Building High Self-Esteem

There is a myriad of books written on the topics of self-esteem.  The advice and suggestions ranges from the commonplace (dress in a way that makes you feel good) to the esoteric (cleanse your chakras).  While some of these tools can be effective for certain individuals, there is an inherent problem in that many approaches try to build a person up (which operates from the assumption that they are defective) as opposed to realizing that people are inherently worthy and simply helping them realize that fact.

The Groundwork

First, it is important to distinguish between self-confidence and self-esteem.  For the purposes of this article, I define self-confidence as certainty in a particular skill or aptitude.  You can be a confident public speaker, musician or writer. In contrast, I define self-esteem as certainty in your worth or your value. It is about who you are at the core.

Confidence is about what you can do.  Self-esteem is about who you are.

The problem of low self esteem lies in the fact that many of us learn to equate who we are with the external position in the world.  So when you are successful externally, you feel good about yourself. When you fail at something, you feel down. When someone finds you attractive or approves of you, you feel good.  When someone finds you unattractive or disapproves, you feel bad.

Well, isn't this just normal way to think about yourself? Normal, yes. Useful, no.

One of the primary drivers in life is the desire to feel good about yourself.  But if you make how you feel about yourself contingent on external circumstances, you will develop the unconsciousness tendency to avoid all circumstances that make you feel bad. This limits your ability to live consciously.  And as a general rule of personal growth, whenever you lower your consciousness, your results in life will suffer.

Self-Esteem

Your sense of self-esteem relates to the value you place on your identity.  It is the perception of your own worth. 

The issue is, however, that many of us tie in our self-esteem with our self-confidence.  That is, we value ourselves based on external factors - our ability to perform a task, what others may think of us, or what we have.  

Here's the problem: when you tie in your self-confidence with your external position, your perception of your own value becomes a roller coaster ride.  When things go well, you feel great about yourself.  When things are not going so well, you feel terrible about yourself.

The Critical Error

Feeling good about yourself is your natural state.  Just look at any 4 year old and you see someone with high self-esteem.  They naturally deem themselves worthy without having any justification for it.  You were probably that way when you were younger.

So what happened? First of all, invariably everyone make mistakes.  As kids, these mistakes are often accompanied by negative emotions due to the disapproval of others.  At that age, you do not have the cognitive capacity to realize the problem is with the behaviour and not with you as a person.

For example, consider a child who goes to school and gets a bad grade in school.  The parents are then disappointed with the grade. The problem is the child usually does not realize is that the problem is with their knowledge of the subject and not with them as a person.  Herein is the seed of low self-esteem.

A similar effect can be seen with adolescent girls who are constantly exposed to media images that promote a certain body type as being attractive.  In response, many girls who do not do not have a body that coincides with the portrayed medium images develop feelings of low self-worth.  The problem again here is one of identification.  The girls have learned to identify with their body and if it is deemed unattractive based on superficial social standards, they begin to feel bad about themselves.

Both these examples illustrates the self-esteem problems that arise when you equate your personhood with your external circumstances.  That is, you equate being with doing (or having).  I'm not here to argue whether or not this is right or wrong but in my experience, this is not a useful thought process to have at all.  The problem is that as you grow up, no one tells you that this isn't useful and that you would be better served by creating a clear separation between being and doing in your mind.

Separating Being and Doing

The key to consistent high self-esteem is realizing that you are intrinsically valuable.  You have worth simply because you are a human being.  There is nothing you could ever do to add to or take away from your value.  Realizing your intrinsic value leads to what I call unconditional self-worth.

In order to internalize this perspective, you must learn to disidentify from your external position. That is, whether people like you are not, how much money you have or what you have accomplished in your life are essentially irrelevant when it comes to your sense of self.

So, how does this work exactly.  Well, consider a newborn baby.  From an instrumental perspective, the baby has almost no value whatsoever.  It is completely useless.  Yet, if you ask anyone whether or not this baby is valuable, you will get a resounding yes. Why? Because the baby is intrinsically valuable due to its humanity.  And just as a baby has such intrinsic value (being value), so do you.  As you learn, grow and mature, you develop instrumental value (doing value).  However, this instrumental value is secondary.  It pales in your comparison to your intrinsic value.  Once you internalize this, you will have what I call unconditional self-worth.  In other words, high self-esteem is there for you once you decide to claim it.

Ultimately, you want to realize that you are not what you do and you are not what you have. 

The Benefits of the Being-Doing Separation

This unconditional self-worth perspective is not some feel good, self-help crap.  It is a very empowering viewpoint to take on because it increases your ability to succeed and be happy in the real world.

1. The ability to look at weaknesses - As you disidentify from your external position, you increasing develop the capacity to look at who you really are. You can approach your weaknesses and flaws with a sense of curiosity and acceptance as opposed to fear and judgment. With this increased self-awareness and self-honesty, you are able to better perceive reality - and yourself specifically - with greater accuracy.
2. You stop beating yourself up - Self-judgment and self-esteem are inherently incompatible. A lot of emotional pain comes simply from the negative opinions people hold of themselves. How much better would your quality of life be if you just stopped beating yourself up.
3. Letting go of attachment to social values - A lot of mental energy and behaviour is wasted on trying to conform to social conditioning. The need for approval moves people to take actions that are not alignment with their core self in order to feel good about themselves. However, when you already have that good feeling about yourself, you become increasing free from such constraints. You now have the choice to focus on your internal values and expressing them in a way that is meaningful to you.
4. Many fears automatically fall away - A lot of your fears are rooted in what something what mean about you and your worth if it were to happen. For example, the fear of failure is common because for many people, failing to achieve a specific goal would mean that they were a failure as a person. However, when your underlying context for living your life asserts that you are a worthwhile person, such fear cannot exist - it would be a contradiction.
5. Freedom to take risks - Following from the previous point, when you detach your sense of self from the external conditions of your life, you become free to take risks. As you take risks, you gain more refined distinctions about what behaviours produce the results you desire and what behaviours are dysfunctional. This allows you to experience greater success over the long term.
6. Authentic interactions - When you no longer feel that your sense of self is on the line, you are more able to put your real self out there in interactions with others while being free from worry. The need to elicit positive responses from others disappears and you become far more genuine in your expression. Paradoxically, it is when you no longer actively seek the approval of others that you are far more likely to get it.
7. Unattached to outcomes - A natural consequence of separating your sense of self from your external position is a sense of detachment from the outcomes of your actions. Instead of making actions just a means to an end, they become an end in of themselves. Stress melts away because you focus shifts from a future destination to the present moment. Action then becomes effortless, flowing freely without resistance.
8. Being grounded - Life naturally flows in cycles. There are times when things are going enormously well and it seems like you can do no wrong. There are times when everything is going wrong and you struggle with the simplest of tasks. When you identify with the externals of your life, your sense of self fluctuates with your life situation. However, coming from a place of genuine self-esteem, you have the ability to remain centred and grounded in the face of externals.
9. Dilation of perspective - There is a natural tendency for many people to get wrapped up in the difficulties that they are currently facing. However, when your identity and your self-esteem are not wrapped in these problems, they stop seeming so big. Emotionalizing drops away and you are able to take a more objective standpoint.
10. Increased awareness - This is probably the single biggest benefit relating to personal growth. When you hold yourself in unconditional positive regard, you develop the ability to be completely honest with yourself. You can see your flaws and shortcoming without denial and without beating yourself up about them. As you remove these blindspots, this increased awareness exposed you to greater personal truth. This truth, in turn, allows you to make more intelligent decisions about you act and behave in the future.

The Journey to Self-Esteem

After reading through the list of benefits, it is quite clear that develop a high sense of self worth is something that should  be a priority for you.

However, a common problem I encounter when presenting this idea to others a strong sense of internal resistance to the idea.  Plenty of limiting thoughts come up.  "But why do I should I have high self-esteem? Why do I deserve it? It doesn't make any sense?  I can't just decide out of nowhere to become a high self-esteem person."

Even as you are reading this, you might be feeling weird, anxious or defensive.  There are several reasons for these feelings.

First, your brain likes what's the same.  Chances are, if you've difficulties with your self-esteem in the past, you will try to find ways to justify staying the same.  It's a classic example of reordering perception to preserve the map.  Any time an idea challenges your habitual way of thinking, it is natural to feel anxious because of its threat on your current view of reality.  Growth is almost always accompanied by discomfort. These feelings of anxiety can be quite intense. However, you can clearly see the benefits of developing unconditional self-worth and can choose to feel the fear of change and make the change anyway.

Second, you probably have, like most people, beaten yourself about your shortcomings in the past.  The acceptance of unconditional self-worth challenges your sense of identity in that a lot of past pain and suffering would now seem needless.  That itself causes pain - feeling bad now about making yourself feel bad in the past.  To avoid this pain (or meta-pain), you can simply reject this idea of unconditional self-worth.  However, that is a short-sighted solution that will limit you in the long term.

Instead, recognize that at any moment in time you are doing the best you can given you current level of awareness.  This means that in the past you beat yourself up about your mistakes and shortcomings simply because you didn't know any better and, at some level, you thought it would help.  Now, after reading up to this point, you do know better and your level of awareness has increased.

The choice is up to you know.  You can decide to take on a new, empowering attitude of unconditional self-worth or you can choose to ignore it and continue to disempower yourself.  However, if that is what you choose, do so with the full awareness that you are consciously deciding to disempowering yourself.  By reading this far, you have basically taken the red pill.

The Laziness Objection

Some people might object to this proposed attitude shift by saying, "If I value myself unconditionally, I won't take any action."

At one level, it is true that much of your previous fear-based motivation will fall away.  But that is a good thing.  Do you really want to consistently motivate yourself by fear? Do you really want to be constantly striving to prove yourself?  Or would you rather motivate not from a place of lack or scarcity, but from a wholeness, inspiration and self-expression.

Coming from a place of self-esteem, your activity is no longer about proving yourself or filling a hole inside of you but it becomes about genuinely expressing your desires.  In my experience, my motivation to act has actually increased and I am taking far more action each and every day.  The difference is that the motivation is now internally generated and that action becomes fun and almost effortless at times.

The Arrogance Objection

This objection sounds something like, "Won't unconditional self-worth make me arrogant?"

Arrogance is rooted in insecurity and ego.  It is an attempt to fill a hole in your self-esteem by posturing and making yourself superior to others.  Arrogance is trying to justify feeling good about yourself by making yourself out to be better than other people.  This is a stark contrast to genuine self-esteem.

Self-esteem puts you in a position of wholeness - you are complete.  When there is no lack in your sense of self that you are trying to fill, there is no reason to try to make yourself appear better than anyone else.  By recognizing your unconditional self-worth, you also let go of the idea of being special.  If you are worthy, then so is everyone else.  You are special, just like everyone else.  In this way, self-esteem raises your regard not only of yourself but of every single person you encounter.

Practical Steps: How to Make the Transition to Unconditional Self-Worth

So you might be convinced that developing unconditional self-worth is a good idea. It all seems very simple and straightforward as you read it.  Buy how do you practically make the internal shift to the point where this attitude is full internalized?

The most important part is making the decision to take on this belief and committing to internalizing it.  To do so, you must first rationally convince yourself that adopting the attitude of unconditional self-worth is the right choice to make.  Take time to think about it, reflect on it, and perhaps journal about it.  A good exercise to do is write down all the ways your life will be better by having this different perspective.  Write down a lot of reasons to make the shift.  Hundreds of them.  Once you've made the mental shift, the emotional switch will follow suit, though it might take quite a bit longer.

The biggest obstacle you will in internalizing this concept, and something I still struggle with from time to time, is previously conditioned mental patterns.  These patterns include approval seeking, self-judgment, fear of failure etc. All of these mental patterns are in direct opposition to your goal of unconditional self-worth.

Your past mind patterns have a certain momentum to them.  They are not likely to stop instantly.  However, with some consistent effort, they will diminish over time.  Think of it kind of like when you are driving a car and press the brakes.  The car doesn't stop instantly but requires several meters before it stops moving.  Your mind is similar.

The equivalent of pressing the brakes on your mind is awareness.  Become aware when you identify yourself with your external position and thereby make your sense of self-worth conditional.  Become intensely present when these patterns occur.  To learn how to do this, I recommend you read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. As you endeavour to become aware of unconscious patterns, you will undergo a certain progression:

1. You will start catching yourself in an limiting pattern after it has ended. For example, you will notice that were seeking approval in an interaction that occurred 5 minutes ago. The key here is to focus on the positive as a previously unconscious pattern has been made conscious to you.
2. Over time you will start to catch yourself during the limiting pattern. In the middle of stressing about a presentation you have to give tomorrow, you will have the realization that you are identifying yourself with the external.
3. Next, you will catch yourself as you start a limiting pattern and consciously choose an alternative, more conscious course of action. For example, as you realize you are fearing the truth about a situation and about to go into denial, you will consciously decide to see things as they really are.
4. At this level, the pattern completely dissolves. It is something you used to do but no longer resonates with you. You will have replaced the negative mind patterns with positive alternatives.

Behaviour Patterns of High Self-Esteem

It has been my experience that the behaviours that are indicative of high self-esteem also foster the same sense of high self-esteem.  In this way, a positive feedback loop is formed as the better you feel about yourself, the more you engage in these behaviours and the more your engage in these behaviours, the better you feel about yourself.

Here are a few high self-esteem behaviours should be cultivated to replace any negative mind patterns that you may have:

• Reality Orientation - Develop a strong desire to see reality as it is, free from pessimism or over-optimism. Be willing to see yourself as you truly are. Resolve cognitive distortions.
• Acceptance - Accept yourself as you are and accept others as they are.
• Autonomy - Take full responsibility for your life. Live in a way that makes sense to you instead of unconsciously conforming to the expectation of others.
• Principle-centred - Hold your principles and sense of integrity in the highest regard. It is better to stay true to your principles and meet with disapproval than have the approval of others at the cost of your integrity.
• Connection - Develop a feeling of commonality with others. Learn to see yourself in other people and resist the urge to judge.

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Internalizing the attitude of unconditional self-worth is probably the best thing I've done for myself in terms of my mental development.  I suggest that you endeavour to internalize this attitude for yourself.  It is a long, arduous journey which will likely take you several months.  However, the benefits to your quality of life and your ability to achieve are profound.