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whatever the person’s particular complaint, there was always a deeper issue: a sense of inadequacy, of not being “enough,” a feeling of guilt or shame or inferiority, a clear lack of self-acceptance, self-trust, and self-love. In other words, a problem of self-esteem.
And you know what a gigantic problem passivity and envy is here. The psychological changes we need may be even more formidable than the political or economic changes.”
They preferred to focus only on how others might wound one’s feelings of worth, not how one might inflict the wound oneself.
self-esteem is: 1. confidence in our ability to think, confidence in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life; and 2. confidence in our right to be successful and happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values, and enjoy the fruits of our efforts.
To trust one’s mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.
Causation flows in both directions. There is a continuous feedback loop between our actions in the world and our self-esteem. The level of our self-esteem influences how we act, and how we act influences the level of our self-esteem.
To trust one’s mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.
If I respect myself and require that others deal with me respectfully, I send out signals and behave in ways that increase the likelihood that others will respond appropriately. When they do, I am reinforced and confirmed
The higher our self-esteem, the more ambitious we tend to be, not necessarily in a career or financial sense, but in terms of what we hope to experience in life—emotionally, intellectually, creatively, spiritually.
The higher our self-esteem, the more open, honest, and appropriate our communications are likely to be, because we believe our thoughts have value and therefore we welcome rather than fear clarity.
Medium-self-esteem individuals are typically attracted to medium-self-esteem individuals.
Low self-esteem seeks low self-esteem in others—not consciously,
There is no greater barrier to romantic happiness than the fear that I am undeserving of love and that my destiny is to be hurt. Such fears give birth to self-fulfilling prophecies. If I enjoy
impostor! I don’t belong here!” he tells himself. Feeling in advance that he is doomed, he is not motivated to give his best.
When we are moved primarily by fear, sooner or later we precipitate the very calamity we dread.
“In fact, a person’s image of the future may be a better predictor of future attainment than his past performances.”2 What we make an effort to learn and what
High-self-esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quicker to pick themselves up again.
“The only distinction I’ll claim is that I have a sense of humor about it. And that I know these feelings will pass. And that whatever I think, say, or feel this week, I know that in the end the book will be good.”
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.
If my aim is to prove I am “enough,” the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.
Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to “prove” our worth but to live our possibilities.
So it is always “one more” victory—one more promotion, one more sexual conquest, one more company, one more piece of jewelry, a larger house, a more expensive car, another award—yet the void within remains unfilled.
The greater the number of choices and decisions we need to make at a conscious level, the more urgent our need for self-esteem.
Self-efficacy and self-respect are the dual pillars of healthy self-esteem; absent either one, self-esteem is impaired.
To have high self-esteem, then, is to feel confidently appropriate to life, that is, competent and worthy in the sense I have indicated. To have low self-esteem is to feel inappropriate to life; wrong, not about this issue or that, but wrong as a person.
Our minds do not automatically guide us to act on our best, most rational and informed understanding,
Our free will pertains to the choice we make about the operation of our consciousness in any given situation—to focus it with the aim of expanding awareness or unfocus it with the aim of avoiding awareness.
our actions have or should have nothing to do with how we feel about ourselves.
if we avoid action and decisions in spite of their obvious necessity, that, too, affects our sense of self.
Self-efficacy is not the conviction that we can never make an error. It is the conviction that we are able to think, to judge, to know—and to correct our errors. It is trust in our mental processes and abilities.
trust in our processes—and, as a consequence, a disposition to expect success for our efforts.
As far as our own actions are concerned, one of its roots is the will to efficacy itself—a refusal to surrender to helplessness, persistence in the quest to understand even in the face of difficulties.
Low self-efficacy tends to produce discomfort with the new and unfamiliar and overattachment to yesterday’s skills.
Just as self-efficacy entails the expectation of success as natural, so self-respect entails the expectation of friendship, love, and happiness as natural, as a result of who we are and what we do.
Whether the values by which we explicitly or implicitly judge ourselves are conscious or subconscious, rational or irrational, life serving or life threatening, everyone judges himself or herself by some standard.
Self-esteem contemplates what needs to be done and says “I can.” Pride contemplates what has been accomplished and says “I did.”
Self-esteem expresses it itself in a face, manner, and way of talking and moving that projects the pleasure one takes in being alive.
It expresses itself in an openness to criticism and a comfort about acknowledging mistakes, because one’s self-esteem is not tied to an image of “being perfect.”
We see shoulders relaxed yet erect; hands that tend to be relaxed and graceful; arms that tend to hang in an easy, natural way; a posture that tends to be unstrained, erect, well-balanced; a walk that tends to be purposeful (without being aggressive and overbearing).
Relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves
Rigidity is what animals sometimes manifest when they are frightened: they freeze. It is also what companies sometimes manifest when faced with superior competition. They do not ask, “What can we learn from our competitors?” They cling blindly to what they have always done, in defiance of evidence that it is no longer working.
self-trust is tied to respect for reality, then correcting an error is esteemed above pretending not to have made one.
Healthy self-esteem is not ashamed to say, when the occasion warrants it, “I was wrong.” Denial and defensiveness are characteristics of insecurity, guilt, feelings of inadequacy, and shame.
That is why the first steps of building self-esteem can be difficult: We are challenged to raise the level of our consciousness in the face of emotional resistance.
Instead of seeking self-esteem through consciousness, responsibility, and integrity, we may seek it through popularity, material acquisitions, or sexual exploits.
Self-esteem is an intimate experience; it resides in the core of one’s being. It is what I think and feel about myself, not what someone else thinks or feels about me.
When we begin to understand self-esteem in this way, we appreciate the foolishness of believing that if we can only manage to make a positive impression on others we will then enjoy good self-regard.
And since action in the world is a reflection of action within the mind of the individual, it is the internal processes that are crucial.
Since self-esteem is a consequence, a product of internally generated practices, we cannot work on self-esteem directly, neither our own nor anyone else’s. We must address ourselves to the source.
