulfillment.

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; however certainly its lack will guarantee some measure of anxiety, frustration, and despair.

In a world where there are more choices and options than ever before, and frontiers of limitless possibilities face us in whatever direction we look, we need a higher level of personal autonomy. This means a greater need to exercise independent judgment, to cultivate our own resources, and to take responsibility for the choices, values, and actions that shape our lives; a greater need for self-trust and autonomy; a greater need for a reality-based belief in ourselves. The greater the number of choices and decisions we need to make at a conscious level, the more urgent our need is for self-esteem.

The higher our self-esteem, the better equipped we are to deal with adversity in our careers or in our personal lives and the quicker we are to pick ourselves up after a fall and last 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 in a 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 willing 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-esteemindividuals. 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, kindness, good will, and fairness—since we do not tend to perceive them as a threat, and since self-respect is the source of respect for others.

While an inadequate self-esteem can severely limit an individual’s aspirations and accomplishments, the consequences of the problem isn’t so clear. Sometimes the consequences show up in more indirect ways. The time bomb of a poor self-concept may tick silently for years while an individual, driven by a passion for success and exercising genuine ability, may rise higher and higher in his profession. Then, without real necessity, he starts cutting corners, morally, ethically and/or legally, in his eagerness to provide more extravagant demonstrations of his mastery. Then he/she commits more blatant offenses, still, telling him/her-self that he/she is “beyond good and evil,” as if challenging the fates to bring him/her down. Only at the end, when his/her life and career explode in disgrace and ruin, can we see for how many years he/she has been moving relentlessly toward the final act of an unconscious life script he/she may have begun writing at the age of three.

Self-esteem has two interrelated aspects: a sense of personal efficacy (self-efficacy) and as sense of personal worth (self-respect).  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 area of my interests and needs.  Self-respect means assurance of my value; a positive attitude toward my right to live and to be happy; ease in appropriately asserting my thoughts, wants, and needs; the feeling that joy is my natural birthright.

Consider that if an individual felt inadequate to face the challenges of life, if an individual lacked fundamental self-trust, confidence in his or her mind, we would recognize the presence of a self-esteem deficiency, no matter what other assets he or she possessed. Or if an individual lacked a basic sense of self-respect, felt unworthy or undeservingof the love or respect of others, unentitled to happiness, fearful of assertive thoughts, wants, or needs—again we would recognize a self-esteem deficiency, no matter what other positive attributes he or she exhibited. Self-efficacyand self-respect are the twin pillars of healthy self-esteem; absent either one, self-esteem is impaired. The experience of self-efficacy generates the sense of control over one’s life that we associate with psychological well being, the sense of being at the vital center of one’s existence—as contrasted with being a passive spectator and a victim of events.

The definition of self-esteem is the nature 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.

Certainly upbringing can play a powerful role. No one can say how many individuals suffer such ego damage in the early years, before the ego is fully formed, that it is all but impossible for healthy self-esteem to emerge later, short of intense psychotherapy. I believe that one of the best ways to have good self-esteem is to have parents who have good self-esteem and who model it. In addition, if we have parents who raise us with love and respect, who allow us to experience consistent and kind acceptance, who give us the supporting structure of reasonable rules and appropriate expectations, who do not attack us with disagreement, who do not turn to ridicule, humiliation, or physical abuse as means of controlling us, who project that they believe in our competence and goodness—we have a decent chance of internalizing their positive attitudes and in that way of obtaining the foundation for healthy positive self-esteem.