(Life Changing!) The Six Pillars of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Branden | Full Audiobook

the six pillars of self-esteem by Nathaniel Brandon read by the author hello my purpose in this program is to identify the most important factors on which self-esteem depends if self-esteem is the health of the mind then few subjects are of comparable urgency the turbulence of our times demands strong selves with a clear sense of identity competence and Worth with a breakdown of cultural consensus an absence of worthy role models little in the public arena to inspire our Allegiance and disorienting Lee rapid change a permanent feature of our lives with all that it is a dangerous moment in history not to know who we are or not to trust ourselves the stability we cannot find in the world we must create within our own persons to face life with low self-esteem is to be at a severe disadvantage these considerations are part of my motivation in writing this program which in essence consists of my answers to four questions what is self esteem why is self esteem important what can we do to raise the level of our self esteem what role do others play in influencing our self esteem self esteem is shaped by both internal and external factors by internal I mean factors residing within or generated by the individual ideas or beliefs practices or behaviors by external I mean factors in the environment such as messages verbally or non-verbally transmitted or experiences evoked by parents teachers significant others organizations and culture I examine self esteem from the inside and the outside what is the contribution of the individual to his or her self-esteem and what is the contribution of other people I first lectured on self esteem and its impact on love work and the struggle for happiness in the late 1950s and published my first articles on the subject in the 1960s the challenge then was to gain public understanding of its importance self-esteem was not yet an expression in widespread use today the danger may be that the idea has become fashionable it is on everyone's tongue which is not to say that it is better understood yet if we are unclear about its precise meaning and about the specific factors it's successful attainment depends on if we are careless in our thinking or succumb to the oversimplifications and sugar coatings of pop psychology then the subject will suffer a fate worse than being ignored it will become trivialized in working with self-esteem we need to be aware of two dangers one is that of oversimplifying what healthy self-esteem requires and thereby of catering to people's hunger for quick fixes and effortless solutions the other is that of surrendering to a kind of fatalism or determinism that assumes in the fact that individuals either have good self-esteem or they haven't in other words everyone's destiny is set by the first few years of life and there's not much to be done about it except perhaps years of psychotherapy both views encourage passivity both obstruct our vision of what is possible my experience is that most people underestimate their power to change and grow they believe implicitly that yesterday's pattern must be tomorrow's they do not see that choices do exist they rarely appreciate how much they can do on their own behalf if genuine growth and higher self-esteem are their goals and if they are willing to take responsibility for their own lives the belief that they are powerless becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy this program ultimately is a call to action it is addressed to all men and women who wish to participate actively in the process of their evolution as well as to psychologists parents teachers and those responsible for the culture of organizations this program is about what is possible there are realities we cannot avoid one of them is the importance of self-esteem regardless of what we do or do not admit we cannot be indifferent to our self-evaluation however we can run from this knowledge if it makes us uncomfortable we can shrug it off evade it declare that we are only interested in practical matters and escape into baseball or the Evening News or the financial pages or a shopping spree or a sexual adventure or a drink yet self-esteem is a fundamental human need its impact requires neither our understanding there our consent it works its way within us with or without our knowledge we are free to seek to grasp the dynamics of self-esteem or to remain unconscious of them but in the latter case we remain a mystery to ourselves and endure the consequences let us look at the role of self-esteem in our lives by self-esteem I mean much more than that innate sense of self-worth that presumably is our human birthright that spark that psycho therapists and teachers seek to fan and those they work with that spark is only the anteroom to self esteem self esteem fully realized is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life more specifically self esteem is confidence and our ability to think confidence and our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life and confidence in our right to be successful and happy the feeling of being worthy deserving entitled to assert our needs and wants achieve our values and enjoy the fruits of our efforts to trust one's mind and to know the one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self esteem the power of this conviction about oneself lies in the fact that it is more than a judgment or a feeling it is a motivator it inspires behavior in turn it is directly affected by how we act causation flows in both directions there is a continuous feedback loop between our actions in the world and our self-esteem if I trust my mind in judgment I am more likely to operate as a thinking being bringing appropriate awareness to my activities my life works better this reinforces trust in my mind if I distrust my mind I am more likely to be mentally passive when my actions lead to disappointing or painful results I feel justified in distrusting my mind with high self esteem I am more likely to persist in the face of difficulties with low self-esteem I am more likely to give up or go through the motions of trying without really giving my best if I persevere the likelihood is that I will succeed more often than I fail if I don't the likelihood is that I will fail more often than I succeed either way my view of myself will be reinforced if I respect myself and require that others deal with me respectfully I send out signals and behave in ways that increase the likelihood that others will respond appropriately when they do I am reinforced and confirmed in my initial belief if I lack self-respect and accept discourtesy abuse or exploitation from others as natural I unconsciously transmit this and some people will treat me at my self estimate when this happens and I submit to it my self-respect deteriorates still more the value of self esteem lies not merely in the fact that it allows us to feel better but that it allows us to live better to respond to challenges and opportunities more resourcefully and more appropriately the level of our self-esteem has profound consequences for every aspect of our existence how we operate in the workplace how we deal with people how high we are likely to rise how much we are likely to achieve in the personal realm it helps determine with whom we are likely to fall in love how we interact with our spouse children and friends and what level of personal happiness we attained there are positive correlations between healthy self-esteem and a variety of other traits that bear directly in our capacity for achievement and for happiness healthy self-esteem correlates with rationality realism intuitiveness creativity independence flexibility ability to manage change willingness to admit and correct mistakes benevolence and cooperativeness poor self-esteem correlates with irrationality blindness to reality rigidity fear of the new and unfamiliar in appropriate conformity or inappropriate rebellious defensiveness / compliant or over controlling behavior and fear of or hostility toward other people high self esteem seeks the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile and demanding goals low self esteem seeks the safety of the familiar and undemanding the more solid our self-esteem the better equipped we are to cope with troubles that arise in our personal lives or in our careers and the quicker we are to pick ourselves up after a fall the more energy we have to begin anew the higher our self-esteem the more ambitious we tend to be not necessarily in a career or financial sense but in terms of what we hope to experience in life emotionally intellectually creatively spiritually the lower our self-esteem the less we aspire to and the less we are likely to achieve either path tends to be self reinforcing and self perpetuating the higher our self-esteem the stronger the drive to express ourselves reflecting the sense of richness within the lower our self-esteem the more urgent the need to quote unquote prove ourselves or to forget ourselves by living mechanically and unconsciously the higher our self-esteem the more open honest and appropriate our communications are likely to be because we believe our thoughts have value and therefore we welcome rather than fear parity the lower our self-esteem the more muddy evasive and inappropriate our communications are likely to be because of uncertainty about our own thoughts and feelings and our anxiety about the listeners response the healthier our self-esteem the more inclined we are to treat others with respect benevolence goodwill and fairness since we do not tend to perceive them as a threat and since self-respect is the foundation of respect for others we tend to feel most comfortable most at home with persons whose self-esteem level resembles our own opposites may attract about some issues but not this one high self-esteem individuals tend to be drawn to high self-esteem individuals we do not see a passionate love affair for example between persons at opposite ends of the self-esteem continuum just as we are not likely to see a passion of romance between intelligence and stupidity note that I am speaking of passionate love not a brief infatuation or sexual episode which can operate by a different set of dynamics medium self-esteem individuals are typically attracted to medium self-esteem individuals low self-esteem seeks low self-esteem in others not consciously of course but by the logic of that which leads us to feel we have encountered a soulmate the most disastrous relationships are those between persons who think poorly of themselves the union of two abysus does not produce a height it is not difficult to see the importance of self-esteem to success in the arena of intimate relationships there is no greater barrier to romantic happiness than the fear that I am undeserving of love and that my destiny is to be hurt such fears give birth to self-fulfilling prophecies if I enjoy a fundamental sense of efficacy and worth and experience myself as loveable then I have a foundation for appreciating and loving others I have something to give I am not trapped in feelings of deficiency but if I lack respect and enjoyment of Who I am I have very little to give except my unfilled needs in my emotional impoverishment I tend to see other people essentially a sources of approval or disapproval I do not appreciate them for who they are in their own right I see only what they can or cannot do for me I am NOT looking for people whom I can admire and with whom I can share the excitement and adventure of life I'm looking for people who will not condemn me and perhaps will be impressed by my persona the face I present to the world my ability to love remains undeveloped we have all heard the observation that if you do not love yourself you will be unable to love others less well understood is the other half of the story if I do not feel lovable it is very difficult to believe that anyone else loves me if I do not accept myself how can I accept your love for me your warmth and devotion are confusing they can pound my self-concept since I know I am NOT lovable thus even if I consciously disown my feelings of being unlovable even if I insist or try to insist that I am wonderful my poor self concept remains deep within to undermine my attempts at relationships unwittingly I become a saboteur of love I attempt love but the foundation of inner security is not there instead there is the secret fear that I am destined only for pain so I pick someone who inevitably will reject or abandon me or they might pick someone with whom happiness might be possible I subvert the relationship by demanding excessive reassurances or by venting irrational possessiveness or by making catastrophes of small frictions or by seeking control through subservience or domination by finding ways to reject my partner before my partner can reject me everyone knows the famous Groucho Marx joked that he would never join a club that would have him for a member that is exactly the idea by which some low self-esteem people operate their love life if you love me you obviously are not good enough for me only someone who will reject me is an acceptable object of my devotion note that it is not always necessary to destroy the relationship entirely it may be acceptable that the relationship continue providing I am NOT happy I may engage in a project called struggling to be happy or working on our relationship I may read books on the subject participate in seminars attend lectures or enter psychotherapy with the announced aim of being happy in the future but not now not today the possibility of happiness in the present is too terrifyingly immediate happiness anxiety as I call it is very common happiness can activate internal voices saying I don't deserve this or it will never last or I'm riding for a fall or I'm killing my mother or father by being happier than they ever were or happiness is only an illusion or nobody else is happy so why should I be what is required for many of us is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage until such time as we lose the fear of it and realize that it will not destroy us and it need not disappear one day is a time I will tell clients see if you can get through today without doing anything to undermine or subvert your good feelings and if you fall off the wagon don't despair pull yourself back up and recommit yourself to happiness such perseverance is self-esteem building self-esteem creates a set of implicit expectations about what is possible and appropriate to us these expectations tend to generate the actions that turn them into realities and the realities confirm and strengthen the original beliefs self-esteem high or low tends to be a generator of self-fulfilling prophecies self-concept is destiny or more precisely it tends to be our self-concept is who and what we consciously and subconsciously think we are our physical and psychological traits our assets and liabilities possibilities and limitations strengths and weaknesses a self-concept includes our level of self-esteem but is more global we cannot understand a person's behavior without understanding the self-concept behind it people sabotage themselves at the height of the success all the time they do so when success clashes with their implicit beliefs about what is appropriate to them it is frightening to be flying beyond the limits of one's idea of who one is if a self-concept cannot accommodate a given level of success and if the self-concept does not change it is predictable that the person will find ways to self-sabotage poor self-esteem places us in an adversarial relationship to our well-being the question is sometimes asked is it possible to have too much self-esteem no it is not no more than it is possible to have too much physical health or too powerful and immune system sometimes self-esteem is confused with boasting or bragging or arrogance but such traits reflect not too much self esteem but too little they reflect a lack of self esteem persons of high self esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard their joy is in being who they are nothing being better than someone else I recall reflecting on this issue one day while watching my dog playing in the backyard she was running about sniffing flowers chasing squirrels leaping into the air showing a great joy in being I'm sure she was not thinking that she was more glad to be alive than the dog next door she was simply delighting in her own existence that image captures something essential of how I understand the experience of healthy self esteem people with troubled self-esteem are often on comfortable in the presence of those with higher self-esteem they may feel resentful and declare they have too much self-esteem but what they are really making is a statement about themselves the sad truth is whoever is successful in this world runs the risk of being a target people of low achievement often envy and resentment those who are unhappy often envy and resent those who are happy and those of low self-esteem sometimes like to talk about the danger of having as they put it too much self-esteem a poor self-esteem does not mean that we will necessarily be incapable of achieving any real values some of us may have the talent energy and drive to achieve a great deal in spite of feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness an example is the highly productive workaholic who is driven to prove his worth to say a father who predicted he would always be a loser but a poor self-esteem does mean that we will be less effective and less creative than we have the power to be and it means that we will be crippled in our ability to find joy in our achievements nothing we do will ever feel like enough if my aim is to prove I am enough the project goes on to infinity because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable so it is always one more victory one more promotion one more sexual conquest one more company one more piece of jewelry a larger house a more expensive car another award yet the void within remains unfilled in today's culture some frustrated people who hit this impasse announce that they have decided to pursue a spiritual path and renounce their egos this enterprise is doomed to failure an ego in the mature and healthy sense is precisely what they have failed to attain they dream of giving away where they do not possess no one can successfully bypass the need for self-esteem a word of caution if one error is to deny the importance of self-esteem another is to claim too much for it and their enthusiasm some writers today seem to suggest that a healthy sense of self value is all we need to assure happiness and success the matter is more complex than that a well-developed sense of self is a necessary condition of our well-being but not a sufficient condition its presence does not guarantee fulfilment but its lack guarantees some measure of anxiety frustration or despair self-esteem is not a substitute for a roof over one's head or food in one stomach but it increases the likelihood that one will find a way to meet such needs self-esteem is not a substitute for the knowledge and skills one needs to operate effectively in the world but it increases the likelihood that one will acquire them the survival value of self-esteem is especially evident today we have reached a moment in history when self-esteem which has always been a supremely important psychological need has also become a supremely important economic need it is the attribute imperative for adaptiveness to an increasingly complex challenging and competitive world in the past few decades the United States has shifted from a manufacturing society to an information society we now live in a global economy characterized by rapid change accelerating scientific and technological breakthroughs and an unprecedented level of competitiveness these developments create demands for higher levels of education and training than were required of previous generations everyone acquainted with business culture knows this what is not understood is that these developments also create new demands on our psychological resources specifically these developments asked for a greater capacity for innovation self-management personal responsibility and self direction a modern business can no longer be run by a few people who think and many people who just do what they are told today organizations need not only an unprecedented ly higher level of knowledge and skill among all those who participate but also a higher level of independence self-reliance self Trust and the capacity to exercise initiative in a word self-esteem the challenge extends further than the world of business we are freer than any generation before us to choose our own religion philosophy or moral code to adopt our own lifestyle to select our own criteria for the good life we no longer have unquestioning faith in tradition we no longer believe that government will lead us to salvation nor Church nor labor unions nor big organizations of any kind we have more choices and options than ever before in every area frontiers of limitless possibilities now faces in whatever direction we look to be adaptive in such an environment we have a greater need for personal autonomy this is because there is no widely accepted code of values and rituals to spare us the challenge of individual decision making we must learn to think for ourselves to cultivate our own resources and to take responsibility for the choices values and actions that shape our lives the greater the number of choices and decisions we need to make at a conscious level the more urgent our need for self esteem self esteem has two interrelated components one is a sense of basic confidence in the face of life's challenges this is self efficacy the other is a sense of being worthy of happiness this is self-respect self-efficacy means confidence in the functioning of my mind in my ability to think understand learn choose and make decisions it means confidence in my ability to understand the facts of reality that fall within the severe of my interests and needs it means self trust and self-reliance self-respect means assurance of my value it means an affirmative attitude toward my right to live and to be happy it means comfort in appropriately asserting my thoughts wants and needs it means the feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright we will need to consider these two ideas in more detail but for the moment consider the following if an individual felt inadequate to face the challenges of life if an individual lacked fundamental self trust confidence in his or her mind we would recognize a self-esteem deficiency no matter what other assets he or she possessed or if an individual lacked a basic sense of self-respect felt unworthy or undeserving of the love or respect of others an entitled to happiness fearful of asserting thoughts wants or needs again we would recognize a self-esteem deficiency no matter what other positive attributes he or she exhibited self-efficacy and self of healthy self esteem absent either one self esteem is impaired they are the defining characteristics of self esteem within a given person there will be inevitable fluctuations in self-esteem levels much as there are fluctuations in all psychological states we need to think in terms of a person's average level of self-esteem while we sometimes speak of self esteem as a conviction about one's self it is more accurate to speak of it as a disposition to experience oneself a particular way what way let me sum it up in a formal precise definition self esteem is the disposition to experience one's self as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness now the value of a precise definition is that it allows us to a particular aspect of reality from all others so that we can think about it and work with it with clarity and focus if we wish to know what self-esteem depends on how to nurture it and our children supported the school's encouraged it in organizations strengthen it in psychotherapy or develop it in ourselves we need to know what precisely we are aiming at we are unlikely to hit a target we cannot see if our idea of self-esteem is vague that means we adopt to build it will reflect this vagueness am I suggesting that the definition of self-esteem I offer is written in stone and can never be improved on not at all definitions are contextual they relate to a given level of knowledge as knowledge grows definitions tend to become more precise I may find a better clearer more exact way to capture the essence of the concept during my lifetime or perhaps someone else may but within the context of the knowledge we now possess I can think of no alternative formulation that identifies with more precision the unique aspect of human experience we are exploring to have high self-esteem then is to feel confidently appropriate to life to have low self-esteem is to feel inappropriate to life to feel wrong not about this issue or that but wrong as a person to have average self-esteem is to fluctuate between feeling appropriate and inappropriate right and wrong as a person it is also to manifest these inconsistencies in behavior sometimes acting wisely sometimes acting foolishly thereby reinforcing the uncertainty about who one is at one's core I have given the name self-efficacy to that experience of basic power or competence that we associate with healthy self esteem and self respect to the experience of dignity and personal worth while their meaning is clear in a general way I want to examine them more closely first self-efficacy to be efficacious in the basic dictionary sense is to be capable of producing a desired result confidence in our basic efficacy is confidence in our ability to learn what we need to learn and do what we need to do in order to achieve our goals insofar as success depends on our own efforts rationally we do not judge our competence in the sense meant here by factors outside our control self-efficacy is not the conviction that we can never make an error it is the conviction that we are able to think to judge to know and to correct errors it is trust in our mental processes and abilities self-efficacy is not the certainty that we will be able to master any and every challenge that life presents it is the conviction that we are capable in principle of learning what we need to learn and that we are committed to doing our rational and conscientious best to master the tasks and challenges entailed by our values self-efficacy is deeper than confidence in our specific knowledge and skills based on past successes and accomplishments although it is clearly nurtured by them it is confidence in what made it possible for us to acquire knowledge and skills and to achieve successes it is confidence and our ability to think confidence in our consciousness and how we choose to use it again it is trust in our processes and as a consequence a disposition to expect success for our efforts the distinction between trust and our processes and trust in some particular area of knowledge is of the highest importance and virtually every sphere of endeavor in a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every 10 years our security can rest only on our ability to learn no one can expect to be equally competent in all areas and no one needs to be our interests values and circumstances determine the areas in which we are likely to concentrate now let's consider the second component of self-esteem self-respect just as self-efficacy intell's the expectation of success as natural so self-respect entails the expectation of friendship love and happiness as natural as a result of who we are and what we do we can isolate the two components conceptually for the sake of analysis but in the reality of our daily experience they constantly overlap and involve each other self respect is the conviction of our own value it is not the delusion that we are perfect or superior to everyone else it is not comparative or competitive at all it is the conviction that our life and well-being are worth acting to support protect and nurture that we are good and worthwhile and deserving of the respect of others and that our happiness and personal fulfillment are important enough to work for to appreciate why our need for self-respect is so urgent consider this to live successfully we need to pursue and achieve values to act appropriately we need to value the beneficiary of our actions we need to consider ourselves worthy of the rewards of our actions absent this conviction we will not know how to take care of ourselves protect our legitimate interests satisfy our needs or enjoy our own achievements thus our experience of self efficacy also will be impaired if we respect ourselves we tend to act in ways that confirm and reinforce this respect such as requiring others to deal with us appropriately if we wish to raise the level of our self respect we need to act in ways that will cause it to rise and this begins with a commitment to the value of our own person the need to see ourselves as good is the need to experience self respect it emerges very early as we develop childhood we progressively become aware of the power to choose our actions we become aware of our responsibility for the choices we make we acquire our sense of being a person we experience a need to feel that we are right right as a person right and our characteristic way of functioning this is the need to feel that we are good the level of our self-esteem is not set once and for all in childhood it could grow as we mature or it can deteriorate there are people whose self-esteem was higher at the age of 10 then at the age of 60 and the reverse is also true self-esteem can rise and fall and rise again over the course of a lifetime mine certainly has I can think back over my history and observe changes in the level of my self-esteem that reflect choices I made in the face of particular challenges I can recall instances when I made choices I am proud of and others I bitterly regret choices that strengthen my self-esteem and others that lowered it we all can with regard to choices that lower self-esteem I think of times when I was unwilling to see what I saw and know what I knew time was what I needed to raise awareness and instead I lowered it time is when I needed to examine my feelings and instead I disowned them times when I needed to announce the truth and instead I climbed to silence times when I needed to walk away from a relationship that was harming me and instead I struggled to preserve it times when I needed to stand up for my deepest feelings and assert my deepest needs and instead I waited for a miracle to deliver me anytime we have to act to face a challenge to make a moral decision we effect our feelings about ourselves for good or bad depending on the nature of our response and the mental processes behind it and if we avoid action and decisions despite of their obvious necessity that too affects our sense of self our need for self esteem is the need to know we are functioning as our life and well-being require what the self-esteem look like there are some fairly simple and direct ways in which self-esteem manifest itself in ourselves and in others none of these items taken in isolation is a guarantee but when all are present together self-esteem seems certain self-esteem expresses itself in a face manner and way of talking and moving that projects the pleasure one takes in being alive it expresses itself and then ease of talking of accomplishments or shortcomings with directness and honesty since one is in a friendly relationship to facts it expresses itself in the comfort when experiences in giving and receiving compliments expressions of affection appreciation and the like it expresses itself and then openness to criticism and a comfort about acknowledging mistakes because when self-esteem is not tied to the image of being perfect it expresses itself when one's words and movements tend to have a quality of ease and spontaneity reflecting the fact that one there's not at war with oneself it expresses itself in the harmony between what one says and does and how one looks sounds and moves it expresses itself with an attitude of openness - and curiosity about new ideas new experiences new possibilities of life it expresses itself in the fact that feelings of anxiety or insecurity if they appear will be less likely to intimidate or overwhelm since accepting them managing them and rising above them rarely feels impossibly difficult it expresses itself in the ability to enjoy the humorous aspects of life in oneself and others it expresses itself in one's flexibility in responding to situations and challenges since one trust one's mind and does not see light as doom or defeat it expresses itself in one's comfort with assertive behavior in oneself and others it expresses itself in an ability to preserve a quality of harmony and dignity on conditions of stress physical manifestations of self-esteem include eyes that are alert bright and lively shoulders that are relaxed yet erect hands that tend to be relaxed and graceful arms that tend to hang in an easy natural way a posture the temps to be unstrained erect well balanced a walk that tends to be purposeful and a voice that tends to be modulated with an intensity appropriate to the situation and with clear pronunciation notice that the theme of relaxation occurs again and again relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves not denying our feelings and are not at war with who we are chronic tension conveys some form of internal split some form of self avoidance or self repudiation some aspect of the self being disowned or held on a very tight leash when self-esteem is low we are often manipulated by fear fear of reality to which we feel inadequate fear of facts about ourselves or others that we have denied disowned or repressed fear of the collapse of our pretenses fear of exposure fear of the humiliation of failure and sometimes the responsibilities of success we live more to avoid pain than to experience joy if we feel that crucial aspects of reality with which we must deal are hopelessly closed to our understanding if we face the key problems of life with a basic sense of helplessness if we feel that we dare not pursue certain lines of thought because of the unworthy features of our own character that will be brought to light if we feel in any sense whatever that reality is the enemy of our self-esteem these fears tend to sabotage the efficacy of consciousness thereby worsening the initial problem if we face the basic problems of life with an attitude of Who am I to know Who am I to decide or it is dangerous to be conscious or is futile to try to think or understand we are undercut at the outset a mine does not struggle for that which it regards as impossible or undesirable if low self-esteem dreads the unknown and unfamiliar high self-esteem seeks new frontiers if low self-esteem avoids challenges high self-esteem desires and needs them if low self-esteem looks for a chance to be absolved high self-esteem looks for an opportunity to admire in these opposite principles of motivation we have a guide to the health of the mind or spirit we can say that an individual is healthy to the extent that the basic principle of motivation is that of motivation by confidence the degree of motivation by fear is the measure of underdeveloped self-esteem sometimes we see people who enjoy worldly success are widely esteemed or who have a public veneer of assurance and yet are deeply dissatisfied anxious or depressed they may project the appearance of self efficacy and self-respect they may have the persona of self esteem but they do not possess the reality how might we understand them we have noted that to the extent we fail to develop authentic self esteem the consequence is varying degrees of anxiety insecurity and self-doubt this is the sense of being in effect inappropriate to existence of course no one thinks of it in those terms perhaps instead one thinks something is wrong with me or I'm lacking something essential this state tends to be painful and because it is painful we are often motivated to evade it to deny our fears rationalize our behavior and create the appearance of a self-esteem we do not possess we may develop what I have called pseudo self-esteem pseudo self-esteem is the illusion of self-efficacy and self-respect without the reality it is a self protective device to diminish anxiety and to provide a spurious sense of security a device to assuage our need for authentic self esteem while allowing the real causes of its lack to remain unexamined nothing is more common than to pursue self esteem by means that will not and cannot work instead of seeking self esteem through consciousness responsibility and integrity we may seek it through popularity material acquisitions or sexual exploits instead of valuing personal authenticity we may value belonging to the right clubs or the right church for the right political party instead of seeking self respect through honesty we may seek it through philanthropy I must be a good person I do good works instead of striving for the true power of competence we may pursue the so-called power of manipulating or controlling other people the possibilities for self-deception are almost endless self-esteem is an intimate experience it resides in the core of one's being it is what I think and feel about myself not what someone else thinks or feels about me this simple fact can hardly be overemphasized I can be loved by my family my mate and my friends and yet not love myself I can be admired by my associates and yet regard myself as worthless I can project an image of assurance and poise that fools almost everyone and yet 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 feel I have accomplished nothing I can be adored by millions and yet wake up each morning with a sickening sense of fraudulence and emptiness the tragedy of many people's lives is that they look for self-esteem in every direction except within and so they fail in their search the ultimate source of self-esteem is and can only be internal in what we do not what others do when we seek it in externals we invite tragedy I do not wish to suggest that a psychologically healthy person is unaffected by the feedback he or she receives from others we are social beings and others certainly contribute to our self perceptions but there are immense differences among people and the relative importance to their self-esteem of the feedback they receive persons for whom it is almost the only factor of importance and persons for whom the importance is a good deal less this is merely another way of saying there are immense differences among people in the degree of their autonomy having worked for many years with persons who are unhappily preoccupied with the opinions of others I am persuaded that the most effective means of liberation is by raising the level of consciousness one brings to one's own experience the more one turns up the volume on one's inner signals the more external signals tend to recede into proper balance this entails learning to listen to the body learning to listen to the emotions and learning to think for oneself what must an individual do to generate and sustain self-esteem what patterns of actions must be adopted what is the responsibility of you and me as adults in answering these questions we develop a standard by which to answer the questions what must a child learn to do if he or she is to enjoy self-esteem what is the desirable path of childhood development and also what practices should caring parents and teachers seek to evoke stimulate and support self-esteem and children in approaching the roots of self steam why do we put our focus on practices that is on mental or physical actions the answer is that every value pertaining to life requires action to be achieved sustained or enjoyed we pursue and maintain our values in the world through action it is a person's actions that are decisive what determines the level of self-esteem is what the individual does within the context of his or her knowledge and values and since action in the world is a reflection of action within the mind of the individual it is ultimately the internal processes that are crucial we shall see that the six pillars of self-esteem the practices indispensable to the health of the mind and the effective functioning of the person are all operations of consciousness all involve choices they are choices that confront us every hour of our existence note that practice the term practice implies a discipline of acting in a certain way over and over again consistently it is not action by fits and starts or even an appropriate response to a crisis rather it is a way of operating day by day in big issues and small a way of behaving that is also a way of being since self-esteem is a consequence a product of internally generated practices we cannot work on self-esteem directly neither our own nor anyone else's we must address ourselves to the source if we understand what these internal practices are we can commit to initiating them within ourselves and to dealing with others in such a way as to facilitate or encourage them to do likewise to encourage self esteem in the schools or in the workplace for instance is to create a climate that supports and reinforces the practices that strengthens self-esteem what then does healthy self esteem depend on what are the practices of which I speak I will name six that are demonstrably crucial I call them the six pillars of self-esteem it will not be difficult to see why any improvements in these practices generate unmistakable benefits once we understand these practices we have the power to choose them to work on integrating them into our way of life the power to do so is the power to raise the level of our self-esteem from whatever point we may be starting and however difficult the project may be in the early stages one does not have to attain perfection in these practices one only needs to raise ones average level of performance to experience growth in self efficacy and self-respect I have often witnessed the most extraordinary changes in people's lives as a result of relatively small improvements in these practices in fact I encourage clients to think in terms of small steps rather than big ones because big ones can intimidate and paralyze small ones seem more attainable and one small step leads to another here are the six pillars of self esteem one the practice of living consciously to the practice of acceptance 3 the practice of self responsibility for the practice of self assertiveness 5 the practice of living purposefully 6 the practice of personal integrity let's now examine each of them in turn the first pillar of self-esteem is the practice of living consciously in virtually all of the great spiritual and philosophical traditions of the world there appears some form of the idea that most human beings are sleepwalking through their own existence enlightenment is identified with waking up evolution and progress are identified with an expansion of consciousness why is consciousness so important because for all species that possess it consciousness is the basic tool of survival it is the ability to be aware of the environment in some form at some level and to guide action accordingly I use consciousness here in its primary meaning that is the state of being conscious or aware of some aspect of reality to the distinctively human form of consciousness with his capacity for concept formation and abstract thought we give the name mind we are beings for whom consciousness at the conceptual level is volitional this means that the design of our nature contains some extraordinary options that of seeking awareness or not bothering or actively avoiding it that of seeking truth or not bothering or actively avoiding it that of focusing our mind or not bothering or choosing to drop to a lower level of consciousness this capacity for a self management is our glory and at times our burden if we do not bring an appropriate level of consciousness to our activities if we do not live mindfully the inevitable penalty there's a diminished sense of self-efficacy and self-respect we can feel competent and worthy while conducting our lives in a mental fog our mind is our basic tool of survival betray it and self-esteem suffers through the thousands of choices we make between thinking and non thinking be responsible toward reality or evading it we establish a sense of the kind of person we are consciously we rarely remember these choices but deep in our psyche they are added up and the sum is that experience we call self esteem self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves we are not all equal and intelligence but intelligence is not the issue the principle of living consciously is unaffected by degrees of intelligence to live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions purposes values and goals seek to the best of our ability whatever that ability may be and then to behave in accordance with that which we see and know this last point bears emphasis consciousness that is not translated into appropriate action is a betrayal of consciousness living consciously means more than seeing and knowing it means acting on what one sees and knows thus I can recognize that I have been unfair and hurtful to my child or my spouse or my friend and I need to make amends but I don't want to admit I made a mistake so I procrastinate claiming that I am still thinking about the situation this is the opposite of living consciously at a fundamental level it is an avoidance of consciousness living consciously is living responsibly toward reality we do not necessarily have to like what we see but we recognize that wishes or fears or denials do not alter facts if I desire a new outfit but need the money for rent my desire does not transform reality and make the purchase rational if a statement is true by denying it will not make it false when we live consciously we do not confuse the subjective with the objective we do not imagine that our feelings are an infallible guide to truth we can learn from our feelings to be sure and they may even point us in the direction of important facts but this will entail the participation of reason let us look more closely at what the practice of living consciously includes living consciously entails a mind that is active rather than passive an intelligence that takes joy in its own function being in the moment without losing the wider context reaching out toward relevant facts rather than withdrawing from them being concerned to distinguish among facts interpretations and emotions noticing and confronting any impulses to avoid or deny painful or threatening realities being concerned to know where I am relative to my various goals and projects and whether I am succeeding or failing being concerned to know if my actions are in alignment with my purposes searching for a feedback from the environment so as to adjust or correct my course when necessary persevering in the attempt to understand in spite of difficulties being receptive to new knowledge and willing to re-examine old assumptions being willing to see and correct mistakes seeking always to expand awareness a commitment to learning and therefore a commitment to growth as a way of life a concern to understand the world around me a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality the reality of my needs feelings aspirations and motives so that I am NOT a stranger or a mystery to myself a concern to be aware of the values that move and guide me as well as their roots so that I am not ruled by values I have irrationally adopted or uncritically accepted from all of us can look back over our life and think of times when we did not bring to some concern as much consciousness as was needed we tell ourselves if only I had taught more if only I hadn't been so impulsive if only I had checked the facts more carefully I think of my first marriage when I was 22 years old I think of all the signs that we were making a mistake the numerous conflicts between us the incompatibilities in some of our values the ways in which at the core we were not each other's type why then did I proceed because of our shared commitment to certain ideas and ideals because of sexual attraction because I desperately wanted to have a woman in my life because she was the first person from whom I did not feel alienated and I lacked confidence that another would come along because I naively imagined that marriage could solve all the problems between us there were reasons to be sure still if someone had said to me or if I had somehow thought to say to myself if you were to bring a higher level of consciousness to your relationship with Barbara and to do so steadily day after day what do you suppose might happen if I had said that I have to wonder what I might have been led to come to grips with to a mind that is receptive so simple yet provocative a question can have astonishing potency the fact was I examined neither the feelings driving me toward marriage nor the feelings signaling danger I did not confront the logical and obvious questions why marry now why not wait until more is resolved between you and because of what I did not do my self-esteem suffered the subtle wound although it would be years before I fully understood this there is an exercise that I give to therapy clients today that I wish I had known about them the course of my life over the next decade or so might have been different if for two weeks I sat at my desk each morning I wrote the following incomplete sentence my notebook if I bring a higher level of consciousness - my relationship with Barbara if I had then written six to ten endings as rapidly as I could without rehearsing censoring planning or thinking I would have found myself making more and more conscious explicit and inescapable all the deep reservations I had about this relationship as well as my process of avoidance and denial I have given this exercise to clients who are confused or conflicted about some relationship and the result almost invariably his major clarification sometimes the relationship radically improves sometimes it ends had I known to use this technique I would have had to face the fact that loneliness was driving me more than admiration if Barbara had done a similar exercise she would have realized that she was no more rational than I and what we were preparing to do whether we would have had the courage and wisdom to stay at this higher level of awareness is something I can only speculate about now judging from the experience of my clients it would have been extraordinarily difficult for us to persist blindly on our course because we would no longer have been blind an opening one door clears the way to open in another and then another in the course of this program I will give you suggestions per sentence completion exercises sentence completion work is a deceptively simple yet uniquely powerful tool for raising self understanding self-esteem and personal effectiveness it rests on the premise that all of us have more knowledge than we normally are aware of sentence completion is a tool for accessing and activating these hidden resources the essence of this procedure is to write an incomplete sentence call the stem sentence and to keep adding different endings to it the sole requirement is that each ending be a grammatical completion of the sentence we want a minimum of six endings and ten is plenty there are two ways to approach this you may want to have a pen and paper handy and do these exercises in the course of the program as you hear them or you may want to first listen to the tape in its entirety to get the overall flow then return to the exercises at your leisure do whatever works best for you here's what's important work as rapidly as possible no pauses to quote unquote think no worrying if any particular ending is true reasonable or significant any ending is fine just keep going when doing sentence completion this way we work with a notebook typewriter or computer an alternative is to do the sentence completions into a tape recorder in which case you keep repeating the stem sentence into a recorder each time completing it with a different ending you play the work back later to reflect on it how might we used a technique to facilitate the process of learning to live more consciously first thing in the morning before proceeding to the day's business sit down and write the following sentence stem living consciously to me means then as rapidly as possible without pausing for reflection write at least half a dozen endings for that do not worry if your endings are literally true make sense or are profound write anything but write something and minimum of 610 is plenty as an example of how it might go perhaps you're right living consciously to me means really listening to my children being in the present remembering the things I've got to do today noticing the emotional mood of my spouse and children thinking about the consequences of my actions thinking about my choices and decisions before I translate them into action noticing how I'm affected by things people say or do noticing how other people are affected by things I say or do and so on when you're done go on to the next stem which is if I bring five percent more are wearing this to my activities today and what you've done that go on to this stem if I pay more attention to how I deal with people today and finally if I bring 5% more awareness to my most important relationships today when you're finished proceed with your day's business at the end of the day as your last task before dinner do 6 to 10 endings each for the following stems when I reflect on how I would feel if I lived more consciously when I reflect on what happens when I bring 5% more awareness to my activities when I reflect on what happens when I bring 5% more awareness to my most important relationships do this exercise every day Monday through Friday for the first week do not read what you wrote the day before naturally there will be many repetitions but also new endings will inevitably occur you are energizing all of your psyche to work for you an average session should not take longer than 10 minutes if it takes much longer you are thinking too much sometime each weekend reread what you have written for the week and then write a minimum of 6 endings for this stem if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I in doing this work the ideal is to empty your mind of any expectations concerning what will happen or what is supposed to happen do not impose any demands on the situation try to empty your mind of expectations do the exercise go about your day's activities and merely notice any differences in how you feel or how you operate you will discover that you have set in motion forces that make it virtually impossible for you to avoid operating more consciously in addition to my psychotherapy practice I conduct weekly ongoing self-esteem groups where many of my self-esteem building strategies are continually tested sentence completion exercises have proven to be powerful in quietly and gently generating change no one has ever done this particular consciousness exercise for a month or two without showing signs of operating and a higher level of awareness in the conduct of daily life the exercise is an adrenaline shot into the psyche after you have worked with these stems for say two weeks you will acquire a sense of how the procedure works then you can begin to use other stems to help raise your awareness with regard to particular issues of concern living consciously is both a practice and a mindset an orientation toward life and clearly it exists on a continuum no one lives entirely unconsciously and no one is incapable of expanding his or her consciousness if we reflect on this issue we will notice that we tend to be more conscious in some areas of our life than in others I have worked with athletes and dancers who are exclusively aware of the slightest nuances within their bodies and yet who are quite unaware of the meaning of many of their emotions we all know people who are brilliantly conscious in the area of work and our catastrophes of unconsciousness in their personal relationships the ways we know what area of our life needs more awareness are usually fairly obvious we look at the area where our life is working least satisfactorily we notice where the pains and frustrations are we observe where we feel least effective if we are willing to be honest this is not a difficult task once you identify the areas in your life where you are at your most conscious and also the areas where you are your least conscious the next step is to reflect on what seems to be difficult about staying and high level mental focus in the troublesome areas you might find it stimulating to consider the following questions if you choose to be more conscious at work what might you do differently if you choose to be more conscious in your most important relationships what might you do differently if you choose to pay more attention to how you deal with people associates employees customers spouse children / friends what might you do differently if you feel fear or reluctance to expand consciousness in any of these areas what are the imagined negatives you are of waiting if without self-reproach you bring more consciousness to your fears or reluctance what might you notice if you wanted to feel more powerful and effective in the areas where your consciousness has been less than it needs to be what are you willing to do the second pillar of self-esteem is the practice of self acceptance without self acceptance self-esteem is impossible in fact it is so intimately bound up with self-esteem that one sometimes sees the two ideas confused yet they are different in meaning and each needs to be understood in its own right whereas self-esteem is something we experience self acceptance is something we do to be self accepting is to be on my own side to be for my self in the most fundamental sense self acceptance refers to an orientation of self value and self commitment that derives from the fact that I am alive and conscious as such it is more primitive than self esteem it is a pre rational pre moral act of self affirmation it is a kind of natural egoism that is the birthright of every human being some people are self rejecting at so deep a level that no growth work can ever begin until and unless this problem is addressed if it is not no treatment will hold no new learning will be properly integrated no significant advances can be made an attitude of basic self acceptance entails the declaration I choose to value myself to treat myself with respect to stand up for my right to exist this primary act of self affirmation is the base on which self-esteem develops it can lie sleeping and then suddenly awake it can fight for our life even when we are filled with despair when we are on the brink of suicide it can make us pick up the telephone and call for help from the depths of anxiety or depression it can lead us to the office of a psychotherapist what all we want to do is lie down and die it can impel us to keep moving it is the voice of the life force it is selfishness in the noblest meaning of that word if it goes silent self-esteem is the first casualty self-acceptance entails our willingness to experience without denial or evasion that we think what we think feel what we feel desire what we desire have done what we have done and are what we are it is our willingness to experience rather than to disown whatever may be the facts of our being at a particular moment the willingness to experience and accept our feelings carries no implication that emotions are to have the last word on what we do I may not be in the mood to work today I can acknowledge my feelings experience them accept them and then go to work I will work with a clearer mind because I have not begun the day with self-deception often when we fully experience and accept negative feelings we are able to let go of them they have been allowed to have their say and they relinquish center stage self-acceptance is the willingness to say of any emotion or behavior this is an expression of me it is not necessarily an expression I like or admire but it is an expression of me nonetheless at least at the time it occurred if I am thinking these disturbing thoughts I am thinking them I accept the full reality of my experience if I am feeling pain or anger or fear or inconvenient lust I am feeling what is true is true I do not rationalize deny or attempt to explain away I am feeling what I am feeling and I accept a reality of my experience if I have taken actions of which I am later ashamed the fact remains that I have taken them I do not twist my brain to make facts disappear I am willing to stand still in the presence of what I know to be true what is is to accept is more than simply to acknowledge or admit it is to experience stand in the presence of contemplate the reality of absorb into my consciousness I need to open myself to and fully experience unwanted emotions not just perfunctorily recognize them accepting does not necessarily mean liking enjoying or condoning I can accept one is and be determined to evolve from there it is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck I cannot be truly for myself I cannot build self esteem if I cannot accept myself self acceptance also entails the idea of compassion of being a friend to myself suppose I have done something that I regret or of which I am ashamed and for which I reproach myself self acceptance does not deny reality does not argue that what is wrong is really alright but it inquires into the context in which the action was taken it wants to understand the why it wants to know why something that is wrong or inappropriate felt desirable or appropriate or even necessary at the time we do not understand another human being when we know only that what he or she did is wrong unkind destructive or whatever we need to know the internal considerations that prompted the behavior there is always some context in which the most offensive actions can have their own kind of sense this does not mean they are justified only that they can be understand I can condemn some action I have taken and still have compassionate interest in the motives that prompted it I can still be a friend to myself this has nothing to do with ala buying rationalizing or avoiding responsibility a good friend might say to me this was unworthy of you now tell me what made it feel like a good idea or at least a defensible one this too is what I can say to myself just as when we need to reproach or correct others we should wish to do so in ways that do not damage their self-esteem so we should bring the same benevolence to ourselves this is the virtue of self acceptance by way of introducing clients to the idea of self acceptance I often like to begin with a simple exercise it can offer a profound learning experience stand in front of a full-length mirror and look at your face and body notice your feelings as you do so I'm asking you to focus not on her clothes or your makeup but on you notice if this is difficult or makes you uncomfortable it is good to do this exercise naked you will probably like some parts of what you see more than others if you're like most people you'll find some parts difficult to look at for long because they agitate or displease you in your eyes there may be a pain you do not want to confront preps you're too fat or too thin perhaps you see signs of age and cannot bear to stay connected with the thoughts and emotions these signs evoke so the impulse is to escape to flee from awareness to reject deny disown aspects of yourself stay focused on your image in the mirror a few moments longer and say to yourself whatever my defects are imperfections I accept myself unreservedly and completely stay focused breathe deeply and say this over and over again for a minute or two without rushing the process allow yourself fully to experience the meaning of your words you may find yourself pretend stay but I don't like certain things about my body so how could I accept them unreservedly and completely but remember accepting does not necessarily mean liking accepting does not mean we cannot imagine or wish for changes or improvements it means experiencing without denial or avoidance that a fact is a fact in this case it means accepting that the face and body in the mirror are your face and body and they are what they are even though you may not like or enjoy everything you see when you look in the mirror you are still able to say right now that's me and I don't deny the fact I accept it that is respect for reality when clients commit to do this exercise for two minutes every morning and again every night for two weeks they soon begin to experience the relationship between self acceptance and self-esteem that relationship is a mind that honors sight honors itself but more than that how can self-esteem not suffer if we are in a rejecting relationship to our own physical being is it realistic to imagine that we can love ourselves while despising what we see in the mirror those who do this exercise make another important discovery not only do they enter a more harmonious relationship with themselves but if aspects of the self they do not like are within their power to change they are more motivated to make the changes once they have accepted the facts as they are now we are not moved to change those things whose reality we deny what about those things we cannot change well when we accept them we grow stronger and more centered when we curse and protest them we disempower ourselves suppose our negative reaction to some experience is so overwhelming that we feel we cannot practice self acceptance with regard to it let us say the feeling thought our memory is so distressing and agitating that acceptance feels out of the question we feel powerless not to block and contract the solution is not to resist our resistance it is not useful to try to block a block instead we need to do something more artful if we cannot accept a feeling or a thought or a memory we should accept our resistance in other words start by accepting where we are be present to the now and experience it fully if we stay with resistance at the conscious level if we usually begin to dissolve when we fight a block it grows stronger when we acknowledge experience and accept it it begins to melt because its continued existence requires opposition sometimes in therapy when a person has difficulty accepting a feeling I will ask if he or she is willing to accept the fact of refusing to accept the feeling I asked this once of a client who was a clergyman and who had great difficulty in owning or experiencing his anger just the same he was a very angry man my request disoriented him will I accept that I won't accept my anger he asked me when I answered that's right he thundered I refuse to accept my anger and I refuse to accept my refusal I asked will you accept your refusal to accept your refusal we've got to begin somewhere let's begin there I asked him to face the group and say I'm angry over and over again soon he was saying it very angrily indeed then I had him say I refuse to accept my anger which he shouted with escalating vigor then I had him say I refuse to accept my refusal to accept my anger which he plunged into ferociously then I had him say but I am willing to accept my refusal to accept my refusal and he kept repeating it until he broke down and joined in the laughter of the group so if you can't accept the experience accept the resistance he said I answered right and if you can't except the resistance except your resistance to accepting the resistance eventually you'll arrive at a point you can accept then you can move forward from there both accepting and disowning are implemented through a combination of mental and physical processes the act of experiencing and accepting our emotions is implemented through first focusing on the feeling or emotion then breathing gently and deeply allowing muscles to relax allowing the feeling to be felt and finally making real that this is my feeling this is what we call owning it in contrast we deny and disown our emotions through first avoiding awareness of their reality then constricting our breathing and tightening our muscles to cut off or numb the feeling and finally disassociating ourselves from our own experience we typically encounter two fallacious assumptions when people have difficulty with the idea of self-acceptance one is the belief that if we accept who and what we are we must approve of everything about us the other is the belief that if we accept who and what we are we are indifferent to change or improvement but of course the question is if we cannot accept what is where will we find the motivation to improve if we deny and disown what is how will we be inspired to grow there is a paradox here acceptance of what is is the precondition of change and denial of what is leaves me stuck in it let's try some sentence completion exercises designed to facilitate self-acceptance each morning right six to ten endings for the following sentence stems as rapidly as possible again do not worry if your endings are literally true make sense or our profound self acceptance to me means if I am more accepting of my body when I deny and disown my body if I am more accepting of my conflicts that's all when you're finished proceed with your day's business in the evening do six to ten endings each for the following stems when I deny or disown my conflicts if I am more accepting of my feelings when I deny and disown my feelings if I am more accepting of my thoughts when I deny and disown my thoughts do this exercise every day Monday through Friday on the weekend read over what you have written and then write six to ten endings for this stem if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I anything we have the possibility of experiencing we have the possibility of disowning either immediately or later in memory Nietzsche wrote I did it says memory I couldn't have says Pride and remains relentless eventually memory yields unquote I can rebel against my memories thoughts emotions actions I can reject rather than accept virtually any aspect of my experience I can refuse to accept my sensuality I can refuse to accept my spirituality I can disown my sorrow I can disown my joy I can repress the memory of actions of which I am ashamed I can repress the memory of actions of which I am proud I can deny my ignorance I can deny my intelligence I can refuse to accept my limitations I can refuse to accept my potentials I can conceal my weaknesses I can conceal my strengths I can deny my feelings of self-hatred I can deny my feelings of self-love I can pretend that I am more than I am I can pretend that I am less than I am I can disown my body I can disown my mind we can be as frightened of our assets as we are of our shortcomings as frightened of our genius ambition excitement or beauty as we are of our emptiness passivity depression or unattractiveness if our liabilities pose the problem of inadequacy our assets pose the challenge of responsibility the greatest crime we commit against ourselves is not that we may deny and disown our shortcomings but that we deny and disown our greatness because it frightens us if a fully realized self-acceptance does not evade the worst within us neither does it evade the best the third pillar of self-esteem is the practice of self responsibility to feel competent to live and worthy of happiness I need to experience a sense of control over my existence this requires that I be willing to take responsibility for my actions and the attainment of my goals this means that I take responsibility for my life and well-being self responsibility is essential to self-esteem and it is also a reflection or manifestation of self esteem the relationship between self esteem and its pillars is always reciprocal the practices that generate self esteem are also natural expressions and consequences of self esteem the practice of self responsibility entails these realizations I am responsible for the achievement of my desires I am responsible for my choices and actions I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships I am responsible for my behavior with other people co-workers associates customers spouse children friends I am responsible for how I prioritize my time I am responsible for my personal happiness I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live I am responsible for raising my self-esteem once when I was lecturing to a group of psychotherapists on the six pillars of self-esteem one of them asked me why do you put your emphasis on what the individual must do to grow in self-esteem isn't the source of self-esteem the fact that we are children of God I have encountered this question a number of times whether one believes in a God and whether one believes we are God's children is irrelevant to the issue of what self-esteem requires let us imagine that there is a God and that we are all his/her/its children in this respect then we are all equal does it follow that everyone is or should be equal in self-esteem regardless of whether anyone lives consciously or unconsciously responsibly or irresponsibly honestly or dishonestly this is impossible there is no way for our mind to avoid registering the choices we make in the way we operate and no way for our sense of self to remain unaffected if we are children of God the questions remain what are we going to do about it what are we going to make of it will we honour our gifts or betray them if we betray ourselves and our powers if we live mindlessly purposelessly and without integrity can we buy our way out can we acquire a self esteem by claiming to be God's relatives do we imagine we can thus relieve ourselves of personal responsibility whatever role a belief in God may play in our lives surely it is not to justify a default unconsciousness responsibility and integrity in stressing that we need to take responsibility for our life and happiness I am NOT suggesting that a person never suffers through accident or through the fault of others or that a person is responsible for everything that may happen to him or her some things we have control over others we do not if I hold myself responsible for matters beyond my control I put my self-esteem in jeopardy since inevitably I will fail my expectations if I deny responsibility for matters that are within my control again I jeopardize my self-esteem I need to know the difference between that which is up to me and that which is not the only consciousness over which I have volitional control is my own it is easy enough and work situations to observe the difference between those who practice self responsibility and those who do not self responsibility shows up as an active orientation to work and to life rather than a passive one if there is a problem men and women who are self responsible ask what can I do about it what avenues of action are possible to me they do not protest but no one told me what to do or but it's not my job they indulged neither and alibis nor in blaming they are typically solution oriented in every organization we encounter both types those who wait for someone else to provide a solution and those who take responsibility for finding it it is only by grace of the second type that organizations are able to operate effectively in the overall conduct of my life I would say that I've always operated at a fairly high level of self responsibility I did not look to others to provide for my needs or once but I can think of a time when I failed my own principles rather badly with painful results in my 20s I formed an intense relationship with novelist philosopher ayan Rand over the course of 18 years our relationship passed through almost every form imaginable from student and teacher to friends and colleagues to lovers and partners and ultimately to adversaries in the beginning and for some years the relationship was nurturing inspiring valuable in many ways I learned and grew enormous Lee but eventually it became constricting toxic destructive it became a barrier to my further intellectual and sigh biological development I did not take the initiative and propose that our relationship be redefined and reconstituted on a different basis I told myself I did not want to cause pain I waited for her to see what I saw I looked to her rationality and wisdom to reach the decision that would be right for both of us in effect I was relating to an abstraction to the author of The Fountainhead an Atlas Shrugged rather than the concrete woman in front of me I did not confront the fact that her agenda was very different from mine and that she was totally absorbed in her own needs are delayed facing the fact that nothing would change unless I made it change and because I delayed I caused suffering and humiliation to us both I avoided a responsibility that was mine to take no matter what explanations I gave myself there was no way for my self-esteem to remain unaffected only when I began to take the initiative did I begin the process of regaining what I had lost we often see this pattern in marriages one partner sees before the other that the relationship is finished but he or she does not want to be the bad guy the one to end things so instead manipulation begins to lead the other to make the first move it is cruel degrading lacking and dignity and hurtful to both people it is self demeaning and self diminishing to the extent that I evade responsibility I inflict wounds on my self-esteem in accepting responsibility I build self-esteem embracing self responsibility not merely as a personal preference but as a philosophical principle entails one's acceptance of a profoundly important moral idea in taking responsibility for our own existence we implicitly recognize that other human beings are not our servants and do not exist for the satisfaction of our needs we are not morally entitled to treat other human beings as means to our ends just as we are not a means to theirs in my therapy practice and my self-esteem groups I work with a great number of sentence stems that allow clients to explore the psychology of self-responsibility I offer a representative sampling here each morning as rapidly as possible right six to ten endings for the following sentence stems self responsibility to me means at the thought of being responsible for my own existence if I accepted responsibility for my own existence that would mean when I avoid responsibility for my own existence if I accepted five percent more responsibility for the attainment of my goals if I took more responsibility for the success of my relationships sometimes I keep myself passive by if you keep a journal and overtime write six to ten endings for each of these incomplete sentences not only will you learn a great deal but it will be almost impossible not to grow in the practice of self responsibility the best way of working is to do the foregoing stems Monday through Friday then do this weekend stem if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I having worked with people for so many years with the aim of building self-esteem I have always been on the lookout for decisive moments in psychotherapy instances when a click seems to occur in the clients mind a new forward motion begins one of the most important of such moments is when the client grasps that no one is coming no one is coming to save me no one is coming to make life right for me no one is coming to solve my problems if I don't do something different nothing is going to get better some years ago in my group therapy room we hung on the wall a number of sayings that I often found useful in the course of my work a client made me a gift of several of these sayings done the needlepoint each with its own frame one of these was no one is coming one day a group member with a sense of humor challenged me about it Nathaniel it's not true he said you came correct I admitted but I came to say that no one is coming the fourth pillar of self-esteem is the practice of self assertiveness self-assertiveness means honoring my wants needs and values and seeking appropriate forms of their expression in reality its opposite is that surrender to timidity that consists of consigning myself to a perpetual underground where everything that I am lies hidden or stillborn to avoid confrontation with someone whose values differ from mine or to please placate or manipulate someone or simply to belong self assertion does not mean belligerence or inappropriate aggressiveness it does not mean pushing to the front of the line or knocking other people over it does not mean upholding my own rights while being blind or indifferent to everyone else's it simply means the willingness to stand up for myself to be Who I am openly to treat myself with respect in all human encounters to practice self assertiveness is to live authentically to speak and act from my innermost convictions and feelings as a way of life as a rule allowing for the obvious fact that there may be particular circumstances in which I may justifiably choose not to do so appropriate self-assertiveness pays attention to context the forms of self expression appropriate when playing on the floor where the child are obviously different from those appropriate at a staff meeting in every context there will be appropriate and inappropriate forms of self-expression sometimes self assertiveness is manifested through volunteering an idea or paying a compliment sometimes through a polite silence the signals non agreement sometimes by refusing to smile at a tasteless joke while appropriate self expression varies with the content in every situation there is a choice between being authentic or inauthentic real or unreal if we do not want to face this of course we will deny that we have such a choice we will assert that we are helpless but the choice is always there let's examine what self assertiveness is and is not the first and basic act of self assertion is the assertion of consciousness this entails the choice to see to think to be aware to send the light of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being to ask questions is an act of self assertion to challenge authority is an act of self assertion to think for oneself and to stand by what one thinks is the root of self assertion to default on this responsibility is to default on the self at the most basic level note that self assertiveness should not be confused with mindless rebelliousness sometimes people who are essentially dependent and fearful choose a form of assertiveness that is self-destructive it consists of reflexively saying no when their interest would be better served by saying yes their only form of self assertiveness is protest whether it makes sense or not we often see this response among teenagers and among adults who have never matured beyond this teenage level of consciousness while healthy self assertiveness requires the ability to say no it is ultimately tested not by what we are against but by what we are for a life that consists only of a string of negations is a waste and a tragedy self-assertiveness asked that we not only oppose what we deplore but that we live and express our values to practice self assertiveness logically and consistently is to be committed to my right to exist this proceeds from the knowledge that my life does not belong to others and that I am NOT here on earth to live up to someone else's expectations too many people this is a terrifying response of it means that mother and father and other authority figures cannot be counted on as protectors it means they are responsible for their own existence and for generating their own sense of security to practice self-assertiveness consistently I need the conviction that my ideas and wants are important unfortunately this conviction is often lacking when we were young many of us receive signals conveying that what we thought and felt or wanted was not important it often takes courage to honor what we want and to fight for it for many people self surrender and self-sacrifice are far easier they do not require the integrity and responsibility that intelligent selfishness requires within an organization self assertiveness is required not merely to have a good idea but to develop it fight for it work to win supporters for it do everything within one's power to see that it gets translated into reality it is the lack of this practice that causes so many potential contributions to die before they are born as a consultant when I'm asked to work with the team that has difficulty functioning effectively on some project I often find that one source of the dysfunction is one or more people who do not really participate in the undertaking why because of some feeling that they do not have the power to make a difference they do not believe that their contribution can matter in their passivity they become saboteurs a project manager once remarked to me I'd rather worry about handling some egomaniac who thinks he's the whole project then struggle with some self doubting but talented individual whose insecurities stop him from kicking in what he's got to offer without appropriate self-assertiveness we are spectators not participants healthy self esteem asks that we leap into the arena that we'd be willing to get our hands dirty persons with an underdeveloped sense of identity often tell themselves if I expressed myself I may evoke disapproval if I love and affirm myself I may evoke resentment if I have to happy with my I may evoke jealousy if I stand out I may be compelled to stand alone such people remain frozen in the face of such possibilities and pay a terrible price in loss of self esteem self assertion entails the willingness to confront rather than evade the challenges of life and to strive for mastery when we expand the boundaries of our ability to cope we expand self efficacy and self-respect when we commit ourselves to new areas of learning when we take on tasks that stretch us we raise personal power we assert our existence when we are attempting to understand something and we hit a wall it is an act of self assertiveness to persevere when we undertake to acquire new skills absorb new knowledge extend the reach of our mind across unfamiliar spaces we are practicing self assertiveness when we learn how to be in an intimate relationship without abandoning our sense of self when we learn how to be kind without being self-sacrificing when we learn how to cooperate with others without betraying our standards and convictions then we are practicing self assertiveness some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy some speak as if their intention is that you not be able to hear them either because they mumble or speak faintly or both some signal at the most crudely obvious level that they do not feel they have a right to exist these people embody lack of self-assertiveness in its most extreme form their poor self-esteem is obvious in therapy when such men than women learned to move and speak with more assurance they invariably report a rise in self-esteem not all manifestations of non self assertiveness are obvious the average life is marked by thousands of unremembered silences surrenders capitulations and misrepresentations of feelings and beliefs that corrode dignity and self-respect when we do not express ourselves do not assert our be do not stand up for our values in contexts where it is appropriate to do so we inflict wounds on our sense of self the world does not do it to us we do it to ourselves consider as an example a young man who sits alone in the darkness of a movie theater deeply inspired by the drama unfolding before him the story touches him so deeply that tears come to his eyes he knows that in a week or so he will come back and want to see this film again in the lobby he spots a friend who was at the same screening and they greet each other he searches his friend's face for clues to his feelings about the movie but the face is blank the friend inquired how'd you like the picture the young man feels an instant stab of fear he does not want to appear uncool he does not want to say the truth I loved it it touched me very deeply so instead he shrugs indifferently and says not bad he does not know that he has just slapped his own face or rather he does not know it consciously his diminished self-esteem knows it a woman is at a cocktail party where she hears someone make an ugly racial slur that causes her inwardly to cringe she wants to say I found that offensive but she is afraid of evoking disapproval in embarrassment she looks away and says nothing later to appease her sense of uneasiness she tells herself what difference does it make the man was a fool but her self-esteem knows what difference it makes now a personal example I have already mentioned the relationship that I began with ayan Rand a month before my 20th birthday and that came to an explosive parting of the ways 18 years later among the many benefits that I received from her in the early years one was an experience of profound visibility I felt understood and appreciated by her to an extent that was without precedent what made her response so important was the high esteem in which I held her I admired her enormous Lee only gradually did I realize that she did not tolerate disagreement well not among intimates she did not require full agreement among acquaintances but with anyone who wanted to be truly close enormous enthusiasm was expected for her every deed and utterance I did not notice the steps by which I learned to censor negative reactions to some of her behavior when for example I found herself congratulatory remarks excessive or her lack of empathy disquieting or her pontificating unworthy of her I did not give her the kind of corrective feedback everyone needs from time to time in later years after the break I often reflected on why I did not speak up more often the simple truth was I valued her esteem too much to place it in jeopardy I had in effect become addicted to it in exchange for the intoxicating gratification of being treated as a demigod by the person I valued above all others and whose good opinion I treasured above all others I leashed myself assertiveness in ways that over time were damaging to my self regard in the end I learned an invaluable lesson I learned that surrenders of this kind do not work they merely postpone confrontations that are inevitable and necessary I learned that the temptation to self betrayal can sometimes be worst with those about whom we care the most and I learned that no amount of admiration for another human being can justify sacrificing one's judgment the following sentence stems can facilitate reaching a deeper understanding of self assertiveness each morning for each stem write 6 to 10 endings as rapidly as possible self-assertiveness to me means if I lived 5% more self assertively today if I brought more awareness to my deepest needs and once if I were willing to voice my thoughts and opinions more often when I suppress my thoughts and opinions and as before on the weekend after reading the week stems right six to ten endings for this one if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I once again we can appreciate that the actions that support healthy self-esteem are also expressions of healthy self esteem self-assertiveness both support self esteem and is a manifestation of it it is a mistake to look at someone who is self-assured and say well it's easy for her to be self assertive she has good self-esteem one of the ways we build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so there are always times when self-assertiveness calls on our courage the fifth pillar of self esteem is the practice of living purposefully I have a friend in his late 60s who is one of the most brilliant and sought-after business speakers in the country a few years ago he reconnected with a woman he had known and loved many years earlier and with whom he had been out of touch for three decades she too was now in her 60s they fell passionately in love telling me about it one evening at dinner my friend had never looked happier it was wonderful to be with him and to see the look of rapture on his face thinking perhaps of the two divorces in his past he said wistfully and urgently god I hope I handle things right this time I want this relationship to succeed so much I wish I mean I want I hope you know that I don't screw up I was silent and he asked got any advice well yes I do I answered if you wanted to work you must make it your conscious purpose that it work he leaned forward intently and I went on I can just imagine what your reaction would be if you were at IBM and some executives said gee I hope we handle the marketing of this new product properly I really want us to succeed with this and I wish you'd be all over him in a minute saying what is this hope stuff what do you mean you wish my advice is to apply what you know about the importance of purpose in business to your personal life his elated smile said eloquently that he understood this leads me to the subject of living purposefully to live without purpose is to live at the mercy of chance the chance event the chance phone call the chance encounter because we have no standard by which to judge what is or is not worth doing outside forces bounces along like a cork floating on water with no initiative of our own to set a specific course our orientation to life is reactive rather than proactive we are drifters to live purposefully is to use our powers for the attainment of goals we have selected the goal of studying of raising a family of earning a living I've started a new business of bringing a new product into the marketplace of sustaining a happy romantic relationship it is our goals that lead us forward that call on the exercise of our faculties that energize our existence to live purposefully is among other things to live productively productivity is the act of supporting our existence by translating our thoughts into reality of setting our goals and working for their achievement of bringing knowledge goods or services into reality it is not the degree of a person's productive ability that matters here but the person's choice to exercise such ability as he or she possesses nor is it the kind of work selected that is important but whether a person seeks work that offers an outlet for his or her intelligence if the opportunity to do so exists the purposes that move us need to be specific if they are to be realized I cannot organize my behavior optimally if my goal is merely to do my best the assignment is too vague my goal needs to be precisely defined for example to exercise on the treadmill for 30 minutes 4 times a week during a specific sum of money in commissions by the end of the year to which of a specific market niche by a specific means by a specific target date with such specificity I'm able to monitor my progress compare intentions with results modify my strategy or my tactics in response to new information and be accountable for the results I produce to live purposefully is to be concerned with these questions what am I trying to achieve how am I trying to achieve it why do I think these means are appropriate does the feedback from the environment convey the time succeeding or failing is there new information that I need to consider do my goals and purposes need to be rethought it is easier for people to understand these ideas as applied to work than to personal relationships that may be why more people make a success of their work life that have their marriages everyone knows it is not enough to say I love my work what am I show up at the office and do something otherwise the business moves towards non-existence in intimate relationships however it is easy to imagine that love is enough that happiness will just come and if it doesn't this means we were wrong for each other people rarely ask themselves if my goal is to have a successful relationship what must I do what actions are needed to create and sustain trust intimacy continuing self-disclosure excitement growth purposes unrelated to a plan of action do not get realized they exist only as frustrated yearnings or more precisely as daydreams daydreams do not produce the experience of efficacy to live purposefully and productively requires that we cultivate within ourselves at capacity for self-discipline self-discipline is the ability to organize our behavior over time in the service of specific tasks no one who is without the capacity for self discipline can feel competent to cope with the challenges of life self-discipline requires the ability to defer immediate gratification in the surface of a remote goal this is the ability to think plan and live long range neither an individual nor business can function effectively let alone flourish in the absence of this practice one of the challenges of effective parenthood our effective teaching is to communicate a respect for the present that does not disregard the future and the respect for the future that does not disregard the present to master this balance is a challenge to all of us it is essential if we are to enjoy the sense of being in control of our existence a purposeful self disciplined life does not mean a life without time for rest relaxation recreation or random even frivolous activity it merely means that such activities are chosen consciously with the knowledge that it is safe and appropriate to engage in them and in any event the temporary abandonment of purpose also serves a purpose whether consciously intended or not that of regeneration the practice of living purposefully intell's the following four core issues one taking responsibility for formulating one's goals and purposes consciously to identifying the actions necessary to achieve ones goals three monitoring behavior to check that it is in alignment with one's goals for paying attention to the outcomes of one's actions to know whether they are leading where one wants to go as an example of the confusions that can surround the issue of living purposefully consider the extraordinary statement made by psychiatrist erwin de aalam in his book existential psychotherapy he writes the belief that life is incomplete without goal fulfillment is not so much a tragic existential fact of life as it is a Western myth a cultural artifact unquote but if there is anything we know it is that life is impossible without goal fulfillment impossible on every level of evolution from the amoeba to the human being it is neither a tragic existential fact nor a Western myth but rather the simple nature of life the alternative to goal fulfillment is passivity and aimlessness is it a tragedy that such a state does not yield a joy equal to the joys of achievement incidentally let us remember that goal fulfillment is not confined to so-called worldly goals a life of study or meditation has its own kind of purposefulness or it can have but a life without purpose can hardly be said to be human to observe that the practice of living purposefully is essential to fully realize self-esteem should not be understood to mean that the measure of an individual's worth is his or her external achievements the root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that among other things make it possible for us to achieve all the self-esteem virtues we are discussing here steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie once stated you can take away our factories take away our trade our avenues of transportation and our money leave us with nothing but our organization and in four years we could re-establish ourselves Carnegie's point was that power lies in the source of wealth not in the wealth itself in the cause not the effect the same principle applies to the relationship between self esteem and external achievements productive achievement may be an expression of high self esteem but it is not its primary cause consider a person who is brilliantly talented and successful at work but irrational and irresponsible in his or her private life such a person may want to believe that the sole criterion of virtuous productive performance and that no other sphere of action has moral or self-esteem significance and such a person may hide behind work in order to evade feelings of shame and guilt stemming from other areas of life then productive work becomes not so much a healthy passion as an avoidance strategy a refuge from realities one feels frightened to face in addition if a person's self-esteem is tied primarily to accomplishment success or income the danger is that economic circumstances beyond the individuals control may lead to the failure of the business or the loss of a job flinging him into depression or acute demoralisation on occasion I have counseled older men and women who found themselves unemployed passed over in favor of people a good deal younger who were in no way better equipped or even as well equipped for the particular job I have also worked with highly talented young people who suffered from a reverse form of the same prejudice a discrimination against youth in favor of age where again objective competence and ability were not the standard in such circumstances often those involved suffer a feeling of loss of personal effectiveness such a feeling is only a hairline away from a sense of diminished self esteem and often turns into it it takes an unusual kind of person to avoid falling into the trap of this error it takes a person who is already well centered and who understands that some of the forces operating are beyond personal control and should not have significance for self esteem it is not that they may not suffer or feel anxiety for the future it is that they do not interpret the problem in terms of personal worth when a question of self-esteem is involved the question to ask is this is this matter within my direct policial control or is it at least linked by a direct line of causality to matters within my direct volitional control if it isn't it is irrelevant to self esteem and should be perceived to be however painful or even devastating the problem may be on other grounds when I think of what living purposefully means in my life I think first of taking responsibility for generating the actions necessary to achieve my goals living purposefully overlaps definitely with self-responsibility I think of a time when I wanted something I could not afford that represented a significant improvement in my way of living a fairly large expenditure of money was involved for several years I remained uncharacteristically passive about finding a solution then one day I had a thought that certainly was not new to me and yet somehow had fresh impact if I don't do something nothing is going to change this jolted me out of my procrastination of which I have been dimly aware for a long time but had not confronted I proceeded to conceive and implement a project that was stimulating challenging profoundly satisfying and worthwhile and that produced the additional income I needed in principle I could have done it several years earlier however only when I became bored and irritated with my own procrastination only when I decided to commit myself to finding a solution over the next few weeks only when I applied what I know about living purposely to my own situation only then did I launch myself into action and toward the solution when I did I noticed that not only was I happier but also that my self-esteem rose when I told this story and one of my self-esteem groups I was challenged by someone who said that's ok for you but not everyone is in a position to develop new projects what are we to do I invited him to talk about his own procrastination and about the unfulfilled desire involved if you made that your conscious purpose to achieve that desire I asked what might you do and after a bit of good nature prompting he began to tell me here are some stem sentences that my clients find helpful in deepening their understanding of the ideas we've been discussing living purposefully to me means if I bring 5 percent more purposefulness to my life today if I operate five percent more purposefully in my marriage if I operate 5% more purposely with my friends if I have 5% more purposeful about my deepest yearnings and once again as a summary we can sentence them if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I living purposefully is a fundamental orientation that applies to every aspect of our existence it means that we live and act by intention it is a distinguishing characteristic of those who enjoy a high level of control over their life the sixth pillar of self-esteem is the practice of personal integrity as we mature and develop our own values and standards or absorb them from others the issue of personal integrity assumes increasing importance in our self-assessment integrity is the integration of ideals convictions standards beliefs and behavior when our behavior is congruent with our professed values when ideals and practice match we have integrity when we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment we lose face in our own eyes we respect ourselves less if the policy becomes habitual we trust ourselves less or cease to trust ourselves at all at the simplest level personal integrity entails such questions as am i honest reliable and trustworthy do I keep my promises do I do the things I say I admire and avoid the things I say I deplore am i fair unjust in my dealings with others integrity means congruence words and behavior match there are people we know whom we trust and others we do not if we ask ourselves the reason we will see that congruence is basic we trust congruence and are suspicious of in congruence studies disclose that many people and organizations do not trust those above them why lack of congruence beautiful mission statements unsupported by practice slogans about customer service on the walls unmatched by the realities of daily business in most organizations however there are men and women who others trust why they keep their word they honor their commitments they don't just promise to stick up for their people they do it they don't just preach the fairness they practice it they don't just counsel honesty and integrity they live it to understand why lapses of integrity are detrimental to self-esteem consider what a lapse of integrity entails if I act in contradiction to a moral value held by someone else but not by me I may be right or I might be wrong but I cannot be faulted for having betrayed my convictions if however I act against what I myself regard as right then I act against my judgment i betray my mind hypocrisy by its very nature is self invalidating it is mind rejecting itself a default on integrity undermines me and contaminates my sense of self it damages me as no external rebuke or rejection can damage me I may give sermons on honesty to my children yet lie to my friends and neighbors I may become righteous and indignant when people do not keep their commitments to me but I disregard my commitments to others I may preach a concern with quality but indifferently sell my customers shoddy goods I may outmaneuver a colleague in the office and appropriate her achievements I may ask for honest feedback then penalized the employee who disagrees with me and I may evade my hypocrisy I may produce any number of rationalizations but the fact remains that I launched an assault on my self-respect that no rationalization will dispel if I am uniquely situated to raise my self-esteem I am also uniquely situated to lower it one of the great self-deceptions is to tell myself only I will know only I will know that I am a liar only I will know ideal unethically with people who trust me only I will know I have no intention of honoring my promise the implication is that my judgment is unimportant and only the judgement of others counts but when it comes to matters of self-esteem mine is the only judgment that counts my ego is the judge from whom there is no escape I can avoid people who have learned the humiliating truth about me I cannot avoid myself I recall a news article I read some years ago about a medical researcher of high repute who was discovered to have been faking his data for a long time while piling up grant after grant and honor after honor there was no way for self-esteem not to be a casualty of such behavior even before the fakery was revealed he knowingly chose to live in a world of unreality where his achievements and prestige were equally unreal long before others knew he knew Impostors of this kind who lived for an illusion in someone else's mind which they hold is more important than their own knowledge of the truth do not enjoy good self-esteem most of the issues of integrity we face are not big issues but small ones yet the accumulated weight of our choices has an impact on our sense of self as I mentioned earlier I conduct weekly ongoing self esteem groups for people who have come together for a specific purpose to grow in self efficacy and self-respect one evening I gave the group this sentence them if I bring 5% more integrity into my life here are some of the endings that were expressed if I bring 5% more integrity into my life I tell people when they do things that bother me I wouldn't pad my expense account I'd be truthful with my husband about what my clothes cost I tell my parents I no longer believe in God I'd admit it when I'm flirting I wouldn't be so ingratiating to people I just like I wouldn't laugh at jokes I think are stupid and vulgar I put in more an effort at work I'd help my wife more with chores as I promised I tell customers the truth about what they're buying I wouldn't just say what people want to hear the ease and speed of people's responses point to the fact that these matters are not very far beneath the surface of awareness although there is understandable motivation to evade them people greatly underestimate the self-esteem costs and consequences of hypocrisy and dishonesty they imagine that all that is involved is some discomfort but it is the spirit itself that is contaminated the essence of guilt is moral self-reproach I did wrong when it was possible for me to do otherwise guilt always carries the implication of choice and responsibility whether or not we consciously are aware of it for this reason it is imperative that we be clear on what is and is not in our power what is and is not a breach of integrity otherwise we run the risk of accepting guilt inappropriately for example suppose someone we love is killed in an accident even though we may know the thought is irrational we may tell ourselves somehow I should have prevented it perhaps this guilt is fed in part by our regrets over actions taken or not taken while the person was alive the survivor feels if only I had done such and such differently this terrible accident would not have occurred thus guilt can serve the desire for efficacy by providing an illusion of efficacy the protection of self-esteem requires a clear understanding of the limits of personal responsibility where there is no power there can be no responsibility and where there is no responsibility there can be no reasonable self-reproach regret yes guilt no the idea of original sin of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence no freedom of choice no alternatives available is anti self-esteem by its very nature the very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality let us think about guilt and how it can be resolved in situations where we are personally responsible generally speaking five steps are needed to restore one sense of integrity with regard to a particular breach one we must face and accept the full reality of what we have done without disowning or avoidance 2 we seek to understand why we did what we did we do this compassionately but without evasive Alabang 3 if others are involved we acknowledge explicitly to the relevant person or persons the harm we have done and convey our understanding of the consequences of our behavior 4 we take any and all actions available that might make amends for or minimize the harm we have done 5 we firmly commit ourselves to behaving differently in the future without all these steps we may continue to feel guilty over some wrong behavior even though it happened years ago even though our psychotherapist might have told us everyone makes mistakes and even though the person we have wronged may offer forgiveness none of that may be enough self-esteem remains unsatisfied sometimes we try to make amends without ever owning or facing what we have done or we keep saying I'm sorry or we go out of our way to be nice to the person we have rond without ever addressing it wrong explicitly or we ignore the fact that there are specific actions we could take to undo the harm we have caused sometimes of course there is no way to undo the harm and we must accept and make our peace with that but if we do not do what is possible and appropriate guilt tends to linger on when guilt is a Const Quinn's a failed integrity nothing less than an act of integrity can redress the breach while it is easy enough to recognize that a common-sense level the relationship between self-esteem and integrity the issue of living up to our standards is not always simple what if our standards are irrational or mistaken we may accept or absorb a code of values that does violence to our nature and needs for example certain religious teachings implicitly or explicitly damned sex damned pleasure damned the body damned ambition damned material success damned for all practical purposes the enjoyment of life on earth if children are indoctrinated with these teachings what will the practice of integrity mean in their lives some elements of quote unquote hypocrisy may be all that keeps them alive once we see that living up to our standards appears to be leading us toward self-destruction the time has come to question our standards rather than simply resigning ourselves to living without integrity we must summon the courage to challenge some of our deepest assumptions concerning what we have been taught to regard as the good one area in which integrity and living consciously clearly intersect is in the need to reflect on the values we have been taught the share of assumptions of our family or culture and the roles we may have been assigned we need to question whether they fit our own perceptions and understanding or whether they do violence to the deepest and best within us to whether sometimes called our true nature one of the penalties for living unconsciously is that of enduring unrewarding lives in the service of self stultifying ends never examined or not chosen with awareness by the individuals involved the higher the level of consciousness of which we operate the more we live by explicit choice and the more naturally does integrity follow as a consequence discussing the complexities of moral decision-making in a lecture I was once asked what I thought of Joseph Campbell's counseled to quote follow your own bliss did I believe it was ethically appropriate I answered that while I liked what I believed to be Campbell's basic intention his statement could be dangerous if divorced from a rational context I suggested this modification live consciously take responsibility for your choices and actions respect the rights of others and follow your own bliss I added that is a piece of moral advice I love the Spanish proverb take what you want said God and pay for it but of course complex moral decisions cannot be made simply on the basis of statements such as these helpful though they may sometimes be a moral life requires serious reflection I have said that moral decisions are not always easy and that sometimes rightly or wrongly we experience our choices as agonizingly complex and difficult to offer a personal example many years ago I was married to a woman I was very attached to but no longer loved my romance with iron ran was fading but not officially terminated both relationships were painfully unresolved when I met and fell passionately in love with a third woman I would later marry Patricia who would die at the age of 37 for a long time my mind was a chaos of conflicting loyalties and I handled things very badly I did not tell the truth to my wife or to ion as soon as I could have never mind the reasons reasons do not alter facts it was a long road but at its end was painfully acquired knowledge I had possessed at the beginning that knowledge was that the truth had to be told and that by procrastinating and delaying I merely made the consequences for every one more terrible I succeeded in protecting no one least of all myself if part of my motive was to spare people I cared about I inflicted a worse pain than they would otherwise have if part of my motive was to protect my self-esteem by avoiding a conflict between my values and loyalties it was my self-esteem that I damaged lies do not work if we examine our lives we may notice that our practice of integrity exhibits inconsistencies there are areas where we practice it more and areas where we practice it less rather than evade this fact it is useful to explore it it is worthwhile to consider what stands in the way of my practicing integrity in every area of my life what would happen if I lived my values consistently here are sentence tems that can aid the process of exploration integrity to me means if I bring 5% more integrity to my work if I bring 5% more integrity to my personal relationships if I am willing to look at the areas where i do not practice integrity on the weekend again work with this sentence them if any of what I have been writing this week is true it might be helpful if I if you choose to bring a high level of awareness to what you produce in doing these sentence stems you may discover that living with greater integrity has become realizable in a world where we regard ourselves and are regarded by others as accountable for our actions the practice of integrity is relatively easier then in a world where the principle of personal accountability is absent a culture of accountability tends to support our moral aspirations the challenge for people today and it is not an easy one is to maintain high personal standards while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer grounds for such a feeling are to be found in the behavior of our public figures the horror of so many world events and in our so-called art and entertainment so much of which celebrates the gravity cruelty and mindless violence all contribute to making the practice of personal integrity a lonely and even heroic undertaking if integrity is a source of self-esteem then it is also an expression of self-esteem this leads to an important question about all six pillars it might be asked to practice them does one not need to already possess self-esteem how then can they be the foundation of self-esteem in answering I must introduce what I call the principle of reciprocal causation by this I mean that behaviors that generate good self-esteem are also expressions of good self esteem living consciously is both a cause and an effect of self efficacy and self-respect and so with self-acceptance self responsibility and all the other practices I described the more I live consciously the more I trust my mind and respect my worth and if I trust my mind and respect my worth it feels natural to live consciously the more I live with integrity the more I enjoy good self esteem and if I enjoy good self esteem it feels natural to live with integrity another noteworthy aspect of the dynamics involved here is that the practice of these virtues over time tends to generate a felt need for them if I have literally operate at a high level of consciousness unclarity and fog in my awareness will make me uncomfortable if I have been consistent in my integrity I will experience dishonesty on my part as disturbing and will feel a thrust to resolve the dissonance and restore the inner sense of moral cleanliness once we understand the practices I have described we have the power at least to some extent to choose them the power to choose them is the power to raise the level of our self-esteem from whatever point we may be starting and however difficult the project may be in the early stages an analogy to physical exercise may be helpful if we are in poor physical condition exercise is typically difficult as our condition improves exercise becomes easier and more enjoyable we begin where we are and build our strength from there raising self-esteem follows the same principle these practices are ideals to guide us and this can hardly be overemphasized they do not have to be lived perfectly 100 percent of the time in order to have a beneficent impact on our lives small improvements make a difference the practices and beliefs we have discussed pertained to internal factors that bear on self-esteem that is they exist or are generated from within the individual we will now turn to an examination of external factors that is factors originating in the environment what is the role and contribution of other people what is the potential impact of parents teachers managers and the culture in which one lives these are the questions I will address in the remainder of this program let's begin with the role of parents the proper aim of parental nurturing is to prepare a child for independent survival as an adult an infant begins in a condition of total dependency if his or her upbringing is successful the young man or woman will evolve out of that dependency into a self-respecting and self responsible human being who is able to respond to the challenges of life competently and enthusiastically it is an old and excellent adage that effective parenting consists first I've given a child roots to grow and then wings to fly the security of a firm base and the self confidence one day to leave it children do not grow up in a vacuum they grow up in a social context parental behavior alone does not decide the course of a child's psychological development apart from the fact that sometimes the most important influence in the child's life is a teacher or a grandparent or a neighbor external factors are only part of the story never the whole we are beings whose consciousness is volitional so beginning in childhood and continuing throughout our life we make choices that have consequences for the kind of person we become and the level of self esteem we obtain to say that parents can make it easier or harder for a child to develop healthy self-esteem is to say that parents can make it easier or harder for a young person to learn the six practices and make them a natural and integral part of his or her life the six practices provide a standard for assessing parental policies do these policies encourage or discourage consciousness self-acceptance self responsibility self-assertiveness purposefulness and integrity do they raise or lower the probability that a child will learn self esteem supporting behaviors a child who is treated with love tends to internalize the feeling and to experience him or herself as lovable love is conveyed by verbal expression nurturing actions and the joy and pleasure we show in the sheer fact of the child's being an effective parent can convey anger or disappointment without signaling withdrawal of love an effective parent can teach without resorting to rejection the value of the child as a human being is not should not be on trial love is not felt to be real when it is always tied to performance tied to living after mother's or Father's expectations and is withdrawn from time to time as a means of manipulating obedience and conformity love is not felt to be real when the child receives subtle or unsubtle messages to the effect that you are not enough unfortunately many of us receive such messages you may have potential but you are unacceptable as you are you need to be fixed one day you may be enough but not now you will be enough only if you fulfill our expectations I am enough does not mean I have nothing to learn and nowhere to grow to it means I accept myself as a value as I am we cannot build self esteem on a foundation of I am not enough to convey to a child you are not enough is to subvert self esteem at the core no child feels loved who receives such messages a child whose thoughts and feelings are treated with acceptance tends to internalize the response and to learn self acceptance acceptance is conveyed not by agreement but by listening to and acknowledging the child's and feelings and not by chastising arguing lecturing psychologizing or insulting if a child is repeatedly told that he or she must not feel this must not feel that the child is encouraged to deny and disown feelings or emotions in order to please or placate parents if normal expressions of excitement anger happiness sexuality longing and fear are treated as unacceptable or wrong or sinful or otherwise distasteful to parents the child may disown and reject more and more of the self to belong to be loved to avoid the terror of abandonment we do not serve a child's development by making self repudiation the price of our love few attitudes of parents can be so helpful for the child's healthy development as the child's experience that his or her nature temperament interests and aspirations are accepted whether or not parents share them it is unrealistic in the extreme to imagine a parents will enjoy or be comfortable with a child's every act of self-expression but acceptance does not require enjoyment or comfort or agreement a parent may be athletic a child may not be or the reverse a parent may be artistic a child may not be or the reverse a parent may be very social a child may be less so or the reverse a parent may be competitive a child may not be or the reverse if differences are accepted self-esteem can grow a child who receives respect from adults tends to learn self-respect respect is conveyed by addressing a child with the courtesy when normally extends to adults as child psychologists claim cannot used to observe if a visiting guest accidentally spills a drink we do not say oh you're so sloppy what's the matter with you but then why do we think such statements are appropriate for our children who are much more important to us than the visitor parents need to be informed be careful what you to your children they may agree with you before calling a child stupid or clumsy or bad or a disappointment consider the question is this how I want my child to experience him or herself if a child grows up in a home where everyone deals with everyone else with natural good natured courtesy he or she learns principles that apply both to self and to others respect of self and others feels like the normal order of things which properly it is especially important for the nurturing of a child self-esteem is the experience of what I have called psychological visibility if I say or do something and you respond in a way that I perceive as congruent in terms of my own behavior I feel seen and understood by you for example if I become playful and you become playful in turn or if I express joy and you show understanding of my state or if I express sadness and you convey empathy or if I do something I am proud of and you smile at admiration I feel visible in contrast if I say or do something and you respond in a way that makes no sense to me in terms of my own behavior I do not feel seen and understood if I become playful and you react as if I were being hostile or if I expressed joy and you display impatience and tell me not to be silly or if I express sadness and you accuse me of pretending or if I do something I am proud of and you react with condemnation I feel invisible to feel visible to you I do not require your agreement with what I'm doing or feeling or saying we might hold different viewpoints but if we show understanding of what the other is saying and if our responses are congruent in terms of that we can continue to feel visible to each other a child has a natural desire to be seen heard understood and responded to appropriately to a self that is still forming this need is particularly urgent this is one of the reasons a child will look to a parent for a response after having take some action if a child says unhappily I didn't get the part in my school play and mother answers empathetically that must hurt the child feels visible what does a child feel of mother answers sharply do you think you're always gonna get what you want in life if a child burst into the house full of joy and excitement and mother says smiling you're happy today the child feels visible what does a child feel of mother screams do you have to make so much noise what is the matter with you when we convey love appreciation empathy acceptance and respect we make a child visible when we convey indifference scorn condemnation and ridicule we drive the child self into the lonely underground of invisibility if we are to love effectively whether the object is our child our mate or a friend the ability to provide the experience of visibility is essential and in giving this experience to our child we model a practice that he or she may learn to emulate loving parents concerned to support the self-esteem of their children may believe that the way to do it is with praise but inappropriate praise can be as harmful to self esteem as an appropriate criticism many years ago I learned from Hyman Gannett an important distinction that between evaluative praise and appreciative praise evaluative praise does not serve a tuiles interests in contrast appreciative praise can be productive both in supporting self-esteem and in reinforcing desired behavior to quote from gannets book teacher and child in psychotherapy a child is never told you are a good little boy you are doing great judgmental praise is avoided why because it is not helpful it creates anxiety invites dependency and evokes defensiveness it is not conducive to self-reliance self direction and self control unquote if we state what we like and appreciate about the child's actions and accomplishments we remain factual and descriptive we leave it to the child to do the evaluating cannot offers this example of the process quote Marsha h-12 helped the teacher rearrange the books in the class library the teacher avoided personal praise such as you did a good job or you're a hard worker instead she described what Marsha had accomplished the books are all in order now it'll be easy for the children to find any book they want it was a difficult job but you did it thank you the teachers words of recognition allowed Marcia to make her own inference my teacher likes the job I did I am a good worker unquote the more specifically targeted our praise the more meaningful it is to the child praise that is generalized and abstract leaves the child wondering what exactly is being praised it is not helpful not only does praise need to be specific it needs to be commensurate with its object overblown or grandiose praise tends to be overwhelming and anxiety provoking because the child knows it does not match his or her self perceptions some parents are intent on helping their children's self-esteem but they praise globally indiscriminately and extravagantly at best this does not work at worst it backfires the child feels invisible and anxious in addition this policy tends to produce approval addicts children who cannot take a step without looking for praise and who feel this value if it is not forthcoming if we wish to nurture autonomy always leave space for the child to make his or her own evaluations after we have described behavior leave the child free of the pressure of our judgments help create a context in which independent thinking can occur as to criticism it needs to be directed only at the child's behavior never at the child the principle is this describe the behavior describe your feelings about it describe what you want done if anything and omit character assassination no good purpose has ever served by assaulting a child self-esteem this is the first rule of effective criticism we do not inspire better behavior by impugning a child's worth intelligence morality character intentions or psychology no one was ever made good by being informed he or she was bad attacks on self-esteem tend to increase the likelihood that the unwanted behavior will happen again the child thinks since I am bad I will behave badly there is perhaps nothing more important to know about children than that they need to make sense out of their experience in effect they need to know that the universe is rational they need to know that human existence is knowable predictable and stable on that foundation they can build a sense of efficacy without it the task is worse than difficult sanity in family life is one of a child's most urgent needs if healthy development is to be possible what does sanity mean in this context it means adults who for the most part say what they mean and mean what they say it means rules that are understandable consistent and fair it means not being punished today for behavior that was ignored or even rewarded yesterday it means a home in which reality is appropriately acknowledged it means parents who practice what they preach who are willing to admit when they make mistakes and apologize when they know they have been unfair or unreasonable it means parents who reward and reinforce consciousness in a child rather than discourage and penalize it if instead of obedience we want cooperation from our children if instead of conformity we want self responsibility we can achieve it in a home environment that supports the child's mind we cannot achieve it in an environment intrinsically hostile to the exercise of mind we want to teach our children healthy ideas and values ideas and values our most powerfully communicated when they are embedded into family life rooted into the being of the parents regardless of what we think we're teaching we teach what we are we need not pretend to our children that we are perfect we can acknowledge our struggles and admit our mistakes the likelihood is that the self-esteem of everyone in the family will benefit in supporting and nurturing the self-esteem of our children we support and nurture our own too many children school represents a second chance an opportunity to acquire a better sense of self and a better vision of life than was offered in their home a teacher who projects confidence in the child's competence and goodness can be a powerful antidote to a family in which such confidence is lacking a family in which perhaps the opposite perspective is conveyed a teacher who refuses to accept a child's negative self-concept and relentlessly holds to a better view of the child's potential has the power sometimes to save a life but for some children school is a legally enforced incarceration at the hands of teachers who lack either the self esteem or the training or both to do their jobs properly these are teachers who do not inspire but humiliate they do not speak the language of courtesy and respect but of ridicule and sarcasm they do not motivate by offering values but by evoking fear they do not believe in the child's possibilities they believe only in limitations they do not light fires in mines they extinguish them who cannot recall encountering at least one such teacher during one school years most teachers want to make a positive contribution to the mines and trust to their care if they sometimes do harm it is not by intention and today most are aware that one of the ways they can contribute is by nurturing the child's self-esteem they know the children who believe in themselves and whose teachers project a positive view of their potential do better in school than children without these advantages indeed of any professional group it is teachers who have shown the greatest receptivity to the importance of self-esteem but what nurture self-esteem in the classroom is not self-evident I have stressed that feel-good notions are harmful rather than helpful yet if one examines the proposals offered to teachers on how to raise student self-esteem many are the kind of trivial nonsense that give self-esteem a bad name these include praising and applauding a child for virtually everything he or she does dismissing the importance of objective accomplishments handing out gold stars on every possible occasion and propounding an entitlement idea of self-esteem that leaves a divorced from built behavior and character one of the characteristics of persons with healthy self-esteem is that they tend to assess their abilities and accomplishments realistically neither deny nor exaggerating them might a student do poorly in school and yet have good self-esteem of course there are any number of reasons why a particular boy or girl might not do well scholastically from a dyslexic condition to lack of adequate challenge and stimulation grades are hardly a reliable indicator of a given individual's self-efficacy and self-respect but rationally self-esteem extents do not delude themselves that they are doing well when they are doing poorly what makes the challenge of fostering children's self-esteem particularly urgent today is that many young people arrive in school in such a condition of emotional distress that concentrating on learning can be extraordinarily difficult schools cannot be expected to provide solutions for all the problems in students lives but good schools and good teachers can make an enormous difference as with parents it is easier for a teacher to inspire a self-esteem in students if the teacher exemplifies and models a healthy affirmative sense of self indeed some research suggests that this is the primary factor in the teachers ability to contribute to a student's self-esteem teachers with low self-esteem tend to be more punitive impatient and authoritarian they tend to focus on the child's weaknesses rather than strengths they inspire fearfulness and defensiveness they encourage dependency teachers with low self-esteem tend to be over dependent on the approval of others they tend to feel that others are the source of their self-esteem therefore they are hardly in a position to teach that self-esteem must be generated primarily from within they tend to use their own approval and disapproval to manipulate students into obedience and conformity they teach that self-esteem comes from adult and peer approval they convey an external approach to self-esteem rather than an internal one their by deepening whatever self-esteem problems students already have children watch teachers in part to learn appropriate adult behavior if they see ridicule and sarcasm often they learn to use it themselves if they hear the language of disrespect and cruelty it tends to show up in their own verbal responses if in contrast they see benevolence and an emphasis on the positive they may learn to integrate that into their own responses if they witness fairness they may absorb the attitude of fairness if they see self-esteem they may decide that is a value worth acquiring what a great teacher a great parent the great psychotherapist and a great coach have in common is a deep belief in the potential of the person with whom they are concerned they possess a conviction about what that person is capable of being and doing plus the ability to transmit that conviction during their interactions teachers with good self-esteem are likely to understand that if they wish to nurture the self-esteem of another they need to relate to that person from our vision of his or her worth and value providing an experience of acceptance and respect they know that most of us tend to underestimate our inner resources and they keep that knowledge central in their awareness most of us are capable of more than we believe when teachers remain clear about this others can acquire this understanding from them almost by contagion one of the painful things about being a child is that one tends not to be taken seriously by adults whether one is dismissed discourteously or praised for being cute most children are not used to having their dignity as human beings respected so a teacher who treats all students with courtesy and respect sends a signal to the class you are now in an environment where different rules apply than those you may be used to in this world your dignity and feelings matter in this simple way a teacher can begin to create an environment that supports self-esteem sometimes a child is not fully aware of his or her assets it is the teacher's job to facilitate that awareness this has nothing to do with phony compliments every child does some things right every child has some assets they must be found identified and nurtured a teacher should be a prospector looking for gold try to think back to what it would have been like to be in a class where the teacher felt there was no more urgent task than to discover the good in you your strengths and virtues and to help you become more aware of them would that have inspired the best in you would that be an environment in which you were motivated to grow and learn in every classroom there are rules that must be respected of course if learning is to progress and tasks are to be accomplished rules can be imposed by dint of the teachers power or they can be explained in such a way as to engage the mind and understanding of the student a teacher can think about rules in one of two ways she or he can wonder how could I make students do what needs to be done or he or she can wonder how can I inspire students to want to do what needs to be done the first orientation is necessarily adversarial and the best achieves obedience while encouraging dependency the second orientation is benevolent and achieves cooperation while encouraging self responsibility which approach a teacher feels more comfortable with has a good deal to do with his or her own sense of efficacy as a person low self-esteem can impel some teachers too rigid punitive even sadistic behavior it can impair others - the kind of mushy permissiveness the signals of complete absence of authority with classroom Anarchy as the result compassion and respect do not imply lack of firmness a capitulation to disruptive elements in the class means abdication of the teachers responsibilities competent teachers understand the need for standards of acceptable behavior but they also understand the toughness need not and should not entail insults or responses aimed at demeaning anyone sense of personal value one of the characteristics of a superior teacher is mastery of this challenge to achieve the results they want teachers sometimes have to exercise imagination one teacher I know solved the classroom problem by gravely asking the biggest noisiest boy in the class when they were alone if he could help her by exercising his natural leadership abilities to persuade some of the others to be more orderly the boy looked a bit disoriented evidently not knowing how to answer but piece quickly prevailed an employee responsible felt proud of himself the frustrations pressures and challenges teachers face test their self-esteem energy and dedication every day to preserve throughout their careers the vision with which the best of them started to hold fast to the idea that the business they are in is that upsetting minds on fire is a heroic project the work they are doing could not more important yet to do it well they need to embody that which they wish to communicate a teacher who does not operate at an appropriate level of consciousness cannot model live in consciously for his or her students a teacher who is not self accepting will be unable successfully to communicate self acceptance a teacher who was not self responsible will have a difficult time persuading others of the value of self responsibility a teacher who is afraid of self-assertiveness will not inspire its practice in others a teacher who is not purposeful is not a good spokesperson for the practice of living purposefully a teacher who lacks integrity will be severely limited in the ability to inspire it in others if their goal is to nurture self esteem in those entrusted to their care then teachers like parents like psycho therapists like all of us need to begin by working on their own one arena and which this can be done is the classroom itself just as parenting can be a spiritual discipline a path for personal development so can teaching the challenges each venue presents can be turned into vehicles for personal growth now I want to focus on the world of work on the challenges to economic adaptiveness both for individuals and organizations in an economy in which knowledge information creativity and their translation into innovation are the source of wealth and of competitive advantage there are distinct challenges both to individuals and to organizations to individuals whether as employees or a self-employed professionals the challenges include to acquire appropriate knowledge and skills and to commit oneself to a lifetime of continuous learning which the rapid growth of knowledge makes mandatory to work effectively with other human beings which includes skill in written and oral communication the ability to participate in non adversarial relationships understanding how to build consensus through give-and-take and willingness to assume leadership and motivate co-workers when necessary finally to manage and respond appropriately to change to organizations the challenges include to respond to the need for a constant stream of innovation by cultivating a discipline of innovation and entrepreneurship into the mission strategies policies practices and rewards system of the organization to go beyond paying lip service to the importance of the individual by designing a culture in which initiative creativity self responsibility and contribution are fostered and rewarded and finally to recognize the relationship between self-esteem and performance and to think through and implement policies that support self-esteem this demands recognizing and responding to the individuals need for a sane intelligible noncontradictory environment that a mind can make sense of make sense of for learning and growth for achievement for being listened to and respected and for being allowed to make responsible mistakes leaders do not usually ask themselves how can we create a self-esteem supporting culture in our organization but the best of them do ask what can we do to stimulate innovation and creativity how can we make this the kind of place that will attract the best people and what can we do to earn their continuing loyalty these questions are all different and yet the answers to them are largely the same or at least significantly overlap it would be impossible to have an organization that nurtured innovation and creativity and yet did not nurture self-esteem in some important ways it would be impossible to have an organization that nurtured self-esteem and yet did not stimulate innovation creativity excitement and loyalty from the point of view of the individual it is obvious that work can be a vehicle for raising self-esteem the six pillars all have clear application here when we bring a high level of consciousness responsibility and so on to our tasks self-esteem is strengthened just as when we avoid them self-esteem is weakened in this section I want to focus on self-esteem from the perspective of the organization the kind of policies and practices that either undermine or support the self-efficacy and self-respect of people an organization whose people operate at a high level of consciousness self-acceptance self responsibility self-assertiveness purposefulness and personal integrity would be an organization of extraordinarily empowered human beings these straights are supported in an organization to the extent that the following conditions are met people feel safe they're secure that they will not be ridiculed demeaned humiliated or punished for openness and honesty or for admitting I made a mistake or for saying I don't know but I'll find out people feel accepted they're treated with courtesy listen to invited to express thoughts and feelings dealt with as individuals whose dignity is important people feel challenged they're given assignments that excite inspire and test and stretch their abilities people feel recognized they're acknowledged for individual talents and achievements and rewarded monetarily and non monetarily for extraordinary contributions people receive constructive feedback they hear how to improve performance and non demeaning ways that stress positives rather than negatives and that build on their strengths people see that innovation is expected of them their opinions are solicited their brainstorming is invited and they see that the development of new and usable ideas is desired of them and welcomed people are given easy access to information not only are they given the information and resources they need to do their job properly they are given information about the wider context in which they work the goals and progress of the company so that they can understand how their activities relate to the organization's overall mission people are given authority appropriate to what they are accountable for they are encouraged to take initiative may decisions exercise judgment people are given clear-cut and non contradictory rules and guidelines they are provided with a structure their intelligence can grasp and pound on and they know what is expected of them people are encouraged and empowered to solve as many of their own problems as possible people see that their rewards for successes are far greater than any penalties for failures in too many companies where the penalties for mistakes are much greater than the rewards for success people are afraid to take risks or express themselves people are encouraged and rewarded for learning people experience congruence between an organization's mission statement and prevents philosophy on the one hand and the behavior of leaders and managers on the other they see integrity exemplified and they feel motivated to match what they see people experience being treated fairly and justly they feel the workplace is a rational universe they can trust people are able to believe in and take pride in the value of what they produce they perceive the results of their efforts is genuinely useful and they perceive their work as worth doing to the extent that these conditions are operative in an organization it will be a place in which high self-esteem people will want to work it will also be one in which people have more modest self-esteem will find their self esteem raised now I want to say a few words about the leader the CEO or company president the primary function of a leader in a business enterprise is to develop and persuasively convey a vision of what the organization is to accomplish she or he must also inspire and empower all those who work for the organization to make an optimal contribution to the fulfillment of that vision and to experience that in doing so they are acting in alignment with their self-interest so the leader must be an inspirer and a persuader the higher the self esteem of the leader the more likely it is that he or she can perform that function successfully a mind that distrust itself cannot inspire the best in the minds of others neither can leaders inspire the best in others if their primary need arising from their insecurities is to prove themselves right and others wrong it is a fallacy to say that a great leader should be egoless a leader needs an ego sufficiently healthy that it does not experience itself as on the line in every encounter this so the leader is free to be tasked and results-oriented not self aggrandizement or self-protection oriented if degrees of self esteem are thought of on a scale from one to ten with ten representing optimal self-esteem and one the lowest imaginable then is a leader who is a five more likely to hire a seven or a three very likely he or she will feel more comfortable with the three since people often feel intimidated by others more confident than themselves multiplied this example hundreds or thousands of times and project the consequences for a business leaders often do not fully recognize the extent to which who they are affects virtually every aspect of their organization they do not appreciate the extent to which they are role models their smallest bits and behavior are noted and absorbed by those around them not necessarily consciously and reflected via those they influence throughout the entire organization if a leader has unimpeachable integrity a standard is set that others feel drawn to follow if a leader treats people with respect associates subordinates customers suppliers shareholders that tends to translate into company culture for these reasons a person who wants to work on his or her leadership ability should work on self esteem continual dedication to the six pillars and their daily practice is the very best training for leadership as it is for life the policies that support self esteem are also the policies that make money the policies that demean self esteem are the policies that sooner or later cause a company to lose money why simply because when you treat people badly and disrespectfully you cannot possibly hope to get their best and in today's fierce competitive rapidly changing global economy nothing less than their best is good enough one way to deepen our understanding of the themes with which this program has been concerned is to look at self esteem as it relates to and disaffected by culture let us begin by considering the idea of self esteem itself it is not an idea one finds in all cultures and emerged in the West only recently and is still far from well understood self esteem existed in human consciousness thousands of years before it emerged as an explicit idea now that it has emerged the challenge is to understand it the need for self esteem is not cultural the need is inherent in human nature what is the effect of different cultures and different cultural values on self-esteem every society contains a network of values beliefs and assumptions not all of which are named explicitly but which nonetheless are part of the human environment indeed ideas that are not identified overtly but are held and conveyed tacitly can be harder to call into question this is precisely because they are absorbed by a process that largely bypasses the conscious mind everyone possesses what might be called a cultural unconscious a set of implicit beliefs that reflect the knowledge understanding and values of a historical time and place I do not mean there are no differences among people within a given culture in their beliefs at this level nor do I mean that no one holds any of these beliefs consciously or that no one challenges any of them I mean only that at least some of these beliefs tend to reside in every psyche in a given society and without ever being the subject of explicit awareness throughout human history most societies and cultures have been dominated by the tribal mentality this was true in primitive times in the Middle Ages and in socialist and some non socialist countries in the 20th century Japan is a contemporary example of a non socialist nation still heavily tribal in its cultural orientation although it may now be in the process of becoming less so the essence of the tribal mentality is that it makes the tribe as such the supreme good and denigrates the importance of the individual it tends to view individuals as interchangeable units and to ignore or minimize the significance of differences between one human being and another at its extreme it sees the individual as hardly existing except in the network of tribal relationships the individual by him or herself is nothing the tribal premise is intrinsically anti self-esteem it is the premise and an orientation that disempowers the individual as individual it's implicit messages you don't count by yourself you are nothing only as part of us can you be something thus any society to the extent that it is dominated by the tribal premise is inherently unsupportive of self esteem in such a society the individual is socialized to hold him or herself in low esteem relative to the group self assertiveness is suppressed pride tends to be labeled a vice what was so historically extraordinary about the creation of the United States of America was its conscious rejection of the tribal premise the Declaration of Independence proclaimed the revolutionary doctrine of individual inalienable rights and asserted that the government exists for the individual not the individual for the government although our political leaders have betrayed this vision many ways and many times it still contains the essence of what the abstraction America stands for freedom individualism the right to the pursuit of happiness self ownership the individual as an end in him or herself not a means to the ends of others not the property of family or church or state at the core of the American tradition was the fact that this country was born as a frontier nation where nothing was given and everything had to be created self discipline and hard work were highly esteemed cultural values there was a strong theme of community a mutual aid to be sure but not a substitute for self-reliance and self responsibility independent people held one another when they could but ultimately everyone was expected to carry his or her own weight this generalized account of traditional American culture leaves out a good deal it does not for instance address the institution of slavery the treatment of black Americans as second-class citizens or legal discrimination against women just the same we can say that to the extent the American vision was actualized it did a good deal to encourage healthy self-esteem it encouraged human beings to believe in themselves and in their possibilities at the same time a culture is made of people and people inevitably carry the past with them Americans may have repudiated the tribal premise politically but they or their ancestors came from countries dominated by the tribal mentality their history often continued to influence them culturally and psychologically they may in some instances have come to these shores to escape religious prejudice and persecution but many of them carried the mindset of religious authoritarianism with them they brought old ways of thinking about race religion and gender into the new world conflicting cultural values present from the beginning continued to this day in our present culture Pro self-esteem forces and anti self-esteem forces collide constantly the 20th century witnessed a shift in cultural values in the United States and predominantly the shift is not supported higher self-esteem but has encouraged the opposite today the American culture is a battleground between the values of self responsibility and the values of entitlement this is not the only cultural conflict we can see around us but it is the one most relevant to self-esteem it also at the root of many of the others we are social beings who realize our humanity fully only in the context of community the values of our community can inspire the best in us or the worst a culture that values mind intellect knowledge and understanding promote self-esteem a culture that denigrates mind undermine self-esteem a culture in which human beings are held accountable for their actions support self-esteem a culture in which no one is held accountable for anything breeds demoralisation and self-contempt a culture that prizes self responsibility foster self esteem a culture in which people are encouraged to see themselves as victims Foster's dependency passivity and the mentality of entitlement the evidence for these observations is all around us cultures do not encourage the questioning of their own premises one of the meanings of living consciously has to do with one's awareness that other people's beliefs are just that their beliefs and not necessarily the ultimate truth the average person tends to judge him or herself by the value spread n't in his or her social environment as transmitted by family members political and religious leaders teachers newspaper and television editorials and popular arts such as movies these values may or may not be rational and may or may not answer to the needs of the individual I am sometimes asked if a person cannot achieve genuine self-esteem by conforming and living up to cultural norms that he or she may never have thought about let alone questioned and that do not necessarily make a good deal of sense is not the safety and security of belonging with and to the group a form of self esteem does not group validation and support lead to an experience of true self worth the error here is an equation any feeling of safety or comfort with self esteem conformity is not self efficacy popularity is not self respect whatever its gratifications a sense of belonging is not equal to trust in my mind or confidence in my ability to master the challenges of life the fact that others esteem me there's no guarantee I will esteem myself if I live a life of unthinking routine with no challenges or crises I may be able to evade for a while the fact that what I possess is not self-esteem but pseudo self esteem when everything is all right everything is all right but that is not how we determine the presence of self esteem genuine self esteem is what we feel about ourselves when everything is not alright when we are challenged by the unexpected when the cocoon of the group can no longer insulate us from the task and risks of life have such moments our deepest premises reveal themselves one of the biggest lies we were ever told is that it is supposedly easy to be selfish and that self sacrifice takes spiritual strength people sacrifice themselves in a thousand ways every day this is their tragedy to honor the self to honor mind judgment values and convictions is the ultimate act of courage observe how rare it is but it is what self esteem asommus the need for a self esteem is a summons to the hero within us this means a willingness and a will to live the six practices when to do so may not be easy we may need to overcome inertia face down fears confront pain or stand alone and loyalty to our own judgment even against those we love no matter how nurturing our environment rationality self responsibility and integrity are never automatic they always represent an achievement we are free to think or to avoid thinking free to expand consciousness or to contract it free to move toward reality or to withdraw from it the six pillars all entail choice living consciously requires an effort generating a sustained awareness is work every time we choose to raise the level of our consciousness we act against inertia and electing to think we strive to create an island of order and clarity within ourselves the first enemy of self-esteem we may need to overcome is laziness laziness is not the term we ordinarily encounter in programs on psychology and yet is anyone unaware that sometimes we fail ourselves for no reason other than the disinclination to generate the effort of an appropriate response sometimes of course laziness is abetted by fatigue but not necessarily sometimes we are just lazy which means that we do not challenge inertia we do not choose to awaken the other dragon we may need to slay is the impulse to avoid discomfort living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears it may bring us into contact with unresolved pain self-acceptance may require that we make real to ourselves thoughts feelings or actions that disturb our equilibrium it may shake up our official self-concept self responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness it demands that we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic with no guarantee of how others will respond living purposefully pulls us out of passivity into the demanding life of high focus it requires that we be self generators living with integrity demands that we choose our values and stand by them whether or not this is pleasant and whether or not others share our convictions there are times when it demands hard choices if one of our top priorities is to avoid discomfort if we make this a higher value than our self regard then under pressure we will abandon the six practices precisely when we need them most the desire to avoid discomfort is not per se a vice when surrendering to it blinds us to important realities and leads us away from necessary actions it results in tragedy here is the basic pattern first we avoid what we need to look at because we do not want to feel pain then our avoidance produces further problems for us which we also do not want to look at because they invoke pain then the new avoidance produces additional problems we do not care to examine and so on layer of avoidance is piled on layer of avoidance disown pain on disown pain this is the condition of most adults here is the reversal of the basic pattern first we decide that our self-esteem and our happiness matter more than short-term discomfort or pain we take baby steps at being more conscious self accepting responsible and so on we notice that when we do this we like ourselves more this inspires us to push on and attempt to go farther we become more truthful with ourselves and others self-esteem Rises we take on harder assignments we feel a little tougher a little more resourceful it becomes easier to confront discomforting emotions and threatening situations we feel we have more assets with which to cope we become more self assertive we feel stronger we are building the spiritual equivalent of a muscle experiencing ourselves as more powerful we see difficulties and more realistic perspective we may never be entirely free of fear or pain but they have lessened immeasurably and we are not intimidated by them integrity feels less threatening and more natural if the process were entirely easy if there was nothing hard about it at any point if perseverance and courage were never needed why then everyone would have good self-esteem but a life without effort struggle or suffering is an infant's dream we do not have to catastrophize fear or discomfort we can accept them as part of life face them and deal with them as best we can and keep moving in the direction of our best possibilities but always will is needed perseverance is needed courage is needed the energy for this commitment can only come from the love we have for our own life this love is the beginning of virtue it is a launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations it is the motive power that drives the six pillars it is the seventh pillar of self-esteem we'll hope to have enjoyed this program

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Id: b8Bh7tJwv4w

Length: 203min 39sec (12219 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019