Healthy self-esteem is a deep-down, inside the soul belief in your own worth, regardless of your age, looks, ethnicity, gender, religion, background, or status. It encompasses the idea that you have potential for success and fulfillment, and that you are worth investing in, learning, gaining skills, and performing a valuable service to society in your own, unique way.
It allows you to feel deserving of a new, healthier environment or lifestyle, instead of being a mirror or victim of your early or current circumstances. It is one of the most important roots in the healthy growth of every human being. Self-esteem gives you permission to believe you can improve and better yourself and becomes your passport, allowing you the freedom to journey as far as you dare, to seek a destiny worthy of your highest aspirations. It embraces where you want to go, rather than where you are coming from.
The late Dr. Nathaniel Branden, a friend and colleague of mine and a leading authority on healthy self-esteem, taught that to grow in self-esteem is to grow in the conviction that we are competent to live and are worthy of happiness. And to face life with confidence, benevolence, and optimism. In this way, we’re best able to reach our goals and experience fulfillment. To grow in self-esteem is to expand our capacity for happiness. If you understand this, you can see why all of us have a stake in cultivating our self-esteem, not merely those whose self-esteem is painfully low. We don’t have to hate ourselves to learn to love ourselves more. We don’t have to feel inferior to want to feel more competent. We don’t have to be miserable to want to expand our capacity for joy.
The higher your self-esteem, the better equipped you are to cope with life’s adversities. The higher your self-esteem the more likely it is that you’ll be innovative rather than ritualistic and tradition-bound in your work. And this ensures greater success in a world of increasingly rapid change. The higher your self-esteem the more ambitious you tend to be. Not necessarily in a career or a financial sense, but more broadly, in creative and spiritual terms. With high self-esteem you’re more likely to form nourishing rather than destructive relationships. Since like is drawn to like. Health is attracted to health. And vitality and expansiveness are more appealing than emptiness and frustration. With high self-esteem you’re more inclined to treat others with respect and goodwill since you don’t perceive them as threats, and since self-respect is the foundation of respect for others. With high self-esteem you experience more joy in the sheer fact of being, in waking up in the morning and living inside your own skin. These are just a few of the rewards of self-confidence and self-respect.
Self-esteem on whatever level is an intimately personal experience. It resides in the core of our being. It is what I think and feel about myself. Not what someone else thinks or feels. No one else can breathe for us. No one else can think for us. No one else can give us self-esteem. I can be loved by my family, my mate, my friends, and yet not love myself. I can be admired by my associates and yet regard myself as worthless. I can project assurance and poise that fools virtually everyone while I secretly tremble with a sense of my inadequacy. I can fulfill the expectations of others and yet fail my own. I can win every honor and yet I feel I’ve accomplished nothing. I can be adored by millions and yet wake up each morning with a sickening sense of fraudulence and emptiness.
These ideas of Dr. Nathaniel Branden, which I have paraphrased, are powerful and proven. To win success without attaining positive self-esteem is to feel like an impostor, anxiously awaiting exposure. You see, the acclaim of others doesn’t create our self-esteem. Neither does knowledge, skill, expertise, material possessions, a marriage, parenthood, charitable endeavors, sexual conquests, or a facelift. They can sometimes make us feel better about ourselves temporarily, or more comfortable in particular situations, but comfort is not self-esteem. The tragedy of many people’s lives is that they look for self-confidence and self-respect in every direction except within and so they fail in their search. When you begin to understand self-esteem in this way, you can appreciate how foolish it is to think that only by making a more positive impression on others, you can enjoy a good self-regard.
You’ll stop telling yourself, “If only I get one more promotion, if only I become a better wife and mother, if only I’m perceived to be a good provider, if only I can afford a bigger car, if only I could write a book, acquire another company, one more lover, one more award, one more acknowledgment of my selflessness, then I’ll be ready to really feel at peace with myself.” You see, this is an irrational quest and if you take it, your longing will always be for one more.
When you reach the pinnacle of self-esteem, you have an inner standard for judging your performance. You’re sure of what you can do, and the opinion of others does not hold you an emotional hostage. Above all, you have a very precious commodity called self-respect. If you wanted to state your personal code of self-respect it might sound like this: I am valuable because I was created with an inner value and worth. I do not have to earn it. I nurture self-respect as I understand and internalize my basic inner value. The value is there. I don’t have to achieve it. I already have it. My challenge is to nurture and protect it from getting jaded or twisted by the values of a success at any cost oriented society. If I can avoid the trap of trying to possess success or adorn myself with success at the expense of others, I can easily live with self-respect. It will be more important to me to do things to project my value, the marvelous gift I’ve been given, to other people. That is the primary motivation for being the best I can be. My worth is my word. I make commitments and I do what I say I will do and this is more than just important to me, it is crucial.
I say to others, “I am valuable as you are valuable. We will make a value exchange. I will offer you the best I have, and I assume you will give me your best in return.” People who see little or no value in themselves will not operate according to such a code. In fact a code like this may be distasteful to them. Instead of being concerned with self-respect, they’ll try to gain recognition from others through manipulation, half-truth, and show.
The principle of feeling worthy and making others feel worthy also is a basic lesson to be practiced between loved ones. It is also one of the basic goals that I see across the globe as corporations everywhere pursue their search for excellence. The inner applause you give yourself when you succeed outweighs anything anyone could ever give you. People who live with a good sense of worthiness in themselves and others are people who understand and believe in personal values.
Parents and children in today’s global society have a confused concept of self-esteem. The messages from all forms of media suggest that self-esteem is having a big ego and being able to assert ourselves as important in a celebrity-oriented, materialistic culture. Many people wrongly assume that self-esteem is the way we look, how much money we have, and how popular we are. In other words, the essence of self-esteem is lost and mixed up with self-indulgence and self-absorption. Instead of non-material, inner value, the concept of self-esteem has become narcissistic, hedonistic, and more associated with external “lifestyle” rather than feeling worthy of happiness and fulfillment.
We have the ability to edit and reprogram our bad memories—so they don’t hold us back. We also have the ability to edit, reprogram, splice-in, and spruce-up our good memories—so they propel and launch us forward. We can begin by making a conscious effort to upgrade our attitudes, education, habits, and personal development skills. We always project on the outside how we feel on the inside. We, ourselves, are our most influential coaches and critics of our performance. By rewiring our brains with positive, success-related messages, we can change our future outcomes. Let’s review the fundamentals of healthy self-esteem:
Healthy self-esteem, or the lack of it, is at the root of most behavior, both positive and negative. Self-esteem is a combination of self-worth and self-trust. Self-worth is being glad you’re you, with your genes, your body, your background, and your potential. Self-trust is the functional belief in your own ability positively and effectively to control what happens to you in a world of uncertainty. The first gives you a feeling of optimism. The second gives you empowerment.
No opinion and no judgment is so vitally important to your own growth and development as that which you hold of yourself. The most important conversations, briefings, meetings, and lectures you will ever have are those that you mull over in the privacy of your own mind. When you talk to yourself, speak as if you were encouraging your best friend. Talk to yourself with all due respect!
No eyes will ever critique a video of you, a selfie or photo of you, a reflection of you in a store window, or a full-length view of you in the mirror as you step out of the shower, as sharply and critically as your own eyes. Make an effort to feel good about your physical self, including what you eat, how you exercise, your grooming, how you dress, and how you think. If you don’t feel good about any of those things, take control and join a support group with similar goals to make positive changes. Engage in a self-improvement program for at least six months before you expect major results and prepare to stay involved for at least a year to two years. It takes over a year for a new habit to be imbedded strongly enough to overcome old destructive behaviors.
You have a choice of being your own worst enemy or your own best friend. Realize, once and for all, you hold the key to your personal success and happiness. You should believe that you and your children are as worthy of happiness and success as anyone. You are worthy in your own way, regardless of how you may differ from others.
And you must learn self-trust, which is the ability to feel positive, responsible, and in control of what takes place as you try to test your limits. You do this by dedicating yourself to a lifelong journey of knowledge and skill development as we move through the most exciting millennium in history. By building your own healthy self-esteem you will be a worthy role model, coach, and leader, to set the example for everyone in your personal and professional life, especially your own children.
Here are some action reminders to help you develop more positive self-esteem:
- Dress and look your best at all times, regardless of the pressure from your friends and peers. Personal grooming and appearance provide an instantaneous projection on the surface of how you feel inside about yourself. You don’t have to be the best-looking in any group, just look your best. Being clean says you care about yourself. Make a commitment to join a support group with a proven program that will overcome any habit that reduces the quality of your life.
- Improve your body language. Stand erect yet relaxed. Walk purposefully but without arrogance. Your jaw and face should be relaxed, your eyes bright and in direct contact with others while in conversation, your pronunciation should be clear, your voice projecting confidence and intensity. Always extend your hand and offer your own name first in any personal encounter and offer your name first in phone conversations. Smile with your eyes, voice, face, and body language. In virtually every culture, a smile is a light in your window that says a caring person resides within.
- Dwell on your strengths and talents. Keep a video webpage or Facebook record of your professional and personal milestones and achievements—positive memories for reinforcement during difficult times. Also, make a video of the older members of your family and senior members of your company relating their experiences and their expertise. Nothing is more important to rookies and the younger generation than wisdom from people who have been there before. And nothing is more important than featuring dedicated employees who may not be getting the attention they deserve.
- Make the first and last fifteen minutes of your day at home and at the office—the time we call sign-on and sign-off signatures—the most important for all around you. Make it a habit, no less important than brushing your teeth, to start your day on a positive note. Wake up looking forward to a new slate. Send your partner or spouse off with a loving, encouraging thought. Send yourself off to work with a bright outlook. Send everyone at your factory or office forward with the expected results, not the morning newspaper’s bad news.
Just as important, use the last fifteen minutes of your office and family day to let others know how much you care for them—by signing off with a reassuring, optimistic sentence or two. Just before leaving the office, think of something in your working environment that brings you satisfaction and pass it on. Do the same at home before going to sleep. We believe this has influenced our family to rise higher in their aspirations. We know it has changed our own lives.
Questions: In your journal or a place you can refer to, make a simple list of what is in your BAG: B—Blessings? What blessings do you take for granted? A—Accomplishments? What you are proud of? G—Goals? What are you reaching for? By dwelling on the answers to those few questions, you will never want to trade “bags” with anyone else.
Action: When anyone pays you a compliment for any reason, reply with a warm “thank you,” and return the compliment in some way. This is the best way to pay value forward.
The most important three words you can say to yourself: Yes, I can!