Chapter 6 – Cultivating self-efficacy and self-worth

Self-esteem and potential pitfalls

Given the philosophical and psychological disarray in our culture, no wonder self-esteem remains largely misunderstood. Some even claim that it’s a dangerous or useless concept, given the research on the subject claiming that so-called psychopathy or sociopathy is correlated with high self-esteem! Clearly, when self-esteem is ascribed to behaviors ranging from fawning praise of self to deceiving and injuring others, we know something is amiss.

Again, self-esteem is simply the evaluative aspect of self-concept. As we’ve covered, it’s a combination of self-confidence and self-respect, or of mental efficacy to cope with life’s challenges and a feeling that one is worthy of happiness. This also entails honoring these same qualities in others, because to hold a double standard in this realm is not indicative of integration. In addition to providing the above description, Nathaniel Branden explained the essential components, and practices, of self-esteem in his book The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem: the practice of living consciously; the practice of self-acceptance; the practice of self-responsibility; the practice of self-assertiveness; the practice of living purposefully; and, the practice of personal integrity. [70] Notice that these are all described as practices.

When we engage in these practices to meet our need for self-esteem, we strive to live consciously and respect facts. We accept our basic nature as humans, including fallibility, and we have compassion for ourselves. We take responsibility for what we do and what we say and the choices we make, in line with honoring our reasoning and volitional capacities. We say “Yes” when we want to and “No” when we want to, in line with our likes and dislikes and honestly expressing what’s alive in us. We set goals and work at achieving them, in line with enriching our lives and following our bliss. We strive for consistency, congruence between what we say and do, which enables us to integrate an enlightened self-concept.

All these practices indeed reflect a degree of self-understanding that most of us were never explicitly taught. Oftentimes, we were shown quite different models of how humans operate “in the real world.” In this way self-esteem is a bit of a novel concept for humanity, which partially explains things culturally. As Branden has written (and spoken) at length, self-esteem has little to do with self-praise or merely “feeling good” about oneself regardless of context, because these don’t genuinely address the actual practices—such as being connected to the reality of our inner world and its impact on the outer world, including on others.

The six pillars are interrelated, and they are also interdependent. They are useful ways to examine the nature of self-concept, which concerns who one thinks one is and what one thinks is possible for oneself. Self-concept is the mental foundation upon which we meet our need for self-esteem. So, naturally, if we have a view of ourselves as hindered in thinking logically, not able to attain clarity and make sense of things, or if we have a view that happiness and achievement of values aren’t possible, then our self-esteem will suffer. We then might resort to various costly strategies to try to meet some needs, though perhaps in the process not fully meeting them, and likely sacrificing many others.

Additionally, we may consciously grasp the nature of self-concept and how it affects self-esteem, but still have trouble putting the six pillars into practice. Thus far, we’ve covered a multitude of ways that we humans have gotten a really raw deal in the realm of understanding ourselves, so it’s sometimes easy to venture off the path of enlightenment and happiness.

However, the practices of the six pillars resonate with our commonsensical view of things, while the research done on self-esteem dynamics oftentimes falls short of clarity and comprehensibility. This is because of the way researchers define self-esteem. In psychological research, what’s called “the operational definition” of self-esteem typically leaves a lot to be desired, especially when it’s correlated with narcissistic or anti-social behaviors. Of course, when researchers set out to study aspects of the human mind and its ensuing behaviors, a lot can be left out or not taken into consideration; some key variables can be overlooked.

Because we are conceptual creatures in a process of identifying and integrating things, we need to practice living consciously, and the rest of the pillars tend to follow from this. In turn, if we strive for meeting our need for consistency, we’ll likely become more assertive and responsible for our own views, choices, and actions. To live with a sense of purpose also helps us generate creativity and accept our nature as fallible beings, hence enabling us to make more sensible and informed decisions, which reflect a realistic assessment of our capabilities and our grasp of reality. All this shows how interrelated and interdependent the various aspects of self-esteem are.

Again, since “self-concept is destiny,” we avoid examining it at our peril and at the peril of our relationships and our society. If humans were to spend time focusing on this key aspect of ourselves—i.e., our view of our inherent worth and capabilities—many of the changes emphasized in this book would be seen for what they are: ways to enrich our lives and make them much more wonderful. This stands to reason, because when we feel confident and resourceful in addressing life’s challenges we readily embrace change—we invite change. And when we feel a solid sense of self-worth and of being happy on this planet, we want the best for ourselves and the best for others. As we practice the art of living consciously, we see that there are no contradictions in objective reality.

In the beginning chapter of The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem, in the section “Self-Esteem: The Immune System Of Consciousness” Branden wrote the following:

“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 nor 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… (p. 3)

“…[Self-esteem] 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. The level of our self-esteem influences how we act, and how we act influences the level of our self-esteem.

“If I trust my mind and judgment, I am more likely to operate as a thinking being. Exercising my ability to think, 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, to bring less awareness than I need to my activities, and less persistence in the face of difficulties. When my actions lead to disappointing or painful results, I feel justified in distrusting my mind… (p. 4-5)

“…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 consequently 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.” (p. 5) [70]

Indeed, living better represents the principles and insights of an inside-out view of complete liberty. The more you trust your mind, know your value, and strive to have no pretenses, the more easily you can maintain a realistic assessment of yourself and your capacity for happiness. Rather than viewing your self-efficacy and self-worth as always hanging in the balance of your next choice or behavior, consider them as foregone conclusions—reflecting a realistic self-concept. This conclusion of course hinges on challenging the premises that we may have adopted in childhood within our domination culture—premises indicating that we aren’t good enough, that happiness really isn’t our birthright, and still more devastatingly, that we’re unfit to exist.

Self-acceptance and self-concept

Now, to meet the need for self-acceptance, we’re going to shift into an explicitly therapeutic mode of introspection. Here, distorted self-concept premises can be brought into full view, inspected, and replaced with new premises, which foster new behaviors. Our subconscious view of self typically reveals itself in our feelings. Thoughts about ourselves reverberate in our emotions.

The written exercises below explore the practice of self-acceptance, which also entails self-empathy and self-compassion. As you reflect on your premises and ensuing emotions, notice that you are healing essentially what has kept countless individuals in society in their present condition: a fragmented and conditional relationship with oneself and one’s emotions. Emotions and feelings are key indicators of what’s happening in your life, especially as they pertain to your relationship with yourself. And these indicators may be confusing, disorienting, aggravating, disturbing, and filled with fear and pain.

As every one of us has experienced, we can even have feelings about feelings. Notice what this means for getting connected with yourself. Here are some important things to consider in the form of sentence stems. Please provide five grammatically sufficient endings for each sentence stem as quickly as possible, off the top of your head, without conscious censorship:

If I were to be kind to myself on a frequent basis…

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When I say or do something that I regret, the judgment I sometimes have is…

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When I say or do something that I feel happy or satisfied about, the judgment I sometimes have is…

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If I were to feel more comfortable letting people love me…

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If I were to feel more comfortable loving others…

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When I trust myself and trust my own choices, I feel…

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One of the most important things to realize about ourselves is that we take actions believed to benefit us, even if only from an emotional standpoint. We seek to be comforted by our actions in some way. So, the main task is to find new ways to seek similar comfort or even more comfort without the usual costs.

Additionally, any moralistic judgment about ourselves subverts self-acceptance, and thus it subverts our ability to change. Again, standing in such judgment of self and others is essentially counterproductive. If we make our basic worthiness constantly hang in the balance of our actions, then to perceive ourselves as “enough” will also be extremely difficult.

The fact is this: You are fit for existence, and this is enough for you to be happy and motivated to self-actualize.

Deeper into self-acceptance

Now, let’s delve more into your relationship with yourself, to establish an inner dialogue that you’ll be able to reflect on. Consider the following sentence stems and again provide five endings for each stem, making complete sentences:

If I were to practice self-acceptance during my weekly activities…

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If I can practice self-acceptance when I look in the mirror…

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Aspects of myself that I more easily accept tend to be…

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Aspects of myself that I find hardest to accept involve…

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If family, friends, or society at large, demonstrated acceptance of me…

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If I can accept myself fully, regardless of what others believe…

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Self-acceptance might change my life by…

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In order to accept every aspect of myself, it might be helpful if I…

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If I accepted every aspect of myself, I might let go of…

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One aspect of myself that might still need more acceptance is…

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A supportive message in line with my underlying wish to be healthy and happy might be…

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We know that love can be more motivating than fear, anxiety, and self-rejection. The practice of self-acceptance involves a willingness to experience all of our emotions. Full self-acceptance means to honestly acknowledge and “own” the facts of your reality, rather than to deny, disown, or repress them. It means to embrace even the things you may not like about yourself. Even though that sounds ironic and perhaps unreasonable, there are very important reasons to do so.

Your uncomfortable and painful feelings are just as valid and as much a part of you as your comfortable and joyful ones. In fact, the former are signals for your attention, awakening you to the prospect of healing, growth, and transformation from something tormenting into something enriching.

As we’ve undoubtedly all experienced, every time we choose to deny or disown our feelings, whatever the circumstance, they don’t go away; they aren’t banished from our reality. Rather, they keep arising, providing us more vital signals, until they’re accepted, integrated, and allowed to dissolve. To ignore such feelings implies that we can’t take effective and appropriate action to alter the status quo within ourselves. In other words, without self-acceptance, we can’t effect any meaningful change in our lives.

As we’ve explored, we may find aspects of ourselves difficult to accept, because they trigger feelings of discomfort, embarrassment, anxiety, pain, sadness, and grief. So, it’s understandable that we wish not to confront such feelings in a direct way. Yet, confronting them indirectly in not-so-healthy ways doesn’t really help matters.

Perhaps you don’t think you’re able to stay connected with these emotions. That thought too can be challenged. Whatever the discomfort you experience, you can indeed challenge an habitual impulse to dissociate and shift your awareness, to escape, reject, deny, or disown these aspects of yourself. You can shift to a posture of self-empathy and self-compassion, which is like a big, safe cushion to catch your fall.

Without full acceptance, we’re likely to continue to disown certain parts of ourselves and do little or nothing about the things that we can change for the better. As ironic as it sounds, the key is to fully accept the things that you may dislike about yourself. This process essentially works to dissolve the antagonistic relationship that’s endured within.

Once we’ve worked to resolve the inner struggle of denying, repressing, and repudiating various aspects of ourselves, we are empowered to make meaningful changes. By meeting our need for self-connection, we then become a helpful and compassionate ally with our vulnerable, hurt, and insecure aspects, rather than an unfriendly, defensive, and frequent critic. By accepting things as they are within us right now, we can gain the clarity to strategize how to implement the meaningful changes that will align with our goals for health and vitality. If we recognize and respect reality as it presently is, we’re then in a position of strength to chart a new future.

We need to practice this process as if it were the most important thing in our lives—because it is! The point is to become comfortable with it, which meets needs for honesty, vulnerability, and authenticity. Really “own” yourself for all your uniqueness, until you are completely at ease with and empathetic about what you think about yourself and what you see in the mirror each day. Even though we probably didn’t get (or see) this kind of nurturing in childhood, our goal now can be to feel really well via accepting ourselves unreservedly.

As noted, there are definitely things that you accept about yourself right now—various personality traits, skills, talents, abilities—cognitively, emotionally, and physically. No one else on the planet is exactly like you; each of us is unique in various ways. Ultimately, though, our worth as persons means more than simply how we appear at any given moment to self and others and what we can do.

Honoring self-worth

The very fact of our existence makes us worthy of all that life has to offer. The very fact of your existence makes you worthy of all that life has to offer. As you reflect on this, notice what you’re feeling. In the process, you may notice certain thoughts that accompany your emotions. Pay particular attention to anything you might be trained to overlook. Accept all that is entering your conscious awareness, so that you can align with the totality of yourself as a worthy being on a wondrous planet.

This is about becoming aware of whatever you’ve had trouble accepting in yourself, stemming from the non-accepting times of the past. Perhaps you’ve been judging aspects of yourself harshly, and maybe you’ve been avoiding the significance of various emotions, while still reacting to them in not-so-healthy ways. As you acknowledge your thoughts, feelings, and sensations open-heartedly, without judgment, you can embrace all aspects of yourself with love and empathy. Notice how this feels.

Given the culture we find ourselves in, we can benefit from practicing such self-acceptance on a daily basis; eventually, it will become automatized subconsciously. For instance, whenever you notice that you’ve shifted into the realm of moralistic judgment (of either yourself or others), you can make the transition back to acceptance, empathy, and compassion. Whenever you think a “should” or a “must” (or a “shouldn’t” or a “mustn’t”), you can realize the helpfulness in returning to acceptance, which dissolves antagonistic relationships with yourself, with others, and with reality.

Once you breathe deeply and practice self-acceptance as a habit—that is, recognize reality for what it is right now—you’re more able to grasp what it means to really live well. You no longer find comfort at the expense of your well-being and what your knowledge and emotions importantly tell you. To feel free and authentic means to resolve and to transcend the realm of inner conflict.

Self-acceptance provides the impetus to make so many helpful changes, both internally and externally. This practice of fully accepting all aspects of ourselves avoids supposed quick fixes and reverting to past patterns of self-conflict (and conflict with others). As we affirm who we are currently, we can most accurately gauge the necessary actions to change ourselves in significant respects. Ultimately, this process starts with acknowledging and showing compassion for the parts of ourselves that haven’t been acknowledged and shown enough compassion.

Our various faults or frailties are essentially irrelevant to our basic acceptability. Such integration of self-worth enables the formulation of more effective and more life-enriching strategies. By changing the way we view ourselves and our past choices, we’re able to achieve much more of what we desire, what we truly want.

Letting go of old strategies and devising new ones

Since the psychology of complete liberty is about mental liberation instead of mental enslavement, let’s delve into it even more by examining more of the things we might be telling ourselves. Our everyday thinking might be tragically fostering less liberation and more enslavement. In our childhoods we encountered lots of demand-oriented and deserve-oriented thinking, made known in statements and behaviors. In order to survive safely in the family, we complied in various protective ways. While this tended to sacrifice our needs, such as autonomy, equality, fairness, and choice, it also tended to get some connection needs met, albeit with varying amounts of resentment, conflict, and despair.

Identify the various moralistic shoulds and shouldn’ts that you may have been imposing on yourself either lately or in the past, both consciously and subconsciously. Here’s a table in which to put the salient ones:

How much have these injunctions hindered the process of achieving the goal of a healthy self-concept, and how much have they interfered with your flourishing? Indeed, probably a lot—just like other impositions we place on ourselves. After all, they stem from a demanding, non-accepting relationship with ourselves and with reality.

As noted, from an early age, we were admonished to do and not do various things, oftentimes with threats of punishment and love withdrawal if we didn’t do as we were told. This is likely when we learned, over time, not to be in a very accepting and loving relationship with ourselves, which made it harder to develop strategies and habits that better served our lives and well-being. Because traumatic experiences left us with a sense of powerlessness, this made healing and growing psychologically difficult.

With the knowledge we now have and the exercises we’ve done thus far, I invite you to make a list of things you’d like to achieve for yourself in a nurturing way. While in a relaxed, semi-meditative state, complete the sentence stem below with 8-10 endings every day for a week:

While practicing self-acceptance, one of the things I’d like to achieve is…

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Maybe you’ve felt uncomfortable—depressed, anxious, fearful, stressed, worried, annoyed—while contemplating small changes in your life, or major ones. Maybe you’ve felt distressed after making a change to your regular regimen, or about implementing something healthier—like it’s some sort of duty, obligation, or burden (“I shouldn’t have to do this! I just want to be carefree!”).

Well, consider that this is in fact the predicament that most humans find themselves in emotionally, so you’re certainly not alone. Every single person starts at where they are presently to get to a new place in life, either internally or externally. Turns out, there are lots of supplemental pleasures to experience as you shift your strategies to bring more enrichment into your life.

Here’s an opportunity to identify such supplemental pleasures, as they come to mind with the following sentence stem:

A pleasure that can provide both short-term and long-term benefits for me might be…

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Maybe at some point, again, you might feel uncomfortable—depressed, anxious, stressed, irritated, worried—after changing to patterns that better incorporate your well-being. Similar to the previous changes you’ve implemented, perhaps you’re uncertain about how long they can last.

Really seeing yourself, perhaps beneath the accumulated emotional layers of rejection, judgment, denial, criticism, blame, guilt, and shame, can be quite challenging in our culture, which unfortunately is one that promotes denial, dissociation, and distraction. Indeed, with such intimacy comes vulnerability. To see past such layers of evaluation entails self-empathy. And self-empathy entails bringing a helpful level of awareness and understanding to your inner turmoil and discomfort, realizing that these emotions are important indicators of inner parts that need more compassionate connection. Contrary to popular belief, no one was ever brought to a higher level of psychological functioning with condemnation and punishment.

Getting what we really want

Self-acceptance is the ultimate test of respect for the facts of reality—to identify and know what is, without approval or disapproval, demands or judgments. If you’re feeling stressed, for instance, realize that you’re probably in need of comfort, ease, and empathy. Breathe into your feeling of stress and these nourishing needs that have been awakened, to generate a calm return to your center of self-acceptance.

To be in an adversarial relationship with your own experiences, after all, can grant power to thought patterns that don’t serve your life in the way you most like, and it can weaken thought patterns that do. Remember to begin by accepting where you are now, which might include accepting your resistance to accepting various things that you don’t like.

As Branden has noted, we cannot leave a place we’ve never been. So, if you can accept where you are now, you can begin to change in ways you want. Also, we can be just as frightened of our amazing potential as we can be frightened of our weaknesses—likely because when we were young, our acts of self-assertiveness might’ve been disapproved of, discouraged, or punished. So, it’s an act of courage to see what you see and to know what you know—and to recognize that your self-worth is beyond moralistic judgments of goodness and badness.

When we look at ourselves, we need to really see ourselves from a place of conscious awareness, free of such judgment. We need to be on our own side, like a close and caring friend. We can implement strategies that meet all of our needs, in the short-term and in the long-term.

This inner attention reveals the fact that we can empower ourselves. Power is not something external to ourselves, like we might’ve learned in childhood, something for others to wield against us, and for us to return the “favor” later on. The more we can connect compassionately with our disempowered aspects, the more we can heal and empower ourselves.

As we’ve explored thus far, we’ve typically been trained in the power-over-others dynamic, which also trains us to develop a similar relationship within ourselves. When we’re afraid that our needs don’t matter, or when we think that they won’t get met, we might also think of reaching for the coercive tools of demands, threats, violence, and the ideology of sacrifice. The costly and harmful effects of these strategies reveal that they have nothing to do with true empowerment.

True empowerment involves treating ourselves and others with respect, which means honoring the power-with-others dynamic and its accompanying win/win strategies. When we share in mutual empowerment to meet human needs without sacrifice, we are expressing the ultimate life-force within us. Instead of frustration of desires and unfulfilled needs, we can seek the synergy of holding everyone’s dignity with equal care and each other’s personal experiences with consideration.

Granted, this is sometimes not an easy process, let alone a familiar one, as we look around in the culture, filled as it is with so much human sacrifice. An extraordinary way of understanding and dealing with this process is via the methodology of nonviolent communication. In addition to exploring the nature of sacrifice in the next chapter, we’ll examine nonviolent communication explicitly and learn how to become fluent in a language that serves everyone’s life.