(This blog has been in the hopper for quite awhile, but I had forgotten where I put the draft -- yet another reason to leave everything in the default folders ...)
Okay, the title is purposely provocative. What I really mean is that I don't want you to have an artificially high self esteem: I want you to (eventually) have a healthy self esteem that deserves to be high. For a long, long time, well-meaning people have been preaching high self esteem -- don't do that to your kid, it will hurt his self esteem .... While not being a jerk is good advice, especially when it comes to those that you have a special relationship with such as kids, in theory what you do should have very little effect on someone else's SELF esteem.
Your self esteem should be based on how well you measure up to your personal values. Because these values are personal, most of what other people say should only inform your own opinions, and as you become more self aware the importance of other's opinions should decrease accordingly. (Queue stiff-lipped British stoicism.)
If my premise here is correct, when you try to convince a person that he should have a high self esteem without first discovering what that individual's personal value system (and personal measuring stick) says, you are trying to commit a sort of well-intentioned psychological fraud. What you are saying is, "Hey, *I* think highly of you, so you should abdicate your own opinion in favor of mine." The fact that you are putting your opinion over the person who is the actual subject here means that that person's esteem, if he follows your suggestion, is now no longer a SELF esteem. That likely means that your goodwill is too important, and you have too much control. This lessening of the individual eventually leads to LOWER self esteem, not higher, once the fraud is discovered.
What is harder to do, and takes longer, is to encourage an ongoing, indepth self evaluation. What is important to you? How do you measure that importance? How well do you stack up to your measurement?
This is not simple, and it's not easy. Each of us has many -- often conflicting -- values, and trying to actually come down on how to measure them, and how we are doing, is a daunting task that can never be perfectly completed. That's okay. Life itself is pretty easy, but a well-lived life is much harder, so each of us has to make his own decisions. Like most important-but-not-urgent things, though, consistently following through on this aspect of your life makes some current moments slightly harder but later moments much more fulfilling (and generally easier).
You will likely find that some of your values include other people. There's no problem with that (in fact, if you DON'T find that, you may want to look at my note below about sociopaths). However, this is an area where you should think very carefully about how to measure its impact on your SELF esteem. For an extreme example, there are many people that, if they LIKED me, I would feel WORSE about myself. For instance, I want racist, violent jerks to think I'm just not measuring up to their standards. However, for those whom I admire, especially those that I think are especially discerning on some point relevant to my character, I do value (sometimes highly value) their opinions. If I want a second opinion on how good a parent I am, for instance, I may see what my wife thinks. If I want to find out how well I handle business matters, I may turn to my boss, or those on my team. But, when I do this, I'm looking for specific points -- not "how good a person is Brandon" but a particular character point--, and I know that these are always SECONDARY opinions. My opinion must remain primary when considering my self esteem.
It is, indeed, impossible by definition to put someone else's opinion above your own in this matter. What you are really doing when you try is to pick, among all the other humans with whom you come into contact, someone that you think has the most reliable opinion of you; you then guess at what that person's opinion of you actually is (people are much too multi-faceted to make simple discussions sufficient to convey true opinions of their worth); you then take that guess and super-impose it on your own opinion, which is still there but not as easily accessible. In other words, your opinion is still, by necessity, used in choosing the person on whom you are placing this ostensible burden ... so why bother? (Of course, I'm making this sound rational, but in reality people are only doing these steps partially consciously -- instead of making decisions, they are letting apathy and inertia guide them, in many cases.)
Thus, you can't bow out of this, and you shouldn't have a high opinion of yourself if you aren't up to par in your own personal assessment. So ... get busy!
* A note about sociopaths: One criticism of much of the above is that someone's values may be to be the greatest misogynist, or serial killer, or baby-eating lunatic of all time... and some would say, "Well, if that's your goal, then you should do it!" First, I doubt people making that response are truthful (they are just trying to be consistent in an inflammatory way). Second, if they are actually sociopaths, nothing I say is very likely to convince them (certainly not on a personal level). However, for a well-functioning society to flourish, the values that you have should reflect some sense that other humans, besides you, have at least as much intrinsic importance as you do. Pragmatically, sociopaths will generally get whatever they want more often if they ACT like they care about others. So, none of the above is designed to give people a license to follow in Stalin's footsteps and be the best cruel dictator in history. I'm sure Stalin's self esteem would survive that criticism.
http://amusingbeam.blogspot.com
Okay, the title is purposely provocative. What I really mean is that I don't want you to have an artificially high self esteem: I want you to (eventually) have a healthy self esteem that deserves to be high. For a long, long time, well-meaning people have been preaching high self esteem -- don't do that to your kid, it will hurt his self esteem .... While not being a jerk is good advice, especially when it comes to those that you have a special relationship with such as kids, in theory what you do should have very little effect on someone else's SELF esteem.
Your self esteem should be based on how well you measure up to your personal values. Because these values are personal, most of what other people say should only inform your own opinions, and as you become more self aware the importance of other's opinions should decrease accordingly. (Queue stiff-lipped British stoicism.)
If my premise here is correct, when you try to convince a person that he should have a high self esteem without first discovering what that individual's personal value system (and personal measuring stick) says, you are trying to commit a sort of well-intentioned psychological fraud. What you are saying is, "Hey, *I* think highly of you, so you should abdicate your own opinion in favor of mine." The fact that you are putting your opinion over the person who is the actual subject here means that that person's esteem, if he follows your suggestion, is now no longer a SELF esteem. That likely means that your goodwill is too important, and you have too much control. This lessening of the individual eventually leads to LOWER self esteem, not higher, once the fraud is discovered.
What is harder to do, and takes longer, is to encourage an ongoing, indepth self evaluation. What is important to you? How do you measure that importance? How well do you stack up to your measurement?
This is not simple, and it's not easy. Each of us has many -- often conflicting -- values, and trying to actually come down on how to measure them, and how we are doing, is a daunting task that can never be perfectly completed. That's okay. Life itself is pretty easy, but a well-lived life is much harder, so each of us has to make his own decisions. Like most important-but-not-urgent things, though, consistently following through on this aspect of your life makes some current moments slightly harder but later moments much more fulfilling (and generally easier).
You will likely find that some of your values include other people. There's no problem with that (in fact, if you DON'T find that, you may want to look at my note below about sociopaths). However, this is an area where you should think very carefully about how to measure its impact on your SELF esteem. For an extreme example, there are many people that, if they LIKED me, I would feel WORSE about myself. For instance, I want racist, violent jerks to think I'm just not measuring up to their standards. However, for those whom I admire, especially those that I think are especially discerning on some point relevant to my character, I do value (sometimes highly value) their opinions. If I want a second opinion on how good a parent I am, for instance, I may see what my wife thinks. If I want to find out how well I handle business matters, I may turn to my boss, or those on my team. But, when I do this, I'm looking for specific points -- not "how good a person is Brandon" but a particular character point--, and I know that these are always SECONDARY opinions. My opinion must remain primary when considering my self esteem.
It is, indeed, impossible by definition to put someone else's opinion above your own in this matter. What you are really doing when you try is to pick, among all the other humans with whom you come into contact, someone that you think has the most reliable opinion of you; you then guess at what that person's opinion of you actually is (people are much too multi-faceted to make simple discussions sufficient to convey true opinions of their worth); you then take that guess and super-impose it on your own opinion, which is still there but not as easily accessible. In other words, your opinion is still, by necessity, used in choosing the person on whom you are placing this ostensible burden ... so why bother? (Of course, I'm making this sound rational, but in reality people are only doing these steps partially consciously -- instead of making decisions, they are letting apathy and inertia guide them, in many cases.)
Thus, you can't bow out of this, and you shouldn't have a high opinion of yourself if you aren't up to par in your own personal assessment. So ... get busy!
* A note about sociopaths: One criticism of much of the above is that someone's values may be to be the greatest misogynist, or serial killer, or baby-eating lunatic of all time... and some would say, "Well, if that's your goal, then you should do it!" First, I doubt people making that response are truthful (they are just trying to be consistent in an inflammatory way). Second, if they are actually sociopaths, nothing I say is very likely to convince them (certainly not on a personal level). However, for a well-functioning society to flourish, the values that you have should reflect some sense that other humans, besides you, have at least as much intrinsic importance as you do. Pragmatically, sociopaths will generally get whatever they want more often if they ACT like they care about others. So, none of the above is designed to give people a license to follow in Stalin's footsteps and be the best cruel dictator in history. I'm sure Stalin's self esteem would survive that criticism.
http://amusingbeam.blogspot.com
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