2025-02-19 14:14
Status:
Tags: psychology self-esteem
Reference
Notes:
Nathaniel Branden has spent his career writing and re-writing on the topic to continue to expand upon his and the field’s understanding. Which has proven difficult as he refers to the field as “A tower of Babel”
Introduction
Self-Esteem has two interrelated aspects:
- Confidence in our ability to think, trust our own minds, and cope with the basic requirements of life. Self-Efficacy
- Confidence in our right to be successful and happy, that we are worthy and appropriate to existence. Self-Respect
Self-Efficacy
High Esteem:
Low Esteem:
Self-Respect
If I respect myself and require that others deal with me respectfully as well, I signal and behave with high self-respect. Others will respond to this.
🚩If I lack self-respect and allow discourtesy, abuse, and negligence I signal low self-respect and permit for others to walk over me and respond to the same regard as myself.
🚨 The Illusion of Esteem:
Low-esteem means low defense against the manipulation of fear in our actions. “Fear of reality, to which we feel inadequate”
Low esteem is living more to avoid pain than to experience joy. Not good or bad, understand this and how to act accordingly, as it’s not the best operating system.
==Self-esteem doesn’t determine our thinking. It affects our emotional incentives.== (Judgement is heavily emotion-derived, then rationalized, The elephant and the rider) These feelings can encourage or discourage us into different directions. To tend towards or away from responsibility, making decisions etc.
p50 “We need to challenge the belief that our interests are best served by blindness.” This is one of the great difficulties, barriers to break past into the life of being “awake” (Perhaps a rare occurrence for an individual of middling-esteem is when the external fails them, such as Covid pandemic helped me to realize “no one else had the wheel”).
Pseudo Self Esteem
Pseudo-esteem is having the illusion of esteem without the reality Perhaps you follow the Theory without reality. This looks like self-esteem but it is a veneer plating over. It is “Faking until you make it”
"Nothing is more common than to pursue self-esteem by means that will not and cannot work"
The possibilities for self-deception is almost endless.