So, let’s talk about Self-Esteem – What it is and what it is not. The “lack” of self-esteem has often been used as an excuse to justify or rationalize bad behavior. Somehow, if I or you lie, play games, are unfaithful, are deliberately hurtful, have no compassion, whatever, if we do those things because we are lacking in self-esteem, well then it isn’t as bad as if we had self-esteem and did those things. That is, of course, complete nonsense.
When people are dishonest or controlling or playing games or whatever, the truth is that those behaviors reflect a lack of character, a deficit in their principles and ideals. It is, funny enough, those old-fashioned values of having morals, character, and integrity that contribute greatly to the process of generating real self-esteem. However, it is a great deal more than that but if you read no further than the end of this paragraph, if you lived your life solely by those values and did nothing more, you would have more self-esteem on a daily basis.
Now, yes, esteem from others is important. We all want to be held in high esteem by others. That means we want to be respected and admired for who we are rather than for what we have accomplished. Although we can certainly be respected and admired for what we have accomplished in life, more importantly, we want to be respected for who we are. We want others to recognize our worth. We all want to be held in high regard by family, friends, and associates. However, being esteemed by others is not the same thing as self-esteem and being esteemed by others will not provide self-esteem. We must earn our self-esteem from ourselves.
Esteem is a real and an essential need. Psychologist Abraham Maslow is famous for having developed what he labelled as the Hierarchy of Needs. These needs are endemic to humans. Level One is Physiological Needs – air, food, water, shelter, sleep, clothing, etc. The things we need to survive physically.
Level Two is Safety Needs. Most people think of safety as a physical thing, absolutely. But we all also have mental, emotional, and spiritual needs that, when met, help us to feel safe. What those needs are can vary widely between people. As example, suppose you are one of those people who is driven by logic and reason, and you need the people around you to be logical and reasonable and rational. Then someone walks into your life who works off of their feelings and intuition. They follow their gut, logic be damned. That person might make your logical self feel profoundly unsafe. Level Two, meeting your safety needs and ensuring the security of your survival.
Level Three of the Needs Hierarchy is Love and Belonging. It is a human need to give, receive, and be loved. We all have the need and the desire to be intimate – close, tender, vulnerable, trusting, caring – with selected others. We all also need to feel like we belong – whether to a group, a tribe, a family, a place, an occupation, etc. Where do I belong in life? What kinds of people, what career or field of interest, what geographic location, is where I belong? We’ve all had the experience of being on the outside looking in, longing to belong - to the “cool” group or the jocks or a specific country club or a certain business association, or a specific house of worship or a recreational group. We need and want that sense of connection.
Then comes the need for esteem. Need Level Four – Esteem. From others, yes, but more importantly, from ourselves. “Why isn’t getting esteem from others enough? Seems to me it is better if I get it from someone else.” Are you sure? What happens if, for some reason, they stop holding you in high esteem? That doesn’t necessarily mean that they begin to dislike you but what if they move away or just drift away and you are unable to get your regular fix? Suppose you have hundreds or thousands of social medial followers? Now, having lots of social media followers may feed your ego but it won’t give you real self-esteem. That said, what happens if you fall out of favor, are deemed to have committed a microaggression or some other infraction and get cancelled? Whatcha gonna do? The real gift here is, and this applies to self-love as well as self-esteem, is that while no one can give these things to you, no one can take them away either when you are getting them from yourself.
When I teach and do counseling, I work off of a modified hierarchy and in my hierarchy, there are four additional levels above esteem but that is for another time. The thing to keep in mind about this hierarchy is that you need to be working to meet the needs of all four of the levels we’ve laid out above concurrently. You don’t wait until you’ve met all of your survival needs and then move up a level to working on your safety needs. And then once you’ve met all of your safety needs, then you can move up to love and belonging needs. No. All four levels must be attended to, though their immediate existential priority in relation to one another will change, often daily. Thus, meeting esteem needs is as important as meeting your survival needs. And, meeting the needs of each of these levels is an ongoing process. The nice thing about meeting our core needs is that we become happier people in the process.
Another nice thing about self-esteem is that when you find your life or yourself to have stopped growing and changing, when things have gotten stale, routine, dull, it can motivate you to keep on growing and stretching. To grow and stretch even more in service of, or at least heading in that direction, becoming all that you can be. This is not an ad for the army – “Be all that you can be.” – No. Maslow called it self-actualization, the peak, the culmination, the highest of the needs, our needs.
The choices we make and the beliefs that we hold are partially sourced from our self-esteem. As example, how often have you made a choice that you knew not to make because you knew what the fallout would be? And yet, you made that choice when you had other options and sabotaged a relationship or a job or even your life? And if not you, how many people have you seen self-sabotage or self-punish? And why did they make those choices? Because they believed they needed to or had to or deserved what they got or they just didn’t want to prove an errant belief wrong. “Nothing ever works out for me,” that is until you let something work out and then you get to see that yes it can, and that the world would remain on its axis. In order to generate more and more self-esteem, we can learn to evaluate potential outcomes of our choices before we act and we can practice, over time, making better and better choices as we go along. And we can root out and heal the errant beliefs like the one just mentioned so that they change into something more positive.
One more thing. Without our own sense of self-esteem, we run the risk of potentially taking on and living other people’s beliefs and other people’s choices. As example, if you are a supervisor or manager, you have seen people who live up or down to your expectations of them, unless they operate from their own expectations of themselves. People who take on the beliefs from others about their worth and what their lives can and can’t or will or won’t be. Or fulfilling a role we think are expected or destined to play rather than living a life that reflects our most authentic self.
Sometimes we wind up making the same kinds of choices we see others making, refusing to make choices for ourselves. I watched my mother self-sabotage herself more times than I can tell you. The choices were fear based but they were also self-sabotaging. Why did she do this? I learned early on that my nerve body couldn’t take that feeling of knowing I’d just deliberately fucked myself. Why did I make those choices? I made them to be self-punishing. Esteem will get you out of these kinds of places.
Self-esteem is our own value judgement of ourself. It is your self-evaluation of you. Your estimate of who you are. So let’s look at what are some valid criteria that we all can use to evaluate ourselves in a way that can generate real self-esteem? And then, what specifically are some things we can and must do daily?
As simple as this is going to sound initially, make the determination to be personally powerful. That is not so easy in our current world. There is a lot of self-pity and people feeling like victims. People feeling helpless. People feeling mistrustful of and anxious about pretty much everything. Pick your area – environment, civil rights, health care, education, whatever - I hear a lot of, “What is the point? The deck is stacked against us. Nothing will ever change.” Or, the ubiquitous “They”. “They did it to me. They are responsible, not me. I am powerless against whomever or whatever.”
First thing is to come to peace with the fact that you are not powerless nor are you helpless, and you are not a victim, in the greater scheme of things. That doesn’t mean bad or unwelcome things won’t ever happen in your life, but you are not, ultimately, a victim. You have power, meaning, you do have the ability to take actions in your life. Yes, there may be times so bad that you are paralyzed by fear or there may be times that you are so happy that you feel life is just going your way and you need take no actions in life for fear of rocking the boat. In either case, you eventually will need to take further positive actions in your life. The question is, are you willing to act, to take action, when necessary?
Start with recognizing that you are powerful enough to act, to have a sense of agency, that you are not helpless nor a victim. Then evaluate how willing you are to take action, to be powerful. Whether that means finding a new job; proposing to your significant other; finally going to the dentist even though you hate going; stop procrastinating about getting the oil changed in your car; applying to grad school; voting; appropriately standing up for yourself; going for that promotion – recognize that you are the only one who has the authority to give you the permission you need to take those constructive actions in your life. Knowing that you are neither helpless nor a victim, but rather are willing and able to act, you will, over time, generate more and more self-esteem.
Secondly, honestly evaluating how good you are at thinking and feeling. Yes, I have written and podcasted a lot about thinking and feeling. Self-esteem is one of the main reasons why. How good are you at each? Most people tend toward thinking everything through, being logical, rational, reasonable, trying to avoid feelings at all costs. (See my blog post and podcast on feelings.) Others prefer feelings, intuition, their gut response to life. They find thought too detached and arid and cold-blooded. If you want self-esteem, you will need more than a passing acquaintance with both your process and habits of thinking and feeling.
What kind of thinker are you? Are you a fast thinker, a slow thinker, a focused thinker, a clear thinker, a creative thinker? Do you look at the quality of your thinking? That you had a thought is great but is it a good thought, a productive thought, a thought that will lead to good things? Do you practice thinking? How well acquainted are you with your thought process and how it works? Your mental habits. Do you ever question your own thoughts or thought processes? Do you ever work on thinking more clearly, more effectively, more powerfully? Do you work at developing your skill of thinking? Do you try to learn and think about new things, or do you tend to stick with what you know, however limited or expansive that may be?
How well do you feel? Do you feel deeply, powerfully, profoundly, consciously, intensely, or shallowly, reactively, superficially? How good are you at identifying your feelings or do they just sit there as a sort of vague unease until you are able to bury or forget them? Are you willing to go into the depth of your emotions or do you skate around the edges?
The second step is to evaluate and be aware and then set out to grow your ability to think and your ability to feel. Thinking for yourself and feeling what you feel, not what you think you should think or feel, not what you think others think you should think or feel. In our current world where too many blindly accept conspiracy theories, where too many are willing to be influenced by the “influencers” on social media for FOMO, where there is an abundance of folks everywhere who are more than willing to tell you what to think and feel, it is critical that you think and feel for yourself and that you deepen and stretch and grow your ability to think and feel. That will bring you more self-esteem.
One last point here. With your capacity to evaluate your ability to think and feel, it enables you to be able to learn from or get something from pretty much anything – a silly person, a forgettable television show, or a dull job. Without that ability, you could read or hear or watch something remarkably profound and life changing, and you’d miss it because you have not developed those deeper skills. Do the work here. The returns will be immeasurable.
Thirdly, evaluate your character. Do you live by your principles? There are several components to character. What ideals do you try to live by? Being an understanding person is an ideal, for example. Being understanding doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything you understand. But it does mean that you seek to understand yourself. You seek to understand other people and where they are coming from, and you try to see things from their perspective. Or you try to understand situations that you find yourself in that may be unexpected or foreign to you. Another ideal is being compassionate. Having empathy for others and the trials they may be facing. Compassion is often born from having experienced something similar and you understand the depth and breadth of what someone else is going through. Creativity is an ideal. Being a loving person is an ideal. Being honest is an ideal. Balance is an ideal. So is always doing the right thing. We may never reach the fullness of those ideals but in our striving to live by those principles, we become more.
Once you have some idea of what your ideals are, then you establish principles. Principles are the actions you will or won’t take in pursuit of those ideals. My ideal may be to be an honest person, but I also stick to my principle of not deliberately hurting anyone in being honest with them. Principles are boundaries in a sense. Character is the frequency with which you live by your principles. If I only do the right thing when other people are looking, then I don’t have much character. If I only behave responsibly when I have to or when someone makes me, I don’t have much character. Thus, a person who has character can identify and define their ideals, can delineate their principles, and adhere to them, live by them, and function within those boundaries. And those people will have a much greater sense of self-esteem.
We all evaluate our own character. Jean-Paul Sartre in his book, Being and Nothingness, talks about ‘Bad Faith.” Sartre makes a clear distinction between lying to oneself and lying in general. He writes, “The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding. A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of . . .” He goes on, “. . .in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth.” “It follows first that the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived. Better yet I must know the truth very exactly in order to conceal it more carefully . . .” And, Sartre insists, we will fail completely in deliberately and cynically attempting to lie to ourselves. And we will fail because implicit in this is the knowledge that, on some level, we know good and well when we are lying to ourselves. No matter how much we try to justify or excuse or explain it away, we know. And it is that knowing that we are acting in bad faith toward ourselves, that we rob ourselves of self-esteem. When we do not live by our principles and ideals, when we fall short, when we do not act from a position of character, and we try to fool ourselves into believing that what we did wasn’t so bad or that it doesn’t matter, the price we pay is self-esteem because we know better on some level.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” The part he didn’t tell you is that you can’t ever really fool yourself because you know when you are dealing with yourself in bad faith.
So, to wrap up Part 1, first know that self-esteem is a real need. No fine print. Working to meet your needs is an ongoing , never-ending process that, as you work with it over time, becomes easier and more automatic.
Self-esteem can be what shakes you out of the doldrums when life has gotten routine or stale or habitual. It can and will motivate you to continue to grow and change and become more and, in so doing, become free from so much in life that can shackle you or impede you.
Self-esteem can be one of the reasons we learn to make ever-better choices and decisions in our lives.
Self-esteem is your self-evaluation of you. We all are certainly our own toughest critics. When all of the daily noise and distractions and diversions are gone and it is just you with you, no one else, and no one else will know what you really think of you but you, if you are OK in your own book, not perfect, not fabulous, not flawless, but really OK, then you are in a good place headed to even better places.
On a daily basis, claim your power. You do have the ability to act, to take positive, healthy, productive actions in your life. How willing you are to do so is a question you will have to answer. If you are unwilling to act, then know that is an obstacle that can be overcome. You are not helpless. You are not a victim. Victims don’t have self-esteem. They want someone to come and rescue them, fix their life for them. You have the authority to give yourself the permission to act, to be powerful. In so doing, you will have more self-esteem.
On a daily basis, evaluate how good you are at thinking and feeling. We all need to have more than a passing acquaintance with how we think and feel the way we do, and why we think and feel the way we do. We need to know our mental and emotional patterns and habits so we can improve them. And as we become more intimate with our own processes and keep working to improve the quality of those processes, the more self-esteem we will have. You have no idea how well this step alone will serve you.
On a daily basis, evaluate your character. Did you have the integrity to live up to your principles and ideals in pursuit of developing and enhancing your character today? The more you did, the more you’ll have.
Finally, three things to do that will change your life.
Honesty – Brutal honesty with yourself and tactful honesty with everyone else. Honesty about where you excel in life and where you can improve. Honesty about who and what you are and are becoming – the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Honesty about your goals and hopes and dreams and about your fears, your attempts to control and manipulate, your hidden agendas that no one else knows about, and the times you try to manipulate others. Honesty about your beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, decisions, choices, and about your intentions. Honesty about your expectations. The list is endless. When you come across things you don’t like about yourself or are not proud of, you have the power to do something about that. And, above all, be honest about the things you do well – your successes, your accomplishments, your ability to love and care and give of yourself, your strengths and your talents.
Responsibility - Responsibility is not, “Well, you made your bed, now lie in it.” Your ability to respond. You know when you are being responsible and when you are not. You know if you’ve met your commitments, your obligations, your duties, if you will, to yourself and others, and you know when you haven’t. You know how and when and where to be responsible and if you’ve done so, and you also know when you’ve procrastinated, put off, ignored your responsibilities like paying the electric bill or going to bed so you can get up and go to work in the morning or getting new brakes on the car for your safety and for the safety of those you love rather than spending that money shopping online and putting off the repair. The more you are responsible, the more self-esteem you will have.
Integrity – Doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do – always, even when no one else is watching, and even when you aren’t going to be praised for it because only you will know. Keeping your word, your commitments and promises to yourself and others. Integrity is saying what you mean and doing what you say. Integrity is being unfailing honest and trustworthy and reliable. Integrity is striving to not let yourself or others down and when you do, doing what you can to make things right again eventually.
This is a lot to digest, I know. And Part 2 is coming, so this is not the complete process. Self-esteem is a process – an ongoing, never-ending process. But it gets easier and becomes a part of who you are, so you won’t even have to think about it. You will just do it. If you need help with any of this, send us an email or give us a call. Start with all of the above. It will change you and it will change your life. I know this because once I learned this process, it changed me and my life forever.
Stay tuned for Part 2. And again, please let us know if we can be of help in any way.
© 2022 Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media
Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc
