Self-esteem is something everyone has heard of these days. And almost everyone thinks they know what it means. But do they really?
Being a self-help book junkie, I thought I knew what it meant too – until I read Nathaniel Brandon’s Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.
In short, self-esteem is the reputation you have acquired with yourself over your lifetime. You can lie and put on a different appearance for others to see. But you can’t lie to yourself. The reputation you have with yourself stays with you. ALL. THE. TIME. Even if you act like you don’t care, deep down you know what sort of a person you are.
Now, imagine how you build a reputation with other people. If you care about your work and want to make a good impression on your boss and colleagues, you show up on time every day. You do your job with great care. And you keep promises you made to other people. Over time, you acquire a reputation of being a reliable person. People trust you.
On the other hand, if you do your work sloppily and don’t keep promises, you acquire the reputation of being unreliable.
Your self-reputation is built in the same way.
So, the next time you are going to betray yourself, don’t think it is ok just because nobody else knows. But YOU know. It’s going to lower your reputation.
Breaking down the definition further, there are two main parts in self-esteem: self-efficacy and self-respect.
If you have high self-esteem, you feel confident in your ability to face and overcome the challenges that life throws at you. You are confident in the processes you take. For example, if you need a good living to support yourself, you feel confident that you will find a means to do it. Because of that, you are very likely to find the way. This is self-efficacy.
You also feel deserving of happiness and love. This is self-respect. For example, if you have high self-esteem, you are able to enjoy your successes and love of others, whereas if you have a low one, no matter how much you have achieved, you would still feel worthless.
In terms of feeling, if you have high self-esteem, you feel appropriate to life. You feel right as a person. You trust your own mind. And you feel confident in your abilities to tackle things appropriately.
If you have low self-esteem, you feel wrong as a person. Not necessarily for any specific issue, you just feel wrong. You don’t trust your own judgements. And you stick to familiar and undemanding things.
Why is high self-esteem important to have?
Self-esteem is essential to you in the same way that calcium is to your body. Without it, you won’t die, at least not immediately. But it impairs your function. So, operating with low self-esteem is like living with calcium deficiency.
Just as a well-nourished healthy body can take physical challenges better than an unhealthy one, a person with healthy self-esteem will be able to respond to life challenges more resourcefully and more appropriately than one with low self-esteem.
Needless to say, self-esteem is one of the main determiners of how fulfilling your life is.
Today, we have countless life options that our ancestors of only a generation ago didn’t have. The option to live in your home country or to move to another. The option to marry or simply live together. The option to have children or not to have any. With careers, we have job positions that didn’t exist just 10 years ago. The careers choices available are mind-numbingly huge. Even though it’s a good thing, it can be a bad thing if you don’t have good self-esteem. It’s far easier to choose from a few options. When you see countless options, it’s far more difficult to choose.
To illustrate the point further, imagine sitting in a restaurant looking at a huge menu that offers so many delicious sounding dishes. You will find it more difficult to choose a dish from that menu than one that has just two choices. So, think about how much more difficult it would be when you are talking about life choices.
Sadly, with too many of us, neither our upbringing nor our education has prepared us adequately to cope with a world that offers too many options. I for one grew up following orders from my parents. With abysmally low self-esteem, I wasn’t ready to cope with the world very well when I left home ten years ago.
With overwhelming choices, people need good self-esteem more than ever to survive in this world. You must be able to make good life choices but also to keep on top of them once chosen. You have to be learning all the time. You need to embrace the changes and not be afraid of them.
You need to be able to trust your mind and tackle things resourcefully. Basically, you need high self-esteem to have a successful life.
What I mean by a successful life is one that feels fulfilling and satisfying. One that makes the owner feel the joy of being alive.
Don’t get me wrong. A person with low self-esteem can still achieve a lot of things. But no matter how successful they are, they will never feel fulfilled.
What I am talking about here is not just an outwardly successful veneer but to have an inwardly satisfying life. You only have one life. It’s important to make it a fulfilling one.
So, how do you raise your self-esteem, which is something everyone urgently needs to do?
In Part 2 of this article, I have explored what possibly has determined your self-esteem so far. Finally, in Part 3, I’ll discuss some action steps that you can take to increase your self-esteem.
References
Branden, N. (1995). Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. New York: Random House USA Inc.
Branden, N. (1989). How to Raise your Self-Esteem. New York: Random House USA Inc.