Individuals who attend therapy often explain that they struggle with “low self-esteem” and that they want to feel more confident. Society portrays self-esteem as a permanent state that can be acquired, but self-esteem is more of a process that is constantly shifting and changing just like the weather. Because self-esteem is not a permanent state that one can attain, it may be helpful to explore the concepts below.
Understanding the Foundation of Self-Perception
Before diving into the intricacies of self-esteem and its alternatives, it’s crucial to understand the foundation upon which our self-perception is built. Our self-perception is the lens through which we view ourselves, influenced by a myriad of factors including our upbringing, societal norms, personal experiences, and the feedback we receive from others. It shapes our beliefs about who we are, our abilities, and our worth. This foundation is constantly being constructed and reconstructed based on new experiences and insights. Recognizing the fluid nature of self-perception is the first step towards fostering a healthier relationship with ourselves.
Individuals who attend therapy often explain that they struggle with “low self-esteem” and that they want to feel more confident. Society portrays self-esteem as a permanent state that can be acquired, but self-esteem is more of a process that is constantly shifting and changing just like the weather. Because self-esteem is not a permanent state that one can attain, it may be helpful to explore the concepts below.
Three ways to replace “Self-Esteem” with more effective concepts:
1. Self-esteem vs. Self-Efficacy
Self-esteem is a general evaluation or judgment of oneself. Given that thoughts and feelings are temporary and constantly changing , self-esteem may be described as a fleeting state. Sometimes it’s high, sometimes it’s low. It doesn’t seem to last and it’s usually contingent on external events or aspects about ourselves that are out of our control. We say we have “high self-esteem” when we succeed, and “low self-esteem” when we fail. The problem with this evaluation is that it makes us constantly doubt ourselves, our abilities, and it interferes with developing a more stable view of ourselves.
What we can do instead is replace the notion of self-esteem with the concept of self-efficacy. Albert Bandura defines Self-efficacy as “an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments”.
Specifically, self-efficacy regards behaviors, as opposed to a personal evaluation of our whole value as a human being. Furthermore, it is implicit that behaviors and abilities can be improved, whereas it’s extremely difficult to change “ourselves”.
What are some strategies that you can use to increase your self-efficacy?
- Focus on specific tasks, in specific contexts and take everything one at a time.
- Start with small things that you can do easily, then gradually increase the difficulty of the task and the time you spend doing it. Not only will this increase your self-efficacy, but it will also increase your motivation to work.
- Keep track of your progress. It’s easy to become overwhelmed when you have many things to do and think you’ve done nothing, but tracking your progress will provide you with a stronger sense of reality and with the ability to evaluate your abilities objectively.
- Reward yourself. When you’ve accomplished something or completed a task, give yourself the validation and recognition that will positively reinforce the behavior.
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2. Self-esteem vs. self-acceptance.
Albert Ellis has stated that “Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man, because it is conditional”.
Self-esteem is out of our control because it is highly influenced by external conditions. The concept of self-esteem is particularly ineffective when it leads to global evaluations about ourselves. when eaching global conclusions about ourselves, based upon a behvaior ends up hurting us will judge your value as a human being as a function of your performance in limited situations, which is actually irrational. Think about how many things you do in one day. Think about how many people you know, and how differently you relate to each of them. Is helpful to tell yourself “I’m a bad friend” because you forgot your friend’s birthday? You may fall into the trap of answering “Yes” to this question.
If you look at the bigger picture, you’ve known your friend for 10 years, you never missed a birthday call so far and also, she’s just one of your 5 closest friends, whom you never forgot to call. Furthermore, there are many other behaviors that describe the behavior of a good friend, and calling is just one of them. Notice how we jump to conclusions. So is it logical, true or helpful, for that matter to tell yourself “I’m a bad friend” for forgetting to call? Probably not.
The solution here is to replace the concept of self-esteem with the concept of unconditional self-acceptance.
How can I cultivate self-acceptance?
Start to accept yourself as you are, with your qualities and flaws, because you are human and all human beings are imperfect and you are just doing your very best.
Everybody makes mistakes and while this may sound like a cliché that we cognitively agree with, in real life we ask nothing but perfection from ourselves and the moment we make a mistake we are ready to scold ourselves and to reduce our whole beings to a negative attribute. “I’m a bad friend”. “I’m a bad mother”. “I’m not good at my job”. “I’m useless”. “I’m unworthy”.
Replace these destructive patterns with thinking realistically about yourself. You are valuable as a human being, no matter what. Yes, there are behaviors that you can improve, yes you may make some mistakes, but they don’t say anything about you as a person.
This does not mean that you won’t do anything in your power to change unworkable behaviors, or to improve certain skills. It just means that we already automatically feel bad when we make a mistake. Judging ourselves about it only makes us feel worse, and it makes it more difficult to change the situation or our behaviors. And no, you’re not unworthy, you were just 5 minutes late. You can apologize and be more careful next time. That’s it. That’s enough.
3. Self-esteem vs. Self-Compassion
The key word here is Kindness.
Kristin Neff defines self-compassion Our brains are designed to automatically detect patterns, and we are evolutionarily prone to evaluation and categorization. This has been helpful throughout our long history as a species, since it was of the utmost importance to quickly identify something as being “good” or “bad”. Food=good. Go get it. Tiger=bad. Fight it or run.
Any skill that we have is not good or bad per se, but it depends on how we’re using it. The ability described above, while saving our lives and enabling us to make quick decisions, also makes us prone to cognitive errors that may end up hurting us.
Our minds tend to jump to conclusions and build hypotheses that we’re horrible based on very little evidence. Constantly using cognitive shortcuts to evaluate ourselves is not an effective strategy, because it is not helpful and it is not logical. As described above, we can keep track of our performance to objectively evaluate one specific trait or skill at a time. Furthermore, these thoughts tend to form patterns that may harm us. They develop in time into our attitudes towards ourselves. Think of a moment when you made a huge mistake. What do you tell yourself? Try to verbalize mentally the exact words that would form your message towards yourself when you feel you really failed at something important?
Now that you have that message clear, I want to ask you a question. Would you ever say this to a friend? Would you talk to a close person the way you talk to yourself? I wouldn’t think so. And here is the moment when you need to replace the concept of self-esteem with self-compassion.
If a good friend would come to you and say ” I have failed miserably”, what would you tell them? That they are no good? Probably not. You would provide them with support and compassion, and this is exactly what you need to do for yourself as well.
Here are some strategies you can use to cultivate kindness and self-compassion
- Accept the fact that pain is an inevitable part of life. We all feel it and we all go through it. Build empathy and compassion for others and notice the pain and suffering of humanity. This normalizes the pain of humanity in existence. Send love and kindness to others, as well as to yourself
- Become mindful of your feelings. Know that all emotions, as unpleasant as they may sometimes be, are temporary. Notice them, become aware of them in a non judgmental way and let them float away like clouds in the sky.
- In difficult times, be as nurturing to yourself as you would be to a close friend or to a child. Tell yourself what you need to hear in order to heal and move forward.
- Learn to let go of the thoughts that make you feel stuck. Imagine your thoughts as helium balloons and picture yourself letting go of the string. Remember that your thoughts do not always hold the absolute truth. See the bigger picture.
- Kindness. How do you show kindness to yourself? Build little kindness habits and take some time each day to practice them. Reward yourself. Create a window every day that’s just yours, no matter what.
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Forget self esteem!
Self-efficacy, Unconditional Self-acceptance and Self-compassion are more valuable concepts. Taking the time to develop them in your life will help you ease the pain, will enable you to stop being so hard on yourself and will provide you with the confidence you need to become more efficient in the areas of your life that are important to you.
