Branden transcription side 5
You have free will. And from that free will, your need for
self-esteem comes. It follows then that you should judge yourself
by the things you can control, for example, your rationality,
honesty and integrity. Judging yourself by things that depend on
the will and choices of others is dangerous to healthy
self-esteem.
Self-esteem pertains to the issue of your fundamental
appropriateness to life, and to your mental operations. I hope
you can appreciate the error of measuring your worth by such
standards as your popularity, influence, affluence, material
possessions, or good looks. Since we are social beings, some
measure of esteem from others is important. But to tie your self
assessment to the good opinion of others is to place yourself at
their mercy, in the most humiliating way. And what will you do
when all the different people whose esteem you desire have
different expectations? Then the approval of one will risk the
disapproval of another.
You may take pleasure in an attractive appearance, but to tie
your self-esteem to your appearance is to be in growing in terror
with every passing year, as the signs of age inevitably mark you.
And if your good looks are better than your behavior, they will
hardly heal the psychic wounds inflicted by dishonesty,
irresponsibility, or irrationality.
In this program, I have focused on the ability to choose as a
function of consciousness. I dont want to deny the role of
the subconscious, the wide range of mental processes and contents
that lie outside awareness. Clearly, the self includes more than
you are consciously aware of, and you are influenced in any
number of ways by factors operating beneath explicit awareness.
This is one of the reasons why your free will is not unlimited.
Nonetheless, your psychological freedom is a powerful force
within your psyche. Admittedly, your freedom exists within
limits. Admittedly, you can be under the sway of forces you dont
recognize or understand. But in the possibility of self-awareness
and self-monitoring lies the possibility of change and evolution.
And, some reasonable control of some measure of your existence.
A commitment to awareness, which I call the will to
understand, is the central pillar of positive self-esteem.
Lets pause to understand what this means.
The potential range of our awareness depends of the extent of our
intelligence, and the breadth of our abstract capabilities. But
the principle of being committed to awareness, or the will
to understand, is the same for everybody. It is a behavior
that seeks to integrate, to the best our knowledge and ability,
that which enters our mental field, as well as the effort to keep
expanding that field.
The beginning of self-assertion is the assertion of consciousness
itself, the act of seeing and of seeking to grasp what we see. Of
hearing and seeking to grasp what we hear. Of responding to life
actively rather than passively. This is the foundation of
honoring the self.
We have already seen that many children experience enormous
obstacles in the way of a healthy development of this attitude. A
child may find the world of parents and other adults
incomprehensible and threatening. The self is not nurtured, but
attacked. After a number of unsuccessful attempts to understand
adult policies, statements and behavior, some children give up.
And worse still, take the blame for their feelings of
helplessness. Often they sense, miserably, desperately,
inarticulately, that there is something terribly wrong
with their elders, with themselves, or with something.
The child who continues to struggle to make sense out of the
world and the people in it is developing a powerful source of
strength, no matter what level of anguish is experienced. Caught
in a particularly cruel, frustrating and irrational environment,
he or she will doubtless feel alienated from many of the people
in the immediately surrounding world, and legitimately so, but
the child will not feel alienated from reality, or incompetent to
live. Or at least, he or she has a relatively good chance to
avoid this fate.
The growing individual retains a commitment to awareness, learns
subjects, acquires skills, accomplishes tasks and reaches goals.
And these successes validate and reinforce the choice to think.
The sense of being appropriate to life feels natural.
A commitment to thinking as a way of life is both the source and
an expression of positive self-esteem. But often we associate
positive self-esteem only with the result. With knowledge,
success, the admiration and appreciation of others, and we miss
the cause. The cause is all the choices that add up to what we
call a commitment to awareness, or the will to understand.
Its easy enough to deceive ourselves about the actual
sources of positive self-esteem.
The concept of the will to be effective is an extension of the
will to understand. It places its emphasis on perseverance in the
face of difficulties, like continuing to seek understanding when
understanding doesnt come easily. Pursuing the mastery of a
skill or the solution to a problem in the face of defeat.
Maintaining a commitment to goals, while encountering many
obstacles along the way.
The will to be effective is the refusal to identify our ego or
self with momentary feelings of helplessness and defeat. This is
important, and Im going to say this again: the will to be
effective is the refusal to identify our ego or self with
momentary feelings of helplessness and defeat.
All of us know times of bewilderment, despair, and a painful
sense of impotence or inadequacy. The question is, Do you
allow such moments to define you?
I remember as a child being enormously bewildered by the behavior
of adults. I perceived the strangeness and superficiality in
their values, a lack of congruence between their statements and
feelings, an anxiety that seemed to saturate much of the
atmosphere around me. And an overwhelming sense that often the
adults did not know what they were doing. It seemed to me they
were lost and helpless, while pretending to be in control. This
experience was painful and sometimes frightening.
I desperately wanted to understand why people behaved as they
did. Somewhere in my mind, at quite a young age there must have
been a conviction that knowledge is power, safety, security,
serenity. Doubtless this conviction played a significant role in
my choice of profession.
The will to be effective. Here was a concept which helped me
explain something I had observed in my clients and students. It
was a principle that helped me understand the difference between
those who felt fundamentally defeated by life, and those who did
not. The will to be effective is the refusal of a human
consciousness to accept helplessness as its permanent and
unalterable condition.
It is impressive to see people who have been battered by life in
many ways, who are torn by unsolved problems, who may be
alienated from many aspects of the self, and yet who are still
fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a
fulfilling existence.
Having the will to be effective doesnt mean that you deny
or disown feelings of ineffectiveness when they arise. It means
you dont accept them as permanent. You can feel temporarily
helpless without defining yourself as essentially helpless. You
can allow yourself to feel temporarily hopeless and overwhelmed
while keeping in mind that after a rest you will pick up the
pieces as best you can and start moving forward again. Your
vision of life extends beyond the feelings of the moment. Your
concept of self can rise above todays adversity. This is
one of the forms of heroism possible to a human consciousness.
Self esteem is not something you are born with. It lies rather in
the way you use your mind, the choices you make concerning
awareness, the honesty of your relationship to reality, and the
level of your personal integrity. Self esteem is neither
competitive nor comparative. Self esteems stems from your
relationship to yourself, and to the choices of self.
A person of high intelligence and high self esteem does not feel
more appropriate to life or more worthy of happiness than a
person of high self esteem and more modest intelligence. An
analogy might be helpful here. Two people may be equally healthy
and physically fit, but one is stronger than the other. The one
who is stronger doesnt experience a higher level of
physical well being. One can merely do some things the other cant.
Or one enjoys certain advantages over the other. But this does
not mean there is a difference in the internal feeling of
wellness and aliveness.
Your level of intelligence is hardly the most important issue
with regard to the will to understand and the will to be
effective. It is also far from the most important issue of
another of the key pillars of healthy self esteem, and that is
independence.
Intellectual independence is vital in the commitment to awareness
or the will to understand. A person cant think through the
mind of someone else. We can learn from one another, but
knowledge entails understanding, not just repetition or
imitation. We can either exercise our own mind, or pass the
responsibility of knowledge and evaluation on to others. Then we
can accept their opinions more or less uncritically. The choice
you make here is crucial for the way your experience yourself,
and the kind of life you create.
All of us are influenced by others in ways we dont
recognize, true enough, but there is still a difference between
the psychology of those who try to understand things for
themselves, think for themselves, judge for themselves, and those
who rarely do. What matters here is intention: the persons
basic goal.
I remember a client in therapy once telling me that she couldnt
understand why she was always relying on the opinions of other
people. I asked her if she ever had wanted to be independent as
she was growing up - if independence had ever been a goal of
hers. Her answer was, no. So there is no need for her
to be surprised that she never arrived there.
Often, what people call thinking is merely recycling the opinions
of others. So thinking independently about our work, our
relationships, our values and our goals enhances self esteem.
And, healthy self esteem results in the natural inclination to
think independently. So the relationship here is reciprocal.
But self esteem is not a given. It is acquired. One of the ways
its acquired is by thinking independently when it may not
be easy to do so. It may even be frightening, especially when the
person doing the thinking is struggling with feelings of
uncertainty and insecurity. It isnt always easy to stand by
your own judgment. And if it is easy for you, that is a
psychological victory that you have achieved. Its likely
that you faced many pressures against independent thought, and
along the way, had to confront and endure anxiety.
For example, conflict occurs when the childs feelings or
judgments conflict with his or her family members, or when
a woman thinks that her husband is wrong on some fundamental
issue, and believes she must choose either to express her
thoughts, or to suppress them to protect the relationship. Or in
the case of an artist of a scientist, who sees a path that would
carry him or her far from the mainstream of contemporary beliefs
and values. In this case the question would arise of whether to
follow the lonely path, or to draw back. The issue and the
challenge in all situations like this remain the same: should one
honor ones inner signals, or disown them? Independence
versus conformity. Self expression versus self repudiation. Self
assertion versus self surrender.
Innovators and creators are people who have a greater than
average ability to accept the condition of aloneness. They are
more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them
far from the mainland of the human community. Whatever anxiety
they have doesnt deter them. This is one of the secrets of
their power. What we call genius has a great deal to
do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with sheer nerve.
We are social animals. We dont normally enjoy long periods
of alienation from the thinking and beliefs of those around us,
especially people we respect and love. One of the most important
forms of heroism is the heroism of consciousness, the heroism of
thought, the willingness to tolerate aloneness.
Like every other psychological trait, independence is a matter of
degree. No one is perfectly independent, and no one is hopelessly
dependent all the time. The higher the level of our independence
and the more willing we are to think for ourselves, the higher
the level of our self esteem.
Part of thinking independently is learning the difference between
facts on the one hand, and wishes and fears on the other. This
can be difficult because thoughts are invariably touched or even
saturated with feeling. The desire to do something isnt
proof that you should do it, for example, running out of the room
in the middle of an argument if youre upset. And just
because youre afraid to do something isnt proof that
you should avoid doing it, like going to a doctor for a check-up
when there are signs of illness. If you buy something you cant
afford, and avoid thinking about the bills you wont be able
to pay, you have surrendered your consciousness to your wishes.
If you ignore signs of danger in a marriage, and then profess to
be bewildered and dismayed when the marriage finally explodes,
you have paid the penalty for sacrificing consciousness to fear.
As far as self esteem is concerned, the issue is one of your
intentions. You dont have to be perfect at distinguishing
among facts, wishes and fears, and choosing consciousness over
some form of avoidance. What counts is that you have a great
desire and intention to see things as they are, as best you can.
You cant always be sure if youre being fully rational
or honest, but you can certainly be concerned about it. You can
certainly care. You arent always free to succeed in your
thinking, but you are always free to try.
Your choices in this matter give you an inner sense of basic
honesty or dishonesty. A fundamental responsibility or
irresponsibility toward existence. From childhood on, some
individuals are far more interested in and respectful of these
questions of truth than others. Some people operate as if facts
dont have to be facts if they dont choose to
acknowledge them. They act as if truth if irrelevant, and lies
are lies only if someone finds them out.
I remember a news article I once read about a medical researcher
of high repute who was found to have been faking his data for
years, while piling up grant after grant and honor after honor.
His self esteem had to suffer from such behavior, even before his
lies were revealed. He knowingly chose to live in a word of
essential unreality, where his achievements and prestige were
equally unreal. Contrast this with the psychology of scientists
who patiently seek out evidence that will disprove their
hypothesis. They understand that the unreal has no value.
The task of consciousness is to perceive what exists to the best
of your ability. To honor reality is to honor consciousness. To
honor consciousness is to honor the self.
Still another pillar of healthy self esteem is integrity. As you
grow older and develop your own values and standards, personal
integrity assumes increasing importance for your self evaluation.
Integrity is the integration of conviction, standards, beliefs
and behavior. When your behavior resonates with your values and
when your philosophy and action are integrated, you have
integrity. If you behave in ways that conflict with your judgment
of what is appropriate, you lose face in your own eyes. You
respect yourself less. If the policy becomes habitual, you trust
yourself less, or stop trusting yourself at all.
Integrity is one of the guardians of mental health. It is cruel
and misleading to encourage people to believe that practicing
unconditional positive self regard will bring them to total self
love, regardless of the level of their personal integrity.
Sometimes people try to escape from the burden of integrity by
denying all values and standards. The truth is, its
impossible for human beings to regress fully to a lower level of
evolution. We cant draw back to a time before thinking and
principles and long range planning were possible. We are
conceptual beings and we cant function successfully as
anything less. We need values to guide our actions. We need
principles to guide our lives. Our standards may be appropriate,
or inappropriate, to our life and well being. But to live without
standards at all, thats impossible. The attempt to discard
all values, principles and standards is itself an expression of
poor self esteem and a guarantee that this expression will be
ongoing.
At a common sense level, its easy to recognize the
relationship between self esteem and integrity. But the issue of
living up to our standards isnt always as simple as it
might first appear. What if our standards are mistaken, or
irrational? We may accept a code of values that does violence to
our needs as living beings. For example, certain religious
teachings damn sex, damn pleasure, damn the body, damn ambition,
damn material success, and for all practical purposes damn the
enjoyment of life on earth. This acceptance of life denying
standards is an enormous problem. So I would make this
observation: if living up to your standards seems to be leading
you towards self destruction, the time has obviously come to
question those standards, rather than resigning yourself to
living without integrity. You must gather the courage to
challenge some of your deepest assumptions about what is good.
Such conflicts, and the manner in which they are resolved, affect
the quality of an individuals self esteem. They affect the
experience of integrity. And integrity is a pre-requisite of high
self esteem.
No discussion of the central pillars of healthy self esteem would
be complete without mention of the profoundly important role of
self responsibility. Self responsibility is essential to self
esteem, and it is also a reflection of positive self esteem. The
relation between self esteem and its pillars is always
reciprocal.
Working in psychotherapy I often see that the most radical
transformation occurs after the clients realization that no
one is coming to the rescue. You are responsible for your choices
and your actions. Not in terms of receiving moral blame or guilt,
but responsible as the chief causal agent in your life and
behavior.
Furthermore, self responsibility means accepting your basic
aloneness, and accepting responsibility for attaining your own
goals. The appreciation of self responsibility can be an
exhilarating and empowering experience. It places your life back
in your own hands. For example, a person learns to say, Why
and how do I make myself so passive? Rather than saying,
Why am I so passive? Instead of saying that he cant
care about anything, the person learns to explore why and how he
prevents himself from experiencing strong feelings about
anything. Why in this context means For what
purpose? Instead of saying, Why does the back of my
neck hurt? the person learns to say, What feelings am
I trying to avoid experiencing by tensing my neck muscles?
Instead of complaining that people are taking advantage of her,
the person learns to say, Why and how do I encourage people
to take advantage of me?
I dont want to imply that people never suffer through
accident or through the fault of others. And Im not saying
that people are responsible for everything in life that happens
to them. We are not omnipotent. But self responsibility is
clearly vital to good self esteem. Avoiding self responsibility
makes you helpless.
Self esteem is rooted internally, not in external successes or
failures. Failing to understand this principle will cause
unnecessary anguish and self doubt. If you judge yourself by
factors that are outside your control, your self esteem will be
in chronic jeopardy. But your self esteem doesnt have to be
impaired if you fail at something in spite of your best efforts.
You wont experience the pride that would have come with the
success, but your self esteem can remain unaffected. Remember
that the self isnt a static, finished entity. Its a
continually evolving creation - an unfolding of your potential.
It is expressed in your choices, decisions, thoughts, judgments,
responses and actions. You always contain within yourself the
possibility of change. You never have to be the prisoner of
yesterdays choices.
The last issue I want to introduce on this tape is self
acceptance. This quality is especially important if you are
unhappy with the way you experience yourself and are looking for
a change in self concept. In order to grow and change, you have
to begin by learning self acceptance, which isnt an easy
concept for most people to understand. Theres a tendency to
equate self acceptance with approval of every aspect of our
personality or physical appearance, while denying that any change
or improvement might be desirable. But thats not at all
what self acceptance rationally means.
To be self accepting doesnt mean that there isnt a
wish to change or improve. It means to be at peace with yourself
and not deny the reality of what is true of you right now at this
moment of your existence. Once more, were dealing with the
issue of respect for and acceptance of facts; in this case, the
facts of your own being. To accept yourself is to accept the fact
that what you think, feel and do are all expressions of the self
at the time they occur. You cannot change if you cant
accept the fact of what you are at any given moment.
Accepting what you are requires that you think about your
experience with an attitude that makes approval or disapproval
irrelevant. The desire to be aware. There is still a deeper level
for understanding self acceptance. Ultimately, self acceptance
refers to an attitude of self value and self commitment that
derives from the fact that you are alive and conscious. As such,
it is deeper than self esteem. It is the birth-right of every
person that human beings have the power to act against. An
attitude of self acceptance can inspire a person to face whatever
he or she most dreads to encounter within, without collapsing
into self hatred, or surrendering the will to live. With self
acceptance, a person can be unhappy about having poor self
esteem, but accept it as part of his or her experience right now.
At this level, self acceptance is unconditional. Self esteem is
not, and cannot be. If you can accept that you are who you are,
that you feel what you feel, that youve done what youve
done, if you can accept it, whether you like all of it or not,
then you can accept yourself. You can accept your short comings,
your self doubts, even your poor self esteem. And when you can
accept all that, you have put yourself on the side of reality,
rather than trying to fight reality. You are no longer twisting
your consciousness and thoughts to maintain illusions about your
present condition. And so you clear the road for the first steps
of strengthening your self esteem.
END.