The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

  In the examples above I focus on the workplace, but of course efficacy applies also to intimate relationships, as the preceding paragraph makes clear. No experience of efficacy can be complete if it does not include that of feeling competent in our human dealings. If I am unable to create personal and professional relationships that will be experienced as positive by both me and the other party (which is what “competence” in the human realm essentially means), then I am lacking at a very basic level; I am without efficacy in a vital sphere. And this reality is reflected in my self-esteem.

  Sometimes people who feel fear in the human realm drop to a very low level of consciousness in their relationships and seek the safety and security of competence in the impersonal word of machines, mathematics, or abstract thought. No matter what heights they may attain professionally, their self-esteem remains flawed. We cannot with impunity run from so important an aspect of life.

  Worthiness

  Now the second component of self-esteem: self-respect.

  Just as self-efficacy entails 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.

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  Self-respect entails the expectation of friendship, love, and happiness as natural, as a result of who we are and what we do.

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  As far as our upbringing is concerned, one of its roots is the experience of being treated with respect by parents and other family members. As far as our own actions are concerned, one of its roots is satisfaction with our moral choices—which is a particular aspect of satisfaction with our mental processes. (Indeed, a simple and informal self-esteem “test,” though far from infallible, is to inquire of people whether they feel proud of and satisfied with their moral choices. To turn right or left at a street corner is not ordinarily a moral choice; to tell the truth or not to tell the truth, to honor one’s promises and commitments or not, is.)

  Not uncommonly we meet a person who is far more sure of his or her competence, at least in some areas, than of the right to be happy. Some aspect of self-respect is missing. Such an individual may achieve a great deal but lack the capacity to enjoy it. The feeling of personal worth that would support and sanction enjoyment is, if not entirely absent, then wounded and impaired.

  We sometimes encounter this problem among successful businesspersons who are anxious away from their desks. For such persons, vacations are often more a source of stress than of pleasure. They are limited in their ability even to enjoy their families, much as they may feel they love them. They do not feel entitled. They feel they must continually prove and justify their worth through achievement. They are not devoid of self-esteem, but it is tragically flawed.

  To appreciate why our need for self-respect is so urgent, consider the following: 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.)

  Recently I counseled a brilliant lawyer who was self-effacing almost to the point of self-destruction. She continually allowed others to take credit for her achievements in the law firm where she worked. Her boss took billing credit for hours that were hers. Associates took credit for many of her ideas. She remained cheerful to everyone and insisted she did not mind, while inwardly she was burning with resentment. She wanted to be liked, and she believed that self-abasement was the way to assure it, avoiding thoughts about the cost to her self-respect. Her one act of assertion and rebellion had been to become a lawyer, against the skepticism of her family, who had always minimized her worth. To become highly successful was beyond her view of what was possible or appropriate to her. She had the knowledge and the skill; she did not have the self-esteem. The low level of her self-respect was like a gravitational pull forbidding her to rise. What she learned in therapy was that bringing more consciousness to her choices, taking more responsibility for her self-sabotaging behavior, and acting against that gravitational pull—standing up for herself, in spite of fear—was the way to build her self-respect.

  Three basic observations: (1) 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. (2) If we do not respect ourselves, we tend to act in ways that lower our sense of our own value even further, such as accepting or sanctioning inappropriate behavior toward us by others, thereby confirming and reinforcing our negativity. (3) 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, which is then expressed through congruent behavior.

  The need to see ourselves as good is the need to experience self-respect. It emerges very early. As we develop from 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 in our characteristic way of functioning. This is the need to feel that we are good.

  We learn the concept from adults, from whom we first hear the words “good,” “bad,” “right,” “wrong,” but the need is inherent in our nature. It is tied to the issue of survival: Am I appropriate to life? To be right as a person is to be fit for success and happiness; to be wrong is to be threatened by pain. When a client in therapy says, “I don’t feel entitled to be happy or successful,” the meaning is, “I don’t feel worthy as a human being.”

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  A concern with right and wrong is not merely the product of social conditioning. A concern with morality or ethics arises naturally in the early stages of our development.

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  The need for self-respect is basic and inescapable. Inherent in our existence and humanity are such questions as: What kind of being should I seek to become? By what principles should I guide my life? What values are worth pursuing? I say “inherent in our existence” because a concern with right and wrong is not merely the product of social conditioning. A concern with morality or ethics arises naturally in the early stages of our development, much as our other intellectual abilities develop, and progresses in step with the normal course of our maturation. When we assess our own activities, inevitably our moral attitudes are part of our implicit context.

  It is impossible to escape the realm of values and value-judgments because they are demanded by the very nature of life. “Good for me” or “bad for me” ultimately translates to “for my life and well-being” or “against them.” Further, and essential to an understanding of self-esteem, we cannot exempt ourselves from the realm of values and value judgments. We cannot be indifferent to the moral meaning of our actions, although we may try to be or pretend to be. At some level, their value significance irresistibly registers in the psyche, leaving positive feelings about the self in their wake or negative ones. Whether the values by which we explicitly or implicitly judge ourselves are conscious or subconscious, rational or irrational, life serving or life threatening, everyone judges himself or herself by some standard. To the extent that we fail to satisfy that standard, to the extent there is a split between ideals and pract
ice, self-respect suffers. Thus, personal integrity is intimately related to the moral aspect of self-esteem. For the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves, and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generated out of fantasy and self-delusion.

  Pride

  I want to say a few words about pride, as distinguished from self-esteem. Pride is a unique kind of pleasure.

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  Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a value to be attained.

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  If self-esteem pertains to the experience of our fundamental competence and value, pride pertains to the more explicitly conscious pleasure we take in ourselves because of our actions and achievements. Self-esteem contemplates what needs to be done and says “I can.” Pride contemplates what has been accomplished and says “I did.”

  Authentic pride has nothing in common with bragging, boasting, or arrogance. It comes from an opposite root. Not emptiness but satisfaction is its wellspring. It is not out to “prove” but to enjoy.

  Nor is pride the delusion that we are without flaws or shortcomings (as religionists sometimes suggest). We can take pride in what we have done or what we have made of ourselves while acknowledging our errors and imperfections. We can feel pride while owning and accepting what Jungians call our “Shadow.” In short, pride in no way entails obliviousness to reality.

  Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a value to be attained. (In a philosophical or moral context, when pride is considered not as an emotion or experience but as a virtue, an action commitment, I define it differently—as moral ambitiousness, the dedication to achieving one’s highest potential in one’s character and in one’s life. I discuss this idea in The Psychology of Self-Esteem.)

  Does achievement always result in pride? Not necessarily, as the following story illustrates.

  The head of a medium-sized company consulted me because, he said, although he had made a great success of his business, he was depressed and unhappy and could not understand why. We discovered that what he had always wanted to be was a research scientist but that he had abandoned that desire in deference to his parents, who pushed him toward a career in business. Not only was he unable to feel more than the most superficial kind of pride in his accomplishments but he was wounded in his self-esteem. The reason was not difficult to identify. In the most important issue of his life he had surrendered his mind and values to the wishes of others out of the wish to be “loved” and to “belong.” Clearly a still earlier self-esteem problem motivated such a capitulation. His depression reflected a lifetime of performing brilliantly while ignoring his deepest needs. While he operated within that framework, pride and satisfaction were beyond his reach. Until he was willing to challenge that framework, and to face the fear of doing so, no solution was possible.

  This is an important point to understand, because we sometimes hear people say, “I have accomplished so much. Why don’t I feel more proud of myself?” Although there are several reasons why someone may not enjoy his or her achievements, it can be useful to ask, “Who chose your goals? You, or the voice of some ‘significant other’ inside you?” Neither pride nor self-esteem can be supported by the pursuit of secondhand values that do not reflect who we really are.

  But does anything take more courage—is anything more challenging and sometimes frightening—than to live by our own mind, judgment, and values? Is not self-esteem a summons to the hero within us? These questions will shortly lead us to the six pillars of self-esteem.

  3

  The Face of Self-Esteem

  What does self-esteem look like?

  There are some fairly simple and direct ways in which self-esteem manifests itself in ourselves and others. None of these items taken in isolation is a guarantee, but when all are present together, self-esteem seems certain.

  Self-esteem expresses it itself in a face, manner, and way of talking and moving that projects the pleasure one takes in being alive.

  It expresses itself in an ease in talking of accomplishments or short-comings with directness and honesty, since one is in friendly relationship to facts.

  It expresses itself in the comfort one experiences in giving and receiving compliments, expressions of affection, appreciation, and the like.

  It expresses itself in an openness to criticism and a comfort about acknowledging mistakes, because one’s self-esteem is not tied to an 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 is 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 in an attitude of openness to 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 feel impossibly difficult.

  It expresses itself in an 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 trusts one’s mind and does not see life as doom or defeat.

  It expresses itself in one’s comfort with assertive (not belligerent) behavior in oneself and others.

  It expresses itself in an ability to preserve a quality of harmony and dignity under conditions of stress.

  Then, on the purely physical level, we can observe characteristics such as these:

  We see eyes that are alert, bright, and lively; a face that is relaxed and (barring illness) tends to exhibit natural color and good skin vibrancy; a chin that is held naturally and in alignment with one’s body; and a relaxed jaw.

  We see shoulders relaxed yet erect; hands that tend to be relaxed and graceful; arms that tend to hang in an easy, natural way; a posture that tends to be unstrained, erect, well-balanced; a walk that tends to be purposeful (without being aggressive and overbearing).

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  Relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves and are not at war with who we are.

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  We hear 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 and are not at war with who we are. Chronic tension conveys a message of 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.

  Self-Esteem in Action

  In the beginning of this book I said that healthy self-esteem is significantly correlated with rationality, realism, intuitiveness, creativity, independence, flexibility, ability to manage change, willingness to admit (and correct) mistakes, benevolence, and cooperativeness. If we understand what self-esteem actually means, the logic of these correlations becomes fairly obvious.

  Rationality. This is the exercise of the integrative function of consciousness—the generation of principles from concrete facts (induction), the application of principles to concrete facts (deduction), and the relating of new knowledge and information to our existing context of knowledge. It is the pursuit of meaning and an understanding of relationships. Its guide is the law of noncontradiction—nothing can be true and not true (A and non-A) at the same time and in the same respect. Its base is respect for facts.

  Rationality should not be confused, as it so often is, with compulsive rule following or unreflective obedience to what the people of a given time or place have proclaimed to be “reasonable.” On the contrary, rationality often must challenge what some group calls “reasonable.” (When a particular notion of the “reasonable” has been overthro
wn by new evidence, it is that notion and not reason that has been vanquished.) The quest of reason is for the noncontradictory integration of experience—which implies openness and availability to experience. It is the servant neither of tradition nor consensus.

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  High self-esteem is intrinsically reality oriented.

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  It is very far from that odd notion of rationality that identifies it with the unimaginative, narrowly analytic, accounting mentality, as we find, for instance, in Peters and Waterman’s In Search of Excellence, where “rationality” is characterized in this way and then criticized. Rationality is consciousness operating in its explicitly integrative mode.

  Thus understood, we see that a commitment to rationality and the practice of living consciously entail each other.

  Realism. In this context the term simply means a respect for facts, a recognition that what is, is, and what is not, is not. No one can feel competent to cope with the challenges of life who does not treat seriously the distinction between the real and the unreal; obliviousness to that distinction is incapacitating. High self-esteem is intrinsically reality oriented. (Good reality orientation, in conjunction with effective self-discipline and self-management, is what psychologists mean by the concept of “ego strength.”)

  In tests, low-self-esteem individuals tend to underestimate or overestimate their abilities; high-self-esteem individuals tend to assess their abilities realistically.