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Part of living consciously is being on guard against the sometimes seductive pull of unconsciousness; this asks for the most ruthless honesty of which we are capable.
Self-esteem asks not for flawless success but for the earnest intention to be conscious.
To find it humiliating to admit an error is a certain sign of flawed self-esteem.
It rests on the premise that all of us have more knowledge than we normally are aware of—more wisdom than we use, more potentials than typically show up in our behavior.
Self-acceptance entails our willingness to experience—that is, to make real to ourselves, without denial or evasion—that we think what we think, feel what we feel, desire what we desire, have done what we have done, and are what we are.
Self-acceptance is the willingness to say of any emotion or behavior, “This is an expression of me, not necessarily an expression I like or admire, but an expression of me nonetheless, at least at the time it occurred.” It is the virtue of realism, that is, of respect for reality, applied to the self.
If you persist, if you surrender to the reality of what is, if you surrender to awareness (which is what “accepting” ultimately means), you may notice that you have begun to relax a bit and perhaps feel more comfortable with yourself, and more real.
There is a paradox here (a paradox, not a contradiction): Acceptance of what is, is the precondition of change. And denial of what is leaves me stuck in it.
If I am unwilling to take responsibility for the attainment of my desires, they are not really desires—they are merely daydreams.
I did not confront the fact that her agenda was very different from mine and that she was totally absorbed in her own needs. I delayed facing the fact that nothing would change unless I made it change. And because I delayed, I caused suffering and humiliation to us both.
To the extent that I evade responsibility, I inflict wounds on my self-esteem. In accepting responsibility, I build self-esteem.
Self-responsibility is expressed through an active orientation to life. It is expressed through the understanding that no one is here on earth to spare us the necessity of independence, and through the understanding that without work, independence is impossible.
To live consciously is to live by the exercise of one’s own mind. To practice self-responsibility is to think for oneself.
Never ask a person to act against his or her self-interest as he or she understands it.
One of the most important of such moments is when the client grasps that no one is coming. No one is coming to save me; no one is coming to make life right for me; no one is coming to solve my problems. If I don’t do something, nothing is going to get better.
Self-assertiveness means honoring my wants, needs, and values and seeking appropriate forms of their expression in reality.
“Self-assertiveness” without consciousness is not self-assertiveness; it is drunk-driving.
It often takes courage to honor what we want and to fight for it. For many people, self-surrender and self-sacrifice are far easier. They do not require the integrity and responsibility that intelligent selfishness requires.
Finally, self-assertion entails the willingness to confront rather than evade the challenges of life and to strive for mastery.
When we learn how to be in an intimate relationship without abandoning our sense of self, when we learn how to be kind without being self-sacrificing, when we learn how to cooperate with others without betraying our standards and convictions, we are practicing self-assertiveness.
Self-discipline is the ability to organize our behavior over time in the service of specific tasks.
When a question of self-esteem is involved, the question to ask is: Is this matter within my direct, volitional control? Or is it at least linked by a direct line of causality to matters within my direct, volitional control? If it isn’t, it is irrelevant to self-esteem and should be perceived to be, however painful or even devastating the problem may be on other grounds.
Doing more of what doesn’t work doesn’t work.
In principle, consciousness is reliable; knowledge is attainable; reality is knowable.
But inappropriate praise can be as harmful to self-esteem as inappropriate criticism.
Many devoted parents, with the best intentions in the world but without the appropriate skills, have turned their children into such approval addicts by saturating the home environment with their “loving” evaluations.
It is more desirable to stimulate the search for answers than to provide answers.
What they often come to feel is: “I’ll never understand other people. I’ll never be able to do what they expect of me. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, and I’m never going to know.”
In supporting and nurturing the self-esteem of our children, we support and nurture our own.
We can learn that a pain or fear confronted is far less dangerous than a pain or fear denied.
Sooner or later, all roads lead to self-esteem.
A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
One can choose to see or not to see (or anywhere between). But reality is reality and is not wiped out by self-elected blindness.
In any context where consciousness is needed, operating consciously benefits self-esteem, and operating (relatively) unconsciously wounds self-esteem. The importance of living consciously is grounded not in culture but in reality.
It means a willingness—and a will—to live the six practices when to do so may not be easy. We may need to overcome inertia, face down fears, confront pain, or stand alone in loyalty to our own judgment, even against those we love.
No matter how nurturing our environment, rationality, self-responsibility, and integrity are never automatic; they always represent an achievement.
Living consciously requires an effort. Generating and sustaining awareness is work. Every time we choose to raise the level of our consciousness, we act against inertia. We pit ourselves against entropy, the tendency of everything in the universe to run down toward chaos. In electing to think, we strive to create an island of order and clarity within ourselves.
Living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears; it may bring us into contact with unresolved pain. Self-acceptance may require that we make real to ourselves thoughts, feelings, or actions that disturb our equilibrium; it may shake up our “official” self-concept.
Self-responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness; it demands that we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer.
Self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic, with no guarantee of how others will respond; it mean...
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Self-esteem is the best predictor of happiness we have.
Here is the basic pattern: First, we avoid what we need to look at because we do not want to feel pain. Then our avoidance produces further problems for us, which we also do not want to look at because they evoke pain. Then the new avoidance produces additional problems we do not care to examine—and so on. Layer of avoidance is piled on layer of avoidance, disowned pain on disowned pain. This is the condition of most adults.
