Science & Self-improvement

Self-esteem is not a mere feeling, neither is it the state of mind induced by alcohol or drugs. It is a belief substantiated in a way of living that entails the practice of consciousness, self-acceptance, responsibility, assertiveness, integrity and having a life purpose.

Consciousness is the human characteristic of being aware of oneself and one’s surroundings. Animals are conscious of their environment; this is indispensable for their survival. In addition, man is aware of himself. He can watch himself and pay heed to his internal states of anger, joy, fear, etc. However, human consciousness can be controlled. People can choose how much awareness they want to exert, and some people elect to be as least aware as possible. These people are not likely to have a good self-esteem.

To accept oneself means to have no disapproving feelings about what one knows of oneself. It is related with awareness, the primary attribute. If you have a false image of yourself, you may approve it, but you are wrong in doing so. A person who has high self-esteem does not need to deceive himself. The cause for self-deception is low self-esteem. The person thinks poorly of himself, so he builds an idealized image that he can like.

To behave with responsibility means to acknowledge the consequences of one’s actions. Every action one performs has some outcome that affects oneself or other people. One should be aware of these consequences and should decide accordingly what to do and what not to do. If one chooses one’s actions without minding their consequences, one cannot be said to be a responsible person.

Being assertive means to honor one’s feelings, desires, values, and tastes. It means to not discard them in favor of other person’s, unless there is a good cause to do so. It does not mean to demand that everyone think as you do, or like what you like, but to support your right to have it your way. An assertive person upholds his opinion when it is sensible to do so.

A basic condition to esteem a person is that the person had a behavior according to what he says to profess or to the commitments he makes. Failure to do so may cause that one like him because he is warm-hearted, or because he is generous, but this is not to be mistaken for esteem. The same applies to self-esteem. You know what are your beliefs, and you know when you betray them in what you say or what you do. Self-esteem cannot be enjoyed unless there is integrity in your life.

Having a purpose for one’s actions means that one is in control of one’s life. Therefore, it does not matter what that purpose is, as long as it is freely chosen. What undermines self-esteem is to follow other person’s purpose, or not having purpose at all. You may decide to dedicate your life to assist other people, and it will be all right because it is your decision.

Self-esteem cannot be induced by drugs or compliments. If you take drugs–including alcohol–that make you think you are a very resourceful person, you may feel confident but this is not self-esteem: it is just an illusion. People with high self-esteem do not need to be intoxicated to think highly of themselves. They also do not need other people’s compliments to think so. As it can be seen, self-esteem refers on one side to being in touch with reality, and on the other side to observing certain behaviors. Both aspects are affected when one escapes from reality due to the influence of fear or desire.

Change is a characteristic of life, and ours is a time when change occurs more rapidly than ever. Every man that lived had to experience the changes that inevitably happen from birth to death. Everyone had to go through infancy, adolescence, adulthood, old age, and senility.

Each person confronts differently the changes that the pass of time imposes on his body and on his mind. Some ones pass from one age to the next with grace and smoothly. For others each turn of age is a crisis, what caused that the expression “life crisis” were coined. Self-esteem has much to do with the manner in which a life crisis is faced.

To pass from one life age to the next involves changes in ways of thinking and in responsibility. Things that were impossible to do are now possible, and things that one used to do one should not do them anymore. There are also things that one would like to continue doing, and that one cannot do. Things that one may never have dreamed to do are now a necessity.

These changes in behavior, even if they are not abrupt, pose a challenge on the person. How this challenge is dealt with depends partially on the self-esteem of the person. The low self-esteem person is annoyed by these changes; the high self-esteem person confronts them confidently. Of course, it is not the only factor: social expectations, for example, also play a part. However, flexibility and self-esteem are highly correlated.

Superimposed on the changes that biology and society cause to each individual, there are the changes that society itself experiments. In previous times, these changes were slow enough so that a person did not take notice of them. When he was a child, he had an image of old people. When he himself became an old person, he would incarnate that same image.

This does not happen any longer. While a person goes from childhood to maturity, social expectations vary considerably. The mature person finds that social roles are no longer what he learned when he was a child. What society expects from the young and the old is now different. He has to change his outlook on youth and his expectations about becoming old.

This situation is seen as a threat to the self, because when your reference framework is altered your individuality dilutes. If this individuality was already weak as a result of low self-esteem, the situation is even more complicated. A high self-esteem is based in strong individuality, and it prepares the person to resist changes better.

When a person has low self-esteem, he depends on the beliefs of other people. He has not beliefs of his own because he is not confident on his ability to reason. When the occasion arises to make a decision, which is always based on a judgment, he turns to the judgment of others. Conversely, the person with high self-esteem need not turn to others to know what to do. He has his own ideas that govern his behavior. This creates a feeling of security that it is not available by other means. Security is one of the features of self-esteem; insecurity is a symptom of its absence.

In modern societies the usual goal of everyone is to succeed, understanding success as the possession of more money, fame or power.
It is evident the importance of self-esteem in this endeavor, because without self-esteem it is much more difficult to succeed. It is also less probable that you enjoy what you may achieve.

When a person has low self-esteem, he may achieve what can be called external success at any rate. This means that he will be considered to be successful by other people, but he may consider himself to be unsuccessful. His low self-esteem will drive him to outshine other people, to have more money than any other. Nevertheless, when the goal of being richer than all his competitors be achieved, he will feel that even that is not enough.

What happens in these cases is a disagreement between goals and means. If a person experiences low self-esteem, he may think that outperforming all others will cure his problem, but it is not so. He will try to get rid of the pain caused by low self-esteem by getting more of anything that he consider will convert him into a winner. Money is one of those things, but it could also be honor, admiration, fame, wisdom, or sexual conquests.

The reality is that getting more of something than any other, will not cure his low self-esteem and so his pain will not end. However, he will be a success to the eyes of everybody. The only cure to low self-esteem is, not surprisingly, high or normal self-esteem. That is to say, to cure low self-esteem one must increase his self-esteem. However, increasing self-esteem is not a matter of what the others think, but of what you think. It is your judgment what counts, not the judgment of others.

On the other hand, the person with a normal o high self-esteem may try to succeed, but not as a means to outdo others. For example, he will try to be richer because he has some good use for the money. He may succeed without wanting it: he may become famous for doing something he loves and not because he is seeking fame. It is easier to achieve your goals when you are focused in your work than when you are constantly watching what the others do.

Other consequences of high self-esteem are of importance for the well being of a person. Relationships with other people are smoother compared with those of a low self-esteem person. The latter is always suspicious that other people are trying to take advantage of him. This prevents him of fully engaging in what he is doing and makes him less able to cooperate.

High self-esteem people have, nonetheless, another type of trouble. This is the need to necessarily interact with low self-esteem people. These people will certainly dislike the high self-esteem person, will try to thwart his work, and will criticize everything he does.

To have a good self-esteem is very important to be confident on your reasoning ability. This is part of your overall capability to cope with life challenges. You may lack physical abilities that ordinary people have, you may be handicapped, but, as long as you retain your capacity to reasoning, you have the most valuable asset to confront the struggle for life.

Good sight or strong limbs are just tools to make something. You may have good or bad tools, but what is really important is what you are going to do with those tools, and this should be decided by the use of reason. You must trust, in general, on reason as a quality of the human mind, and, in particular, on your personal reason. These are two aspects that do not necessarily go together–you may accept that humans in general can make profit of reasoning, but you may have doubts about your own reasoning ability.

One of the soundest motives to think well of yourself is the belief in your ability to influence your destiny. To believe in yourself, you must be first be convinced that any man is capable, up to a certain degree, of influencing his destiny. Except for natural catastrophes, stock market depressions, etc., you must believe that a man’s actions can affect the course of his life.

If you believe the course of a man’s life is fixed from the moment he was born, what is known as the theory of predestination, then you have not means to influence your life. Whether you believe you are at the mercy of a supernatural being, or that your life is determined by the position of the stars when you were born, the result is that you can do nothing to alter your fate.

You may think that humans, as a species, have certain power over their lives, but you may distrust your own capacity. You can consider that your reason, the faculty that enables you to deliberate and argument, is not strong enough to be able to tell you what to do. In that case, you will leave decisions in the hands of other people, other human beings like you, to whom you give the power to decide.

It must be understood the difference between reason and knowledge. There are people from whom you may take advice, as lawyers, engineers, physicians, etc. If you have a health trouble, you should ask the advice of a physician, but this does not mean to let him decide in your place. Your life should be your responsibility and, whether or not you take advice of someone more knowledgeable, it is you who must decide what to do. To make a decision you must use your reason to examine the alternatives and your will–your faculty of choice and decision–to choose the better path for you.

It is other factor of self-esteem to accept yourself as you are, and to accept yourself you must first know yourself. If you know yourself, you will know your weaknesses and your strengths. If you know–due to dispassionate study of yourself–that you are not so good at reasoning, you may ask somebody more clever than you to analyze for you what are the alternatives, and the costs and benefits of each one, but finally it is your decision what counts.

As I said before, some people claim that consciousness is not good for the person. These people argue that dwelling too much in one’s own troubles make people more prone to unhappiness. The right attitude–they say–is to deal exclusively with external issues, and forget everything related with oneself.
While this approach may be successful in avoiding unhappiness, it is doubtful if it will help in making people happy.

This approach seems to originate from the idea that a person has rather invariable psychological processes. Since the advent of psychotherapy, however, it has been shown that a person’s behavior can be modified. The modification of human behavior, the goal of psychotherapy, is not easily achieved. In some cases, it is rather straightforward: disorders that puzzled Freud, like phobias, are now treated with short-term methods. On the other hand, profoundly entrenched behaviors such as those related with self-esteem are no easy to modify and require long term treatments.

Though the change of self-esteem is difficult, this should not detract you from attempting it. The alternative is to live a life that is not yours, a life that is controlled by other people. Of course, the change will be a painful process, because the way to change self-esteem is to change one’s actions. Every behavior change produces pain, since many things must be rearranged, including relationships, and it is known that humans love routine and dislike change.

One of the reasons why self-esteem changes are difficult is the impact they have on relationships with other people. People are accustomed to treat you in some way that is connected with the appreciation they have of how you esteem yourself. When your self-esteem changes, they have to modify their views on how to treat you and, obviously, they do not like to do so.

If you belong to the unfortunate people who do not like what they seem to themselves, you may choose to avoid all trouble altogether by escaping consciousness or you may begin to do something to help yourself. If you choose the first path, you must remember that if you do not control your life, somebody else will do it.

Yet, not everyone has the will to undertake the painful task of enhancing his self-esteem. Moreover, not everyone needs it. Some are happy with letting other people take decisions, because deciding is a painful activity. They are generally found in company of other people who seem to be born to direct other people’s life, and that seem to not spare a moment in caring about themselves.

If you are a person who regrets the consequences of leaving substantial decisions about your life in the hands of other people, you must work in reverting this situation. You must enhance your self-esteem and change your actions according to a different concept of yourself.

In these days, it is very unfortunate to be a low self-esteem person. In the past, things were uniform during the life of a person. Our grandparents did not know the speed with which now changes occur; they had a reasonable expectation that things would be more or less the same at their old age as they were in their youth.

This instability makes values change constantly. What was important yesterday is not longer important today. The human being depends on a framework to guide his life. If he has to be permanently updating this framework, he feels insecure about his ability to cope with life. This is normal when several value sets coexist in a society, as currently occurs.

As any other human trait, self-esteem depends on genetics and environment. A person’s self-esteem depends on his genetic heritage and on the conditions in which the person is reared. Inner events such as thoughts and emotions influence self-esteem, as also do outer events such as the response of other people to one’s behavior.

It is preferable for a person to arrive at adult age with a good self-esteem, but, if this is not the case, it can be amended, but only by means of a great effort. It is not easy to change an adult person’s self-esteem, but it can be done–at least to a degree that can ensure a better life.

The influence of other people on one’s self-esteem should not be neglected, but it is not its only source as some people think. It is not even the main source of a healthy self-esteem, which must arise from your own conviction of your value and must not be a reflection of what other people think of you.

From a psychological point of view, self-esteem can be understood as the person’s need of having a worthy self, one that makes life worth. Unlike other animals, the human being is conscious of himself, although this consciousness varies from person to person. Many people can live a happy–or at least tolerable–life without worrying too much about their worthiness. Other people cannot, and it is in these cases when mental disorders may appear.

The term ‘consciousness’ has been employed with many senses. Among other things, it entails the capacity to introspect. Introspection means to behold one’s mental processes. It has been argued that too much introspection is a cause of unhappiness. If you look at yourself and you do not like what you see, you will be unhappy. Many people prefer to be unconscious rather than recognizing that they do not like themselves.

Although consciousness is a characteristic of the human race, individuals may elect to avoid it. A person may choose not to look at himself if he knows that doing so would be cause of distress. Such person can be said to be living unconsciously.

Having short-term and long-term goals and implementing the ways to attain them are positive conducts, as it is maintaining congruence between what one believes, what one says and what one does. This is not always easy, especially if one’s beliefs are different from those of the people that surround one. In such circumstances, the person may find himself hiding from the others what he feels or what he thinks.

When you try to understand reality then you are nurturing your self-esteem. When you avoid being in contact with reality, you damage your self-esteem. This can be a vicious circle: because of criticism, you doubt about what you believe, then you betray your beliefs by adopting others’, this betrayal lowers your self-esteem, and your self-doubt increases.

A person whose self-esteem has been ruined by ignorant or hostile parents, teachers, and friends needs to recover what he has lost by means of a long process of disposing of all his acquired beliefs and re-evaluating his stance concerning the world. He must do this if he wants to have a meaningful life.

To have a good self-esteem means also to feel that you are respectable and worthy; and to feel that you have right to satisfy your needs and to maintain your own moral values. This can end being a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” What this means is that thinking that something is going to occur, actually helps to that occurrence. In other words, if you think that it is probable that a given event occurs, your thought increments that probability.

People have a tendency to perform actions that will bring reality more close to what they think it should be. Self-fulfilling prophecies may refer to pleasant or unpleasant events. In any case, these prophecies will help to their fulfillment. For instance, the level of your self-esteem influences your actions and, conversely, your actions influence the level of your self-esteem. If you have a high self-esteem, you will probably try harder when challenged by a problem. If you have a low self-esteem, it is more probable that you give up. People with high self-esteem are more persistent than people with low self-esteem. Persistence makes that people achieve goals that would be unattainable without this attitude.

If you achieve a goal under difficult circumstances, your self-esteem is reinforced, and this prepares you to try even harder challenges. If you quit when a goal is hard to achieve, your self-esteem is impaired and you will find it more difficult to cope with new challenges. Thus, self-esteem is at the same time the cause and the effect of succeeding at achieving your goals.

If you respect yourself, you will behave in such manner as to make other people respect you. When the others demonstrate that they respect you, you will feel that your idea of your value was right and so it will be confirmed. If you have no respect for yourself, you will behave in a way that will make this feeling evident, and other people will treat you accordingly. This will confirm you of your low value.

Self-esteem is the judgment one makes about one’s capacity to cope with the basic challenges of life, such as thinking, learning, deciding and responding adequately to change. It means having confidence in the efficacy of your mind. If one is not confident in his capacity to evaluate reality (perceiving and thinking about it), one will tend to rely on the opinion of other people and will repudiate his own perceptions.

The reaction of a person to the facts of reality depends on the perception that he has of these facts. Everybody is free to interpret what happens in his life in the manner he wishes. Even if you cannot avoid the effects of what happens to you, you can choose what to think about what is happening. If you are not confident on your capacity to rightly perceive reality, you may desist from doing it yourself, and decide to rely on some other person’s perception.

You can deny your own perceptions because you lack the conviction that what you perceive is the truth. If you are told by a figure of authority that what you think is wrong, and this is repeated over and over again, then you may finally desist from thinking by your own.

Self-esteem is more than just a warm feeling about oneself. It is a cognitive attitude and it entails to operate with responsibility. To evaluate the consequences of your actions, you must consider reality. If you neglect reality, you are not in conditions to evaluate the outcome of your actions and, hence, you are not acting with responsibility.

It can be learned to operate one’s mind having reality on focus–which means to live consciously. However, if one regularly experiments pain as a result of being conscious, one may choose not to be conscious. Living consciously means to seek any information that may be important to your values and goals. It also means trying to understand yourself, so that you do not act against your interest.

To be able to build a high self-esteem one must adopt a series of behaviors that includes avoiding his own repudiation. If one pays excessive attention to other people’s opinions and values, one may end denying one’s thoughts and emotions, replacing whatever could be one’s goals with the goals of other people.

By choosing your own goals and selecting the actions necessary to reach them, you can create the conditions to build self-esteem whether or not the goals are accomplished. It is better to fail trying to achieve goals that one set than to succeed in achieving goals set by the others. The same apply to standing up for your ideas–in appropriate ways and appropriate contexts–as opposed to faking the reality of who you are in order to avoid disapproval.