Self-esteem. How many people have been told that they have “low self-esteem,” that it is negatively affecting their lives, and have been given ridiculous explanations of the phenomenon, a drivel of psychobabble that makes them feel both confused and worthless? Honestly, it is practically impossible to come across a empowering definition of self-esteem that can propel us to live healthier and better lives from any textbook, psychology book or “mental health provider.”
Here is the definition from wikipedia, for example:
“Self-esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs (for example, “I am competent”, “I am worthy”) and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame. Self-esteem can apply specifically to a particular dimension (for example, “I believe I am a good writer and I feel happy about that”) or have global extent (for example, “I believe I am a bad person, and feel bad about myself in general”).
Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic (“trait” self-esteem), though normal, short-term variations (“state” self-esteem) also exist.”
What exactly are they telling us here? There is an entity called “self-esteem” inside of you, and… Well, you can’t really change it, but maybe you can make a few little tweaks here and there so you don’t feel that depressed. Your self-esteem is an “enduring personality characteristic” and you can’t do much about it.
My response to that would be: What a bunch of utter nonsense! You can become more competent, you can become more successful and you can change your emotions. Anybody who tells you that you can’t, is doing you a disservice. In fact, many so-called “experts” are basically confusing people even more than they were when they asked for help.
But what exactly is self-esteem and how can we use the knowledge of what self-esteem truly is in a practical way to improve our lives? There are many intelligent ways to look at this question and I am going to give you just one of them, for now. This is certainly not the only way to define self-esteem, but it damn sure is better than the disempowering psychobabble from wikipedia.
Let’s look at self-esteem in a way that we can use it to improve our lives. I’m going to divide it into five separate factors that influence whether we have high or low self-esteem:
1. Having an internal locus of control.
This means that you must decide how you are going to feel about events and circumstances, rather than feeling a certain way just because something happens to you, or because somebody says something. I know this sounds simple, but in my life, I’ve made this dumb mistake over and over again.
Bad things are going to happen in life, whether we like it or not. I’ve been surrounded by gangsters on the streets, my best friend was mugged in Spain and the police did nothing but laugh at him. Even much worse things happen. The question is this: are we going to let those external events define us? In that case, we let the jerks win! Yes, people have screwed us in the past and many negative things have happened. But we can’t allow ourselves to become the victims of those things then turn them into an identity for ourselves.
So the first principle of changing our low self-esteem is to realize that we decide how to deal with the things that happen to us. Otherwise we will always have low self-esteem.
2. Having a very good strategy for learning from our mistakes.
This increases our confidence, because we know that next time we will not make the same mistake. Every time we make a mistake and we realize the mistake we made, we can correct it and prepare ourselves for next time. In this way we become a more powerful as time goes on. Learn something from your past experience, otherwise they will have gone to waste. Rather than beating yourself up about mishandling a past situation, make sure you prepare so that you never do it again. I can guarantee you that this strategy increases self-esteem more than reading any book.
3. Having a way of finding happiness outside of external circumstances.
If our happiness depends on shallow external things, then it is fragile. It can collapse at any moment. Fixing your external life situation exactly how you think it should be does not bring inner peace. Meditative practices such as chineses neigong or tai chi chuan can help tremendously in reaching out to our deeper selves, where we can feel comfortable in our own skins and not worry about other people and external circumstances.
In the end, finding a way to let go of negativity is crucial to happiness.
4. Having a vision of where you want to go that’s not dependent upon external support.
Decide which direction you want your life to be heading in and aim for that goal without expecting anything from anyone. If you expect others to help you, then you’re sabotaging yourself. Yes you can get help along the way, yes you can be flexible and adjust your plan when needed, but at bottom, you have to make a plan of action done for and by you.
That’s what I did when life got really tough, when my life truly sucked, and it helped a lot. Guaranteed.
5. Having a good framing and reframing style. How do you interpret events? How do you interpret yourself? Think about it. How do you frame these things in your mind?
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
First example. Let’s suppose you start a small business and it loses money. If you carry on thinking “I’m a bankrupt, I’m a failure, I can’t do anything right,” etc…, then you’ve defined yourself as a failure based on one experience. At the same time, you’ve brainwashed yourself into failing over and over again!
Second example. If a student approaches 6 or 7 women in university and they all turn him down and maybe even ridicule him he could think:
a) “I am a failure, women don’t like me, I can’t get a date, I’m going to die single,” etc….
or
b) “My approach to attracting women is not very good yet. I need to improve my skill by learning.”
And then go seek help on the matter. See? It’s that simple. If he chooses the first one, maybe he will die single. But if he chooses the second one, there is hope.
Maybe it’s not easy, especially when the issues are much more serious, but I know from personal experience that actually practicing this way of thinking goes a long way to increasing happiness.
Hopefully this post helps a few people, I know that these ideas helped me.
Low self-esteem is not permanent, it is not a part of you, it is a temporary state that you can change by working on yourself./strong
