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Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities.
Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities.
Reflecting on the stories I heard from clients, I looked for a common denominator, and I was struck by the fact that 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.
In other words, all the famous “defenses” that Freud identified can be understood as efforts to protect self-esteem.
Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves.
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.
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 in my initial belief.
What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage until such time as we lose the fear of it and realize that it will not destroy us (and need not disappear).
It is poor self-esteem that places us in an adversarial relationship to our well-being.
That it makes an essential contribution to the life process. That it is indispensable to normal and healthy development. That it has survival value.
We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy.
For this reason I have come to think of positive self-esteem as, in effect, the immune system of consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration.
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.
When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid.
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, or despair.*
One is a sense of basic confidence in the face of life’s challenges: self-efficacy. The other is a sense of being worthy of happiness: self-respect.
Self-efficacy means confidence in the functioning of my mind, in my ability to think, understand, learn, choose, and make decisions; confidence in my ability to understand the facts of reality that fall within the sphere of my interests and needs; self-trust; self-reliance.
Self-respect means assurance of my value; an affirmative attitude toward my right to live and to be happy; comfort in appropriately asserting my thoughts, wants, and needs; the feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright.
Self-efficacy and self-respect are the dual pillars of healthy self-esteem; absent either one, self-esteem is impaired.
Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.
To have low self-esteem is to feel inappropriate to life; wrong, not about this issue or that, but wrong as a person.
Our need for self-esteem is the result of two basic facts, both intrinsic to our species. The first is that we depend for our survival and our successful mastery of the environment on the appropriate use of our consciousness; our life and well-being depend on our ability to think. The second is that the right use of our consciousness is not automatic, is not “wired in” by nature. In the regulating of its activity, there is a crucial element of choice—therefore, of personal responsibility.
With regard to choices that lower self-esteem, I think of times when (never mind the “reasons”) I was unwilling to see what I saw and know what I knew—times when I needed to raise awareness and instead I lowered it; when I needed to examine my feelings and instead I disowned them; when I needed to announce a truth and instead I clung to silence; when I needed to walk away from a relationship that was harming me and instead I struggled to preserve it; when I needed to stand up for my deepest feelings and assert my deepest needs and instead I waited for a miracle to deliver me.
Our need for self-esteem is the need to know we are functioning as our life and well-being require.
We need to consider ourselves worthy of the rewards of our actions. Absent this conviction, we will not know how to take care of ourselves, protect our legitimate interests, satisfy our needs, or enjoy our own achievements.
Three basic observations: (1) If we respect ourselves, we tend to act in ways that confirm and reinforce this respect, such as requiring others to deal with us appropriately. (2) If we do not respect ourselves, we tend to act in ways that lower our sense of our own value even further, such as accepting or sanctioning inappropriate behavior toward us by others, thereby confirming and reinforcing our negativity. (3) If we wish to raise the level of our self-respect, we need to act in ways that will cause it to rise—and this begins with a commitment to the value of our own person, which is then
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We cannot be indifferent to the moral meaning of our actions, although we may try to be or pretend to be. At some level, their value significance irresistibly registers in the psyche, leaving positive feelings about the self in their wake or negative ones.
For the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves, and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generated out of fantasy and self-delusion.
Self-esteem contemplates what needs to be done and says “I can.” Pride contemplates what has been accomplished and says “I did.”
We can feel pride while owning and accepting what Jungians call our “Shadow.”
Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a value to be attained.
is the pursuit of meaning and an understanding of relationships.
(Good reality orientation, in conjunction with effective self-discipline and self-management, is what psychologists mean by the concept of “ego strength.”)
They value the productions of their mind.
clinging to the past in the face of new and changing circumstances is itself a product of insecurity, a lack of self-trust.
Facts are a higher priority than beliefs.
We live more to avoid pain than to experience joy.
A mind does not struggle for that which it regards as impossible or undesirable.
self-esteem is not confidence but fear. Not to live, but to escape the terror of life, is the fundamental goal. Not creativity, but safety, is the ruling desire. And what is sought from others is not the chance to experience real contact but an escape from moral values, a promise to be forgiven, to be accepted, on some level to be taken care of.
In this book we shall see that positive self-esteem is best understood as a spiritual attainment, that is, as a victory in the evolution of consciousness.
The more one turns up the volume on one’s inner signals, the more external signals tend to recede into proper balance.
If human happiness, well-being, and progress are our goals, it is a trait we must strive to nurture—in our child-rearing practices, in our schools, in our organizations, and first of all in ourselves.
In other words, we have the option of exercising our powers or of subverting our means of survival and well-being.
Our mind is our basic tool of survival. Betray it and self-esteem suffers.
Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals—to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be—and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know.
Consciousness that is not translated into appropriate action is a betrayal of consciousness; it is mind invalidating itself.
