Self Esteem Part Two
How Does Healthy Self-Esteem Manifest?
There are some fairly simple and direct ways in which healthy self-esteem manifests itself in our being. These include:
• A face, manner, way of talking and moving that project the pleasure one takes in being alive.
• Ease in talking of accomplishments or shortcomings with directness and honesty, since one is in friendly relationship to facts.
• Comfort in giving and receiving compliments, expressions of affection, appreciation, and the like.
• Open to criticism and comfortable about acknowledging mistakes because one’s self-esteem is not tied to an image of “perfection.”
• One’s words and movements tend to have a quality of ease and spontaneity since one is not at war with oneself.
• Harmony between what one says and does and how one looks, sounds and moves.
• An attitude of openness to and curiosity about new ideas, new experiences, new possibilities of life.
• Feelings of anxiety or insecurity, if they present themselves, will be less likely to intimidate or overwhelm one, since accepting them, managing them and rising above them rarely feels impossibly difficult.
• An ability to enjoy the humorous aspects of life, in oneself and others.
• Flexible in responding to situations and challenges, moved by a spirit of inventiveness and even playfulness, since one trusts one’s mind and does not see life as doom or defeat.
• Comfort with assertive (not belligerent) behaviour in oneself and others.
• Ability to preserve a quality of harmony and dignity under conditions of stress.
Then, on the purely physical level, one can observe characteristics such as these:
• Eyes that are alert, bright, and lively.
• A face that is relaxed and (barring illness) tends to exhibit natural colour and good skin vibrancy.
• A chin that is held naturally and in alignment with one’s body.
• A relaxed jaw.
• Shoulders relaxed yet erect.• Hands that tend to be relaxed, graceful, and quiet.
• Arms tend to hang in a relaxed, natural way.
• Posture tends to be relaxed, erect, well-balanced.
• A walk that tends to be purposeful (without being aggressive and overbearing).
• Voice tends to be modulated with an intensity appropriate to the situation, and with clear pronunciation.
Notice that the theme of relaxation occurs again and again. Relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves and are not at war with who we are. Chronic tension conveys a message of some form of internal split, some form of self-avoidance or self-repudiation, some aspect of the self being disowned or held on a very tight leash.
How Much Is Enough Self-Esteem?
Is it possible to have too much self-esteem?
No, it is not; no 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. People 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.
Self-Esteem Is Acquired, Not Given
Seeing only the tail end of the process I am describing, a person might say, “Its easy for him to think independently. Look at how much self-esteem he has.” But self-esteem is not a given; it is acquired.
One of the ways self-esteem is acquired is by thinking independently when it may not be easy to do so, when it may even be frightening, when the person doing the thinking is struggling with feelings of uncertainty and insecurity and is choosing to persevere nonetheless. It is not always easy to stand by our judgment, and if it has become easy, that itself is a psychological victory —because in the past there were certainly times when it was not easy, when the pressures against independent thought were considerable, and when we had to confront and endure anxiety.
Our Underlying Intention
As far as our self-esteem is concerned, the issue is not whether we are flawless in executing the task of distinguishing among facts, wishes, and fears and choosing consciousness over some form of avoidance. Rather, the issue is one of our underlying intention.
When we describe a person as “basically honest,” in the sense meant here, we do not mean that he or she is impervious to the influence of the wishes and fears, but rather that there is a pronounced and evident desire and intention to see things as they are. We cannot always know for certain
whether or not we are being rational or honest; but we can certainly be concerned about it, we can certainly care. We are not always free to succeed in our thinking, but we are always free to try.
The accumulated sum of our choices in this matter yields an inner sense of basic honesty or dishonesty — a fundamental responsibility or irresponsibility toward existence. From childhood on, some individuals are far more interested in and respectful of such questions of truth than others.
Some operate as if facts need not be facts if we do not choose to acknowledge them, as if truth is irrelevant and lies are lies only if someone finds them out.
The task of consciousness is to perceive that which exists, to the best of our ability. To honour reality — the perception of that which exists — is to honour consciousness; to honour consciousness is to honour self-esteem.
Integrity
Where we see self-esteem, we see behaviour that is consistent with the individuals professed values, convictions, and beliefs. We see integrity.
When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgments 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.
In their eagerness to dissociate themselves from philosophy in general and ethics in particular, psychologists are often uncomfortable with anything that sounds like a reference to morality in the context of psychotherapy or psychological well-being. In consequence, they can miss the obvious fact that integrity is, in effect, one of the guardians of mental health and that it is crueland misleading to encourage people to believe that practicing “unconditional positive regard” toward themselves will bring them to undiluted self-love, irrespective of the question of their personal integrity.
Valuing Ourselves
This does not mean that we are necessarily incapable of achieving any real values. Some of us may have the talent and drive to achieve a great deal, in spite of a poor self-concept — like the highly productive workaholic who is driven to prove his worth to, say, a father who predicted he would amount to nothing. But it does mean that we will be less effective — 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. Nothing we do will ever feel like “enough.”
If we do have 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, despair.
Self-esteem proclaims itself as a need by virtue of the fact that its (relative) absence impairs our ability to function. This is why we say it has survival value.
And never more so than today. We have reached a moment in history when self-esteem, which has always been a supremely important psychological need, has also become a supremely important economic need — an attribute imperative for adaptiveness to an increasingly complex, challenging, and competitive world.
Values, Principles, And Standards
Sometimes an individual seeks to escape from the burden of integrity by disavowing, or professing to disavow, all values and standards. The truth is, human beings cannot successfully regress to a lower level of evolution; we cannot draw back to a time before thinking in principles and long-range planning were possible. We are conceptual beings, that is our nature, and we cannot function successfully as anything less. We need values to guide our actions. We need principles to guide our lives. Our standards may be appropriate or inappropriate to the requirements of our life and well-being, but to live without standards of any kind is impossible. So profound a rebellion against our nature as the attempt to discard all values, principles, and standards is itself an expression of impoverished self-esteem and a guarantee the impoverishment will be ongoing.
Let us acknowledge that the issue of living up to our standards is not always simple. What if our standards are mistaken or irrational?
A Code Of Values
We may accept a code of values that does violence to our needs as living organisms. For example, certain religious teachings implicitly or explicitly damn sex, damn pleasure, damn the body, damn ambition, damn material success, damn (for all practical purposes) the enjoyment of life on earth.
This acceptance of life-denying standards is an enormous problem.
Here, I will simply observe that once we see that living up to our standards appears to be leading us toward self destruction, the time has obviously come to question our standards, rather than simply resigning ourselves to living without integrity. We may need to summon up the courage to
challenge some of our deepest assumptions concerning what we have been taught to regard as the good.
Self-Acceptance
Where we see self-esteem, we see self-acceptance. High self-esteem individuals tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.
If we are to grow and change, we must begin by learning self-acceptance. In my experience, self-acceptance is not an easy concept for most people to understand. The tendency is to equate self-acceptance with the approval of every aspect of our personality (or physical appearance) and with the denial that any change or improvement might be desirable.
To be self-accepting does not mean to be without a wish to change, improve, evolve. It means not to be at war with ourselves — not to deny the reality of what is true of us right now, at this moment of our existence. We deal here with the issue of respect for and acceptance of the facts — in this
case, the facts of our own being.
To accept ourselves is to accept the fact that what we think, feel, and do are all expressions of the self at the time they occur. So long as we cannot accept the fact of what we are at any given moment of our existence, so long as we cannot permit ourselves fully to be aware of the nature of our choices and actions, cannot admit the truth into our consciousness, we cannot change.
Accepting what I am requires that I approach the contemplation of my own experience with an attitude that makes the concepts of approval or disapproval irrelevant: the desire to be aware.
Unconditional Self-Acceptance
There is still a deeper level on which we need to understand self-acceptance. Self-acceptance, inthe ultimate sense, refers to an attitude of self-value and self-commitment that derives fundamentally from the fact that I am alive and conscious. It is deeper than self-esteem. It is a prerational, premoral act of self-affirmation — a kind of primitive egoism that is the birthright of every conscious organism. Yet, human beings have the power to act against or nullify this deep self-affirmation.
An attitude of self-acceptance is precisely what an effective psychotherapist appeals to or strives to awaken in a person of even the lowest self-esteem. This attitude can inspire a person to face whatever he or she most dreads to encounter within, without collapsing into self-hatred,
repudiating the value of his or her person, or surrendering the will to live. Thus a person might be unhappy about experiencing poor self-esteem, yet accept it along with the self-doubts and feelings of guilt. “I accept them as part of how I experience myself right now.”
Self-acceptance, at this level, is unconditional. Self-esteem is not, and cannot be.
The Roots Of Self-Esteem Are Internal
Self-esteem is rooted internally — in mental operations — rather than in external successes or failures. This is an essential point to understand.
The failure to understand this principle causes an incalculable amount of unnecessary anguish and self-doubt. If we judge ourselves by criteria that entail factors outside our volitional control, the result, unavoidably, is a precarious self-esteem that is in chronic jeopardy. But our self-esteem
need not be affected or impaired if, in spite of our best efforts, we fail in a particular undertaking, even though we will not experience the same emotion of pride that we would have felt if we had succeeded.
Further, we need to remember that the self is not a static, finished entity, but a continually evolving creating, an unfolding of our potentialities, expressed in our choices, decisions, thoughts, judgments, responses, and actions. To view ourselves as basically and unalterably good or bad —
independent of our present and future manner of functioning — is to negate the facts of freedom, self-determination, and self-responsibility. We always contain within ourselves the possibility of change. We need never be the prisoner of yesterdays choices.
Approaching Others In A Benevolent Spirit
People who are happy to be themselves, who trust themselves, and are at peace with themselves, are free emotionally and psychologically to approach others in a benevolent spirit. Those with positive self-esteem tend to elicit cooperation, shared enthusiasm and consensus more readily thanpeople who are more self-doubting, insecure and think in terms of a you versus me, win/lose model of human relationships.
Whether you are thinking about people in the context of a large organization or in their personal lives, people who trust themselves tend to deal with others with much greater respect and benevolence than those who do not, with predictable outcomes in terms of their ability to get consensus.
The Conviction That We Are Worthy Of Success
This also relates to the worthiness component of self-esteem — that conviction that we are worthy and deserving of success, happiness, trust, respect and love.
All of life consists of pursuing values. To pursue values, I have to value the beneficiary of my values, namely myself. If at the core I don’t feel worthy of success or happiness, I most likely will not attain it, and if I do I am unlikely to enjoy it. We often see people at work who feel capable
but not worthy. So they work and work and never feel entitled to rest and enjoy what they have done.
People who doubt their efficacy and worth tend to experience fear of other people and, as a consequence, may tend to fall into adversarial relationships with them. These people are perceived as a threat.
If, in contrast, we have confidence in our efficacy and worth, we are much less likely to fall into a “you versus me” mentality. We are more likely to form cooperative relationships and to be skillful at building consensus.
High Levels Of Social Cooperation
Allan S. Watterman, a New Jersey psychologist, did a comprehensive review of all the literature that exists about social cooperation and how well it correlates with a highly developed individuality. He found that it correlated very positively and not only with social cooperation but with the qualities of benevolence, generosity and compassion.
People with 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.
Feeling As If You Make A Difference
I once worked with a rather unproductive team. One of the core causes was that many of the individuals on that team really didn’t feel they could make a difference. They didn’t think that their contribution was going to count at all. The more they began to believe their input would matter, the more easily they cooperated with each other.
It was clearly an issue of self-esteem.
It is a basic human desire to be visible to others, to be seen and appreciated for who we are. And it is natural to want to work in an environment which supports us, supports our self-esteem, supports the view that our contribution can and will make a difference.
As economic cycles change, there are periods when people are unemployed or fear that they will be. Trying times can be handled better by those whose self-esteem and feelings of competence and self-worth are not derived exclusively from their jobs.