If you have a healthy immune system, does that mean you will never get sick? Of course not. But you will be less susceptible to illness and you will experience a faster recovery. Having a high level of self-esteem doesn't mean you will never be anxious, miserable, depressed, or overwhelmed on occasion. The advantages of having a strong sense of self and worthiness is that you have good shock absorbers. If you are attempting to achieve a goal and hit a wall, you will persevere. You may not always succeed, but you will succeed more often than you fail. A top manager in one of the executive seminars I was conducting said to the group, "I have been knocked down five times — but I got up six." The average CEO has had 3.2 major failures before succeeding. People with a low sense of self-estimate will go through the motions of persevering but will fail more often than succeed. Our self-esteem generates a certain level of expectancy, and expectancies become self-fulfilling prophecies. While our sense of self-efficacy shows up in different areas of our life, it shows up most prominently and consistently in the area of relationships and love. If a person doesn't feel he or she is worthy of love, the person will find it hard to believe someone else loves him or her and will usually find ways to trust test — or sabotage — the relationship in some fashion. Have you ever tried to tell or convey love to a person who doesn't feel lovable? There just isn't much you can do to convince that person. Our self-esteem of course will vary in different areas of our lives, and our effectiveness level, performance, or success will correspond to our self-esteem in that particular area. For example, you may have a high level of self-esteem as a manager and communicator of ideas, and your performance or effectiveness level will correspond to your self-estimate. You may have low self-esteem with mechanical things or replacing parts and putting gadgets together, and your friend's may lovingly call you a "klutz" in that area. You may have average self-esteem as a parent or spouse, and your competence in that area will correspond accordingly. If you take all the areas of your life and make a bar graph of high- and low effectiveness levels, you will probably end up with a zig-zag profile. Psychologists would average that out and come up with what is called a "g" factor — or general level of self-esteem. Of course, if you want to improve your self-esteem in a particular area of your life, one approach would be to begin improving your performance. Perhaps taking a course on effective parenting, joining Toastmasters, or taking a continuing education course on public speaking and effective communication. Not a good money manager? Take that night-school course on financial planning . And so forth. As you raise your performance and effectiveness level in different areas of your life, your self-estimate in that area should go up accordingly. In contrast to the "bottom up" method of changing self-esteem is the "top down" approach. Utilizing certain exercises to change limiting beliefs in certain areas of your life — and of course, re-educating and re-programming your subconscious with affirmations, visualization, and/or self-hypnosis — will also work in improving your effectiveness level in different areas of your life.
Thus, self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. Our self-concept is broader than self-esteem and is the umbrella, so to speak, that subsumes our beliefs, our ideals, our body image — which is an important part of our self-concept. It includes our liabilities, assets, limitations, and capabilities, and self-esteem is one of its major components. Everyone, of course, is born with 100% self-worth. You cannot pour more water into a glass that is full to the brim. There are no "better thans" — or "less thans." However, as we are growing up and begin acquiring certain beliefs about ourselves — primarily from well-meaning parents, teachers, friends, and so forth — we begin to assess our value, our worth as a person. Some people metaphorically take on so many barnacles, wounds, traumas, and insults that they begin to re-evaluate and devalue their sense of worth. Some people — despite their cruise ship of life being so overburdened with barnacles — somehow develop survival skills and go on to succeed. These people are called invulnerables in the literature — and these are the people we should be studying. What is it that these people are doing right despite horrific and brutal histories filled with abuse and shame? We need more studies of success — not just of pathology, which unfortunately is the way most of us are trained.
The importance of self-esteem was first drawn to national attention more than 40 years ago following the publication of Psychocybernetics by cosmetic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz. He described how he would volunteer one morning a week and do cosmetic surgery on prison inmates in the local penitentiary. After two years or so, the warden called Dr. Maltz into his office and pointed out how the men whose nose jobs and facial disfigurements were improved through plastic surgery were not committing more crimes and returning to jail following their release from prison. Dr. Maltz realized that by changing their body image — which, as I noted earlier, is a very important part of self-image — the convicts felt better about themselves. He went on to describe self-esteem as "the most important discovery of the 20th century." However, this is not necessarily true of everyone.
In later writings, Dr. Maltz described two female patients who had radical cosmetic surgery on their faces. In assessing themselves after the bandages were removed and all the swelling disappeared, the women looked and looked at themselves — and very sadly and disapprovingly said, "I don't look any different; not much has changed. I still feel the same about myself." That was when Dr. Maltz realized that self-image — for most people — was internal, not the external trappings of what we call beauty.
Along the same lines, I remember an almost painfully candid interview in which Elizabeth Taylor described herself as "short, pudgy, awful thighs, I hate my nose, my eyes are too far apart, I don't like the shape of my face, I wish I could change my whole appearance at times." That self-description — from one of the most beautiful women in the world. No wonder she had such a series of self-destructive behaviors: eating binges, drug and alcohol abuse, a number of accidents and multiple surgeries, eight marriages, and so on. Self-esteem is an inside job.
Let us now move on and look at some of the qualities that people with high self-esteem share to varying degrees.
The first quality is that they are continually seeking the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile goals. Goals, of course, are the purpose to all human activity. It is not necessary or even possible to achieve all our goals, but their purpose is to help us become more than what we were. Goals are like dreams, and many people, rather than dreaming their own future, ,allow themselves to be woven into other people's dreams. There are two ways to create our reality: to set goals and program an optimal future or to simply allow whatever comes your way. Both are programs. Both work. High self-esteem people love themselves enough to dream — to create the future they will be stepping into.
High self-esteem people realize that material things such as a fancy car or a mountain condo are symptoms of success — but not true success. True success is intrinsic — the way you treat yourself, your family, other people.
People with a strong sense of self-worth live consciously as problem-solvers — having a respect for facts, for truths, being present in the now when someone is talking to them. They have a passion for self-awareness, for honest self-examination, an awareness of their inner world — not just the external world. And they don't anesthetize themselves with denial or addictions such as drugs or alcohol.
Most importantly, they are quick to forgive — themselves and others. They release the past and don't try to make the present conform to the past by hanging on to grudges or seeking revenge. They realize that it is not the prisoners who spend more time in prison — but the warden. If you are keeping someone as an emotional hostage, then you are the prisoner. All healing has to go through the door of forgiveness.
High self-esteem people have good boundaries. They can say no to what doesn't fit or seem right for them. They can draw the line in the sand and firm their boundary. The person who doesn't value himself or herself enough to say no accepts an intrusion simply in order to please and adds to the stresses of his or her life, unfortunately.
Another quality is that people who value themselves value others and treat them with respect. You will never hear racist, sexist, or ageist remarks from people who feel good about themselves. They go out of their way to honor, respect, and nobilize all people.
As indicated earlier, high self-esteemers form nourishing rather than toxic relationships. They have open, honest communication skills and look for clarity rather than fearing it. If giving feedback, they take responsibility for their feelings and instead of a "you"-blaming remark will preface it with an "I feel this way for what just happened."
Another component is humility. That doesn't mean false modesty or apologizing for being who you are, but regardless of how many times you have experienced a person in a certain way – say, for example, the person is a gossip or bossy — humility is being open to each moment in life as something new — by not prejudging that so-and-so is a bore but rather having the humility to let that person be different this time. Humility is seeing each moment or experience as brand new without judgment.
Altruism is another quality of high self-esteem. Altruism is being helpful or of service to others — whether by doing volunteer work, being a big brother/big sister, or whatever you choose to contribute to create a higher sense of well-being or even excitement. Women in one social helping program reported that by volunteering for service at a convalescent home for older folks, they felt a long-lasting sense of deep inner satisfaction — even exhilaration — and an increased sense of self-worth, less depression, and fewer aches and pains.
People with a higher sense of self-estimate also have a higher sense of accountability. Let me give you an example. One of my friends called me not too long ago, offered to buy me lunch, and wanted to talk about how devastated he was, as his wife had run off with his best friend. I thought "oh no! He wants to get into blame and self-pity." So much for my humility in this instance. Instead — despite his torment — he said, "Lee, you have known me for a long time and you have been with my wife and me on many occasions. What was it about me — what could I have done — or didn't do that caused her to leave me?" I was almost in tears — as I could feel his pain — yet he wanted to take accountability for what had happened rather than give his power away to blaming or "poor me's." In other words, he acknowledged that he is accountable for creating his life, his reality, that whatever he did — or didn't do — led to a very sad chapter in his life, but also, he ended up, over time, learning a great deal more about himself.
Finally, high self-esteem people will argue for their magnificence and the magnificence of other people — rather than for their limitations.
People often ask me, "Is all this concern about self-esteem something recent that has come about with the New Age movement?" I always chuckle when I hear that because I know that more than 2,000 years ago, one of the greatest Teachers of all time said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." You cannot love thy neighbor if you don't love yourself. You cannot give away what you don't have. Share this idea-rich article with friends and colleagues
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