. Whether your self-esteem is high or low,
here’s what you need to know to understand its influence in
steering you to certain choices:·
The latest research indicates your self-esteem is a result of how
competent and how lovable you sense you are. You picked up your
first sense of competence and lovability from your primary
caregivers and the other influences in the first 20 years of your
life. Now, as an adult, you conclude how lovable you are by your
current relationships. If you have high self-esteem, and someone
gives you a poor evaluation, you will either dismiss it or, more
frequently, accelerate your positive behavior to prove the
evaluation is incorrect. If you have low self-esteem and someone
gives you more praise than you are comfortable with, you will
increase your negative behaviors so they will believe the praise
was unworthy.
· Once you conclude you are either
competent and lovable, or incompetent and unlovable, you will make
choices that prove your conclusions are right. In fact so strong
is people’s desire to be right in their own self-view that, as
William Swann Jr. says in his book Self-Traps: The Elusive Quest
for Higher Self-Esteem, "The more positive events they (those with
high esteem) experienced, the better their health. In contrast,
for people with low self-esteem, the more positive events they
experienced, the worse their health." When our environment doe not
match our self-view, we become upset. Do you understand the vital
importance of this information? People unconsciously construct
their lives to fit their level of self-esteem. If you believe you
are a treasure, you will fill your life with people, things, and
activities that prove it. If you believe you are trash, you will
do the same.
The fallout of this explains, for example, why the partner and
friends of people often feel left behind as their loved one
improves their beliefs about themselves. When someone’s esteem
goes from low to high, it becomes difficult to return to a
relationship or environment that doesn’t support the new
self-belief. So, in effect, people do get left behind.
By the way, if you’re a product of the "lovable and capable"
self-esteem movement, you may have been helped to a higher esteem,
but you may have also been hurt by it. Some teachers and parents
have come to believe that honesty about a child’s abilities lowers
their esteem, so they overpraise and falsely commend them.
Children know the truth so, when they receive false praise, it
often backfires and causes them to believe the adult really wants
them to be someone they aren’t This only reinforces a sense of low
competence and lovability.
What influence is your self-esteem having on your life?
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