Chapter 1 - Self-Esteem: The Immune System of Consciousness
Note to the reader: This is chapter 1 of an 11 part series of notes / important ideas gathered from my reading of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Branden.
A Definition
In this chapter, Branden begins by defining self-esteem as:
- Confidence in our ability to think, confidence in 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.
Self-Esteem in Action
There is a continuous feedback loop between our self-esteem and our actions. Our self-esteem influences our actions, and our actions influence our self-esteem.
Branden offers a few examples of this, for instance:
If I trust my mind, and I attempt a difficult task and succeed - I am reinforced in trusting my mind. If I distrust my mind and fail, I reinforce the belief of distrusting my mind. Self-esteem is success oriented.
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 without giving it my best. The result of these actions in turn influences our self-esteem. If I have high self-esteem, and I succeed, that success influences my self-esteem. If I have low self-esteem and I fail, that failure influences my self-esteem. Both feedback loops are self-fulfilling prophecies.
If I respect myself and require that others deal with me respectfully, I send out signals and behave in ways so that others respond accordingly. If I disrespect myself, the same is true. When I tolerate abuse, my self-respect deteriorates still more.
One of the core ideas that Branden talks about in this chapter is the effect of self-esteem on every day life. Our level of self-esteem influences 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, whom we are likely to fall in love with, and ultimately the level of personal happiness we attain.
Branden also states that high 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, inappropriate conformity or inappropriate rebelliousness, defensiveness, over-compliant or over-controlling behavior and a fear of or hostility towards others.
Branden goes on to give evidence of the causation between self-esteem and one’s actions. The basic idea is that the result of your actions, heavily influences your self-esteem. The reward of success is higher self-esteem. Higher self-esteem influences the actions that you take. There is a continuous feedback loop between the two.
High self-esteem is an achievement. To be able to maintain a high level of self-esteem over any period of time is something that requires success. It is something that requires health, productivity, and achievement. Your actions influence your level of self-esteem, and your level of self-esteem influences your actions.
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 as Destiny
Branden also briefly touches upon the subject of self-concept as destiny - in particular when discussing the subject of self-sabotage. Branden states that when we achieve a level of success that goes beyond the scope of who or what we truly think we are, we subconsciously engage in self-sabotage.
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 contains or includes our level of self-esteem, but is more global.
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.
A poor self-concept, and poor self-esteem place us in an adversarial relationship to our well-being.
Self-Esteem as a Basic Need
Branden states that self-esteem is a need that is analogous to calcium, rather than food or water. Lacking it to a serious degree, we do not necessarily die, but we are impaired in our ability to function.
A deficiency in self-esteem reveals itself in a bad choice of mate, a marriage that brings only frustration, a career that never goes anywhere, aspirations that are somehow always sabotaged, promising ideas that die stillborn, a mysterious inability to enjoy successes, destructive eating and living habits, dreams that are never fulfilled, chronic anxiety or depression, persistently low resistance to illness, over-dependence on drugs, an insatiable hunger for love and approval, children who learn nothing of self-respect or the joy of being. In brief, a life that feels like a long string of defeats, for which the only consolation, perhaps, is the sad mantra, “So who’s happy?”
Positive self-esteem can be thought of as the immune system of consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. Just as a healthy immune system does not guarantee that one will never become ill, but makes one less vulnerable to disease and better equipped to overcome it, so healthy self-esteem does not guarantee that one will never suffer anxiety or depression in the face of life’s difficulties, but makes one less susceptible and better equipped to cope, rebound, and transcend. High self-esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quicker to pick themselves up again.
Too Much Self-Esteem?
Branden states that it is not possible to have too much self-esteem, no more than it is possible to have too much physical health.
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, not in being better than someone else.
This being said, Branden cautions that the pursuit of self-esteem should not be prioritized over a roof over one’s head or food on the table. He also states that while a well developed sense of self is a necessary condition of our well-being, it is not a sufficient condition. The presence of high self-esteem does not guarantee fulfillment, but the lack of self-esteem guarantees some measure of anxiety, frustration, or despair.
Challenges of the Modern World
If you look at the average entry-level position, you’ll notice that the requirements are not so simple. “Analyze generated reports and identify problems through experiments and statistical process control. Communicate manufacturing performance metrics to management, and understand the company’s competitive position.”
In the 21st century, innovation, self-management, personal responsibility, and self-direction are needed to survive everyday life. Every level of a business enterprise asks this of its’ employees. Such is life in an information economy.
It is easy to see that independence, self-reliance, self-trust, and the capacity to exercise initiative - in a word, self-esteem, are at a high premium in today’s modern economy.
The issue extends even farther. We are freer today than any generation before us. Countless options are open to us with regards to how we want to live our lives.
We are freer than any generation before us to choose our own religion, philosophy or moral code; to adopt our own life-style; 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. No one is coming to rescue us, not in any aspect of life. We are thrown on our own resources.
We need to know who we are and to be centered within ourselves. We need to know what matters to us; otherwise it is easy to be swept up and swept along by alien values, pursuing goals that do not nourish who we really are. 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. We need reality-based self-trust and self-reliance.
The greater the number of choices and decisions we need to make at a conscious level, the more urgent our need for self-esteem.