I Love You, Me: Self Esteem

April 28, 2006

Walk into almost any bookstore and you’re bound to eventually pass by the magazine section. I usually skip this part of the store because there are very few magazines that I can stomach these days. Most have more advertisements than actual content… and the content they do have is usually not that great. My least favorite of the magazine sub-groups are the Entertainment Weekly-style “what’s going on in Hollywood” picture books. No real content at all… just pictures of famous people doing things and wearing labels. Seriously. Why do people care? Closely behind the Hollywood stalker mags on my list of worthless reading are the Cosmo-esqe “how to do this in this many days” periodicals. They’re basically teenbeat magazines with stories about sex replacing the stories about prom.

One of the things both of the genres of magazine have in common is their infatuation with outward appearance. If they’re not critiquing what others are wearing or how they look, they’re telling readers how they should dress or cut their hair to look like the people in the magazine. Yes, yes… I know we live in a materialistic, superficial society that places a higher value on the label in your underwear than on the brain that keeps you alive. I know that the way people look can open or close doors having nothing at all to do with physical appearance. I’ve read the studies that say “pretty” people are more successful than “non-pretty” people. But that’s not the point of my post.

We spend so much time obsessing over the way other people see us. We spend countless hours and countless dollars making our outer shells attractive to rest of the world. People literally die in their attempts to obtain a certain weight or in response to failed attempts to have “the look”. And we sacrifice our own happiness at the expense of what someone else might think or say. While all of the outer tweaking is taking place, something else is getting ignored. Sometimes it’s biology (a growling stomach). Sometimes it’s financial (phone bill or new clothes… phone bill or new clothes… what to choose… what to choose).

And sometimes the thing that gets ignored is more important. Sometimes it’s the most important part of what makes us who we are. Sometimes we ignore the harshest, most unforgiving, and critical judge of all. Sometimes we ignore our self. And no matter how “pretty” you make your outside, that ignored, unstroked inner judge called self-esteem can and will beat you back down time and time again. If you let it.

What is self-esteem? Simply put, it’s the way you feel about yourself. But that simple statement really doesn’t cover the broad scope of exactly what self-esteem is. It’s not just the way you feel about yourself. It’s the value you place on your own life. It’s the value you place on yourself as a person, both for yourself and for other people. It’s the amount of confidence you have in yourself, in your abilities, and in your capacity to grow as a person. Self-worth. Self-image. All part of self-esteem.

So how do you know if your self-esteem is high or low? That’s a tough question to answer for a lot of people. If asked, some folks will tell you one way or the other. Some people really are aware enough and in tune with themselves enough to know the honest answer to that question. Of course, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be honest with their answer, but deep down inside they know. Others aren’t so sure. They may say one thing but think another. They may think one thing but act differently. And I think the real answer lies with their actions. Some people would argue that you can’t gauge something as personal and intimate as self-esteem by outward actions. But I’m not so sure you can’t.

I think you can tell a lot about a person’s self-esteem by how high they say it is. Yeah… I know… vague. Let me elaborate. People who profess openly to have a high self-esteem fall into three categories: the honest, the liars, and the egomaniacs. The honest folks really do feel good about themselves and have a healthy amount of self-esteem. Simple enough. The egomaniacs really do feel good about themselves, but they have an unhealthy amount of self-esteem. You know these people. God’s gift… better than you… on a pedestal… etc. The problem is, some of the egomaniacs are hard to distinguish from the liars. The liars will tell you they have high self-esteem. They’ll act like they have a lot of self-love. But that’s just it. It’s an act. In an attempt to hide their weak and fragile ego, they will project an over-inflated super-ego (not to be confused with Freud’s superego). If you think someone is a better chess player than you, it’s not very likely that you’d challenge them to a match. The same goes for self-esteem. If you think someone has a high self-esteem, it’s not very likely that you’d challenge that assumption. And they know this. And if you’re one of these people, you know it… or at least… you have an idea. These are the same people who tear down others in order to lift themselves up. It’s like a person who’s drowning. Would I jump into the water to save a drowning person without some sort of flotation device for myself? Probably not. Sound selfish? Maybe it is. But what is the person who’s thrashing and flailing around in the water going to do, instinctively, when I jump in to save them? They’re going to push me down under the water and use ME as the flotation device. So by trying to save them, I end up drowning myself. I wouldn’t let another person shove me under the water. If that makes me selfish, I guess I’ll just have to live with that. aha.

If you’re still not sure where you fall on the self-esteem ladder, look at some of your other behaviors.

Do you assume the worst in a new situation? Do you think you’ll fail at something before you even try? Do you avoid taking any risks or trying new things? Do you have trouble accepting a compliment or kind word from someone else? When someone does give you a compliment do you turn it around into something negative? Do you downplay the things you do well and lift up the things you don’t do so well? Do you have a hard time making a decision without first getting input or advice from other people?

These are all questions we ask patients at work during our self-esteem groups. It’s always interesting to hear people respond to these questions because many of them had never considered self-esteem as a factor in any of these behaviors. But if you think about it, almost all of the sources of the behaviors mentioned in those pointed questions can be rooted back to how you feel about yourself. If you lack confidence in your abilities, you won’t take risks… or you’ll assume the worst… or assume you’ll fail. If you don’t think highly of yourself or your talents, you’ll have a hard time taking a compliment… or you’ll minimize something you do well so that you can point out something you don’t do well. The example I use at work might help. Let’s say you made a chocolate cake. After dessert, all of your friends rant and rave about how great the cake was. It was the best cake they’d ever eaten. The low self-esteem response would be something along the lines of “yeah… but I can’t make an apple pie to save my life”… or “chocolate cake is the only thing I can make”. See the correlation?

And what about making decisions? If you can’t make a decision without first seeking out advice (or in some cases a person to actually make the choice for you), what does that say about your self-esteem? It says that you don’t trust yourself. It says that you don’t trust your ability to make a good decision. It says that you think your choice will lead to failure. And maybe it will. But the other thing it says is that you value the opinion of someone else… a third party in your life… above your own. It says that you’d rather place your fate and your destiny to someone who will not have to live your life, deal with the consequences of the decision, or clean up any messes that may arise from it. Before I continue, let me point out that asking for advice or seeking the opinions of others is not always a bad thing. I love hearing other people’s perspectives. I love hearing other people’s opinions. And I’m the first person in line to ask for advice from someone who is more knowledgeable about a subject than I am. The problem arises when you forsake your own opinions and your own “gut instincts” in a situation without any rational reason. If someone offers you advice on a decision you’re faced with and you think to yourself “ya know… I wasn’t going to do that, but now that I think about it, their point makes more sense” you’re fine. It may not be a self-esteem issue. The difference lies in how you come to your decision. Careful examination of all evidence, opinions, and advice is good and healthy. Letting someone else dictate how you will choose is not.

Figuring out just exactly how you feel about yourself is hard. Even if you think you know… you might not. Self-esteem is an up and down ride just by design. It fluctuates from day to day, situation to situation, or even hour by hour. Something might happen that really makes you feel good about yourself. Or something might happen that makes you feel really lousy about yourself. But there’s always a baseline around which these fluctuations occur. On an uneventful day there’s a place on the spectrum of esteem in which we all fall. It’s the baseline we need to figure out. Once found, we can decide what changes, if any, need to happen in order to secure a better position on the scale.

Bottom line… self-esteem is important. The word gets thrown around a lot and has a lot of gushy, esoteric connotations associated with it. There have been countless books, articles, TV specials, and theories written dealing with the subject of self-esteem. This is just another one. But the reason so many people spend time looking at esteem is because the way we feel about ourselves is the foundation for so many other things. The first step to understanding self-esteem is figuring out where you stand on the subject of yourself.

So now I’ll ask again: where are you on the self-esteem spectrum? High? Low? Need to make some changes? Need a boost?

Going about a self-esteem revamp is not as simple as flipping a switch. You can’t just wake up one day and decide to have a high opinion of yourself. It takes time… it takes practice… and it takes a conscious effort. You have to dig down deep inside and find the source(s) of the ill feelings you have about yourself. Was it your childhood? Were you constantly belittled by family… friends… kids at school? Is it your past? Have you made a lot of mistakes? Has Lady Luck left you hanging? Let me guess: it’s your love life? Or lack of?

It could be any, all, or none of these. But you have to find out what it is. People aren’t just born not caring about themselves. It’s a learned way of thinking. So the first step is to find out where you learned to think the way you do. Go on… dig… explore… open painful doors.

When you’ve got it figured out, come back. We’ll meet here to discuss what to do about it….

Part 1 of I Love You, Me. Please visit the Series page for a complete index of all related posts.

Posted in Advice, Human Nature, Noteworthy, Series

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