you've been lied to about self esteem

Just love yourself. Self-care Sunday. You're enough, no matter what you do. Raise your self-esteem. Just be more positive. Is this great advice, or are these messages the very reason you hate yourself? Because you understand you should love yourself and not be so hard on yourself, but you have no idea how to do so. So you do a bit of research, and you read one too many self-help books and absorb the advice of one too many influences. And you come across these two words: self-esteem. And you're told by increasing it, you can solve all of the problems in your life. All you need is a bit more positivity. But the origins and consequences of this psychological concept are a lot darker than you think. So strap on, because we're going to explore this together. I meant strap in, not quite sure where that came from.

To understand the origins of the self-esteem movement, I have to take you back to the mid-1980s and briefly introduce you to a man called John Vasconcelos. He was the bloke who started this whole self-esteem movement, and he was a Californian politician. And he argued that most personal and social problems, such as domestic abuse, gang violence, drug addiction, poor academic achievement, or what have you, were the result of low self-esteem. And by simply raising it, it would act as a panacea for us all. In other words, the solution to all problems is self-love. But to save you the full backstory, in case you find that stuff boring, he quickly turned his political campaign into a quasi-religious movement by manipulating research findings, resulting in the Western world becoming obsessed with this idea that in order to get ahead, you just need more self-esteem.

In the late 1980s, schools then caught on to this idea, offering participation trophies to kids, fueling the belief that no matter what you do, you're special. By 1986, 86% of Californian schools had implemented self-esteem program PRS to help children. Unfortunately, however, in trying to create a culture in which everyone is special, this movement has managed to create a culture in which no one is special, but everyone believes they are. If you want to go deeper into the backstory of the self-esteem movement, feel free to check out the article I linked in the description by a famous writer who researched it called Will Store. I wanted to give you the option to go deeper if you wanted to. But reading the fragile origin stories of this psychological concept didn't surprise me because I've had an issue with psychologists and self-help gurus telling people to just love themselves more for a while now. But moving on, let's now cover the issues with self-esteem.

First of all, let's begin with this idea of why everyone gets a trophy, no matter what. It is an absolutely terrible idea. Well, think about it this way: burning your hand on a hot stove is a good way to tell yourself where you stand. Because here's the thing you need to understand about self-esteem, which we're going to define and get into ways you can boost your self-esteem after, but for now, let's stick to the issues. The problem is the reason people who are well-accomplished, successful, or who have overcome multiple obstacles and have certain attributes have higher self-esteem is because of all of these things. They have higher self-esteem because they're successful, because they have accomplished things. So what we're going to cover in this video, which is important that you focus on, is literally something we're going to call authentic self-esteem, which is based on a fair assessment of your strengths, your weaknesses, and your achievements.

Because the main critique I have of self-esteem is, okay, the modern self-esteem movement tells me that no matter what I do, I should feel good about myself. But what if I'm a bully? What if I'm a narcissistic bell-end who cares nothing about other people and just treats people like crap? What if I'm a young kid and I go to school each day and I beat people up? Should I feel good about myself then? In fact, when we look at bullies and the research behind them, bullies do have high self-esteem. So they convince themselves that what they're doing is justified. I've made videos in the past trying to tell an audience, which is predominantly men, to love themselves more. And for me, when I absorb those messages, it doesn't work. When I tell other people to listen to those messages, it also doesn't work.

But to go one step further in why telling people to love themselves doesn't work, you have to understand what happens when you go on social media. Because considering just how much social media affects our lives and how much a part of our lives it is, it would be pointless not to mention it in this context. So you're a young woman, and you go onto social media. But what are you bombarded with? You're bombarded with images and videos of other women who are incredibly attractive. They're like models. They have the perfect skin. They have the perfect pose in each photo and video to show off their voluminous body and attractive physique. Their lifestyle seems amazing, and they're showing off their perfect skin routine or what have you. And what all of this does, seeing another very attractive young woman who is cherry-picking moments from her life to show to you so you think about her in a certain way, what this does is it slowly chips away at your confidence and self-esteem. Because whether you realize it or not, each time you see these posts, you are subconsciously comparing yourself to these people. It's a very rare person who can go onto social media, see the lives of other people, and feel inspired. You're likely not going to feel inspired. You're likely going to feel wretched and self-hatred because you're going to compare what you don't have to what this person has, be it a physique, an appearance, or a certain lifestyle.

But this is where things get extremely tricky. Because what messages did these influencers and self-help gurus send out? In order to get ahead in life or to build the life you want, you just need to love yourself and improve your confidence and your self-esteem. So what does that do? It depicts your low levels of self-esteem out to be the problem in this game that is going on. But your low level of self-esteem in this context is not the problem. It's a symptom of a deeper issue, which is you are comparing yourself, your appearance, your lifestyle, to someone else's. Which is why when you unfollow certain people or go one step further and stop using social media, you remove this underlying problem that your low self-esteem is a symptom of from your life, and you're met with the blissful realization of ignorance. You become ignorant to what other people are doing.

But before I offer a solution, let's turn to what us young men face. Whenever we go onto these social media platforms, we're bombarded with images and videos of hyped-up, jacked, hyper-masculine men who are surrounded by women. They've got the money, they've got the lifestyle, they've got the cars. And one of the messages that they program us with is, in order to get ahead, in order to get what I have, you just need to be confident in yourself and think highly of yourself. But the problem, in particular for us young men, is one, we do compare ourselves to these influencers and whoever they are. But these messages also propel us into this spiral of mimetic desire. Mimetic desire is where you want what other people have just because they want it. Social media is just a platform for other people to tell you what to want. So we see these people and we think, oh, he's a well-accomplished man. I want what he has. I want the lifestyle, the money, the girls, the physique. And in order to do that, apparently, I just need to have confidence in myself.

But again, the problem isn't your self-esteem. Because just by raising it, that's not going to be a solution to all of your problems. The problem is you're comparing your level 10 to someone's level 100, financially, lifestyle-wise, appearance-wise, physique-wise. And you know exactly where this leads. Those same people who are telling you to raise your self-esteem and your confidence levels and to just believe in yourself and love yourself, the same people who sell you products on how to do so. But the solution I'm going to offer, because I would love to stand here and say, "Just get off social media." Of course, you can unfollow people, that's something that you can do. But because you're unlikely to stop using social media, the solution I'm going to offer is, you need to understand the game you're playing whenever you log on to these social media apps, which is these influencers create the problem and sell you on the solution. But they don't even realize they've created the problem because you're complicit in the creation of the problem as well. Which is, of course, you go on social media and you compare yourself to these people, that lowers your levels of self-esteem. You then think, "Oh, I don't have high self-esteem. That's a bad thing." Because this person is telling me that I should have high levels of self-esteem. Let me listen to what they have to say so I can improve my levels of self-esteem, without realizing that my low levels of self-esteem are a direct consequence of me comparing myself to them. And if I just stopped, then my self-esteem levels would balance out. But when you understand the game, you can rise above it. So you need to understand that this is what's happening whenever you go online. As long as you stay focused on the symptom, you are going to be continuously oblivious to the problem, which is you are comparing yourself to these people who promote these messages. That's why I don't have Instagram and I refuse to get it because I know if I got it, I would just start comparing my life and myself to the lives of others.

In a few moments time, we're going to outline some helpful definitions of self-esteem and cover some practical ways you can improve your levels of self-esteem without playing a game like that. But now, let's cover the issue with this toxic positivity that the self-esteem movement throws at us. The problem with the belief that we see so much on the internet nowadays and in self-help books, that in order to solve your problems, you just need to be more positive, is that it forces you to wear a mask that doesn't always fit. And the main problem with believing that just by being positive, you can solve all of your life problems, is that it runs contrary to a fundamental psychological principle: what you resist, persists. Which is to say, the more that you avoid your uncomfortable emotions, the more they will have a grip on your life. Furthermore, by avoiding the one feedback mechanism you have to your pain, you rob yourself of the opportunity to get the feedback to recognize what you actually need to change in your life. More frighteningly, when we look at the psychological research, there's a longitudinal study which shows people who use the coping style of avoiding problems in their life find themselves in more stressful life situations four years later and 10 years later show more symptoms for depression.

Additionally, in this context of toxic positivity, you might have been told more than once that you need to instill affirmations in your life. But here's the problem with these pesky things: positive affirmations only work for people who already have a positive self-image. Furthermore, if you have to say you are, you aren't a truly happy person. A truly happy person doesn't need to remind themselves they're happy. If you genuinely think you're beautiful, you don't have to remind yourself about it every 10 seconds. And for the person who doesn't have a positive self-image, saying the affirmation to themselves such as, "I love everything about myself," is so obviously a lie that it causes two harms: one, it reminds you of all of the things you don't love about yourself, and two, it now makes you feel like a liar.

Lucas Dixon, who wrote a brilliant article that I'll link in the research notes for this video, he's researched into toxic positivity and self-help gurus and all of that. And he says there's three things that we need to do in order to combat toxic positivity. He says there's a balance that we need to achieve. More so, think about it like a Chinese finger trap. When you put your finger inside, if you instantly try to retreat, you get trapped. However, when you lean into it, you give yourself more wiggle room to then escape. It's exactly the same with your difficult and uncomfortable emotions. Additionally, by accepting your current circumstances and not denying them with excessive positivity, you give yourself the opportunity to be relieved from them. Remember, to accept something doesn't mean you approve of it, but it's only by accepting something that you can change it. The person who accepts, "Do you know what? I'm not the best with money," can then work to improve their financial skills. The person who says, "You know what? I'm not actually the best at relationships at the moment," can give herself the grace to improve her communication or relationship skills.

But the three things Lucas Dixon suggests is: number one, notice the forced positivity from others. Notice those moments when your friends, family members, or colleagues are trying to reassure you into positivity by saying things such as, "Don't worry, it will all be fine. You just need to be a bit more positive and things will work out." Also, notice when you begin comparing your life to other people's lives on social media. Always remember the game you're playing, that is, these people whose posts you're seeing are cherry-picked moments from their life to make you think a certain way about them. Nothing is real on social media. Number two, realize that anyone who demonizes negativity is an instant red flag. Because anyone who does this uses their demonization of negativity as a way to avoid critique. And more particularly, of course, we speak a lot about communication and relationships on this channel. But when you remove negativity from someone's life and the opportunity to feel negativity, you stifle their self-expression and your own, if you're doing it to yourself. And number three, lastly, recognize the positivity. Oh, recognize that positivity manifests in different ways for everyone. To be positive, you don't just have to tell yourself affirmations. Cultivating positivity for you could be listening to music, going for a walk, talking to a friend, going to an improv class, dancing, doing jiu-jitsu, whatever it is, cultivate more of those experiences. And remember, it's okay to be okay, and it's okay to not be okay.

A little anecdote from me: my mom, as much as I love her, when I was growing up, wasn't very receptive to any feelings less than positivity. Not that she was a positivity junkie, but if I was ever in a bad mood as a teenager, it would always be met with the response of, "Oh, what's up with you? Cheered up yet?" And I feel like I was demonized to feel anything less than positive. I love my mom, and I'm not traumatized by it or anything, but that is one of the reasons I feel so passionately about giving yourself the permission to feel anything that's different from positivity.

Okay, now let's get into the juicy stuff: how self-esteem works and how you can positively raise your authentic self-esteem. It's a new dawn, it's a new day. I've trimmed my mustache. Self-esteem is an attitude towards yourself. Specifically, it's the belief that you have value. As you can see, little Jimmy here is looking at himself from yesterday with the conclusion, "I know I can do better." More specifically, though, self-esteem is comprised of two things: capability and worthiness. When we say capability, what we mean is self-efficacy, which is your trust in your mind and your judgment. The worthiness aspect is what we alluded to a few seconds ago, that self-respect and that belief that you have value to offer.

Now, I want you guys to understand that while researching for this video, I was very pessimistic towards self-esteem and everything that I was reading. Which means that this stuff that stood the test of my pessimism, which we're going to cover right now, is valuable. And I wouldn't share it with you guys if I didn't think it was valuable. Because despite my inherent ambivalence and critique of self-esteem and this whole movement, you can't avoid having an opinion about yourself. You just can't. That's what I've realized. But you can change your opinion about yourself. And when you have a positive opinion about yourself through authentic self-esteem, you make choices that promote your well-being and you improve your bounce-back rate in life, otherwise known as your resilience.

So I want to change your understanding of self-esteem a little bit. And I want to say that self-esteem largely involves hope. Not necessarily about your current circumstances, because if you feel like a sack of poo and you don't like yourself at the moment, then telling you to have more self-esteem right now won't help you because you're going to be fixated into believing that you have to approve of your present self, who you don't approve of. The hope aspect is more so oriented towards the future, the value you could bring if you get your ass in line. So through this lens, self-esteem becomes a growth mindset. That despite your current circumstances, you can improve them. And it's that attempt to improve your current circumstances and your opinion about yourself that gives you that positive feedback, which raises your self-esteem. Because we see the opposite all the time in the people who don't have self-esteem, right? Which is obviously known as a fixed mindset, popularized by the brilliant researcher Carol Dweck. We hear people say, "I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough to become a teacher. I'm not creative enough to be an artist or quit my job and go all in on this thing." So again, telling people to just believe in themselves doesn't work, in the same way that telling a depressed person to be happy also doesn't work. But it is important to have self-confidence, otherwise you will likely undermine a lot of what you do. So what I'm suggesting is you get in alignment with that inherent positive guiding force within you that calls you to your highest potential. There's more to you than you think. And all of that. But to put it in plainer terms, becoming is better than being, as Carol Dweck says.

But before we get into the main causes of self-esteem, let's have a look at the main negative effects of having low self-esteem. Mainly, when we look at people with low self-esteem, we see the underlying their behavior is shame and the feeling that they don't deserve any success that they achieve. Now, this feeling of shame might cause this type of person to seek validation from other people in order to fill up this internal lack that they have inside. They might fall prey to certain addictions, which some of them are celebrated in our culture, such as work. Pouring yourself into your work is largely heralded by other people as a big accomplishment, whereas you can use it individually to escape the negative thoughts and perceptions you have about yourself. Same with alcohol. I'm English, and in my culture, it's almost again celebrated to go out every weekend and get drunk. People with low self-esteem might try to numb their emotions, obviously the shame. And they might undermine their efforts by not putting themselves out there in the world and hiding themselves for fear of exposure.

Okay, that's all well and good knowing that. But now let's get into the factors that cause your self-esteem. Now, with researching for this video, I found there are mainly three things that influence your self-esteem levels. First up is genetics. A lot of psychologists disagree and agree with this, but confidence is seen as a trait, and scientists argue around 25 to 50% of your confidence levels comes from your genetics. Interesting one, that. The second factor that influences your self-esteem levels is your past actions. We covered this a few minutes ago in the context of people with high self-esteem tend to have high self-esteem because of their previous accomplishments and success. So the thing to note is, your past actions drive your expectations and they reinforce particular actions and choices. Let me give you a sports example. Let's say you're a basketball player and you play a match and you perform brilliantly. That will likely improve your confidence levels, but won't affect your self-esteem levels too much. However, if you continue to play well over the succeeding 5 to 10 games, then that will likely raise your self-esteem because you have proven to yourself your accomplishments over a sequence of events, otherwise known as on the pattern of your past actions. Why do I make things complicated?

The third factor and final factor is the opinions of others. One thing that the self-esteem movement fails to clarify is just how social we are as human beings and just how susceptible we are to other people's opinions. Now, your self-esteem levels are largely a result of the perception of the value you can offer within your community. And by community, I mean the community of your local area, your work community, any social group you are involved in. But when we go into how past experiences in your childhood impact your self-esteem, what we see is, of course, the importance of your relationship with your parents. For example, people who experienced neglect when they were younger tend to have lower self-esteem levels because the unconscious belief they're programmed with is, "I'm undeserving of love, and my needs aren't worthy of being listened to." On the flip side of that, people who grew up in high-pressure households where they had to overachieve academically, sportswise, and just be perfect across the board, experience self-esteem based on what they achieve. And of course, that will decrease when they stop achieving things. Any deviations from perfection result in lower self-esteem because they think that if I'm not perfect, then I'm going to lose love.

And the last thing in this context of other people is cultural stereotypes. I was searching for something the other day, I just remembered it. I was in the garage outside and I was looking for my bike lock, I think, but I couldn't find it. So 20 seconds in, the voice that came up in my head was, "Oh, I'm a man, you know, I'm pretty bad at looking for things." So I'll just stop there. Might be other stereotypes you've heard of. If you're a woman, you might hear the stereotype that women are bad at driving or bad at math. Men, we have the stereotype that we're bad at opening up and talking about our emotions. That might contribute to low self-esteem. But all of this stuff puts your self-esteem on shaky grounds because it externalizes it, which we're going to clarify in a few seconds time. But the main perception change I would like to propose to you about self-esteem is, stop looking at your self-esteem as a given, something set in stone, and start seeing it as an origin. Because your self-esteem levels are largely a result of how people have treated you in the past. So from a childhood programming point of view, and to use the words of Alain de Botton, we no longer need to judge ourselves through the eyes of people who were too unwell to see us properly.

Now, it's about time we got into the six ways you can actually improve your self-esteem. By the way, I did a morning workout followed by a cold shower and I'm fasted. So if at any point throughout the remainder of this video it seems like you're watching the video on two times the playback speed, I apologize. And if at any point my drawl becomes vaguely psychedelic, it's because I've entered a state of hallucination, and at which point you should definitely call the ambulance. Right before I tell you the six ways, I was talking to my mom the other day, cuz I said, "Mom, I'm making a big video about self-esteem. I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. What do you think about self-esteem and telling people to love themselves?" And shouts out to Mom, she said, "It's impossible to love yourself. So the key is to be comfortable with yourself." And I thought, I like that.

In more detail though, as we always do in these videos together, there's a bloke who's written a book that is pretty good, and we're going to summarize it now. His name is Nathaniel Brandon, and he's a psychotherapist. And the six pillars of self-esteem he talks about are: live with awareness, accept yourself, take responsibility, assert yourself, live intentionally, and act with integrity. Because if you have low self-esteem, you might be thinking, "Well, Lewis, where the bloody hell do I begin if I want to improve it?" Well, beginning with these pillars, you begin a virtuous cycle where by living with awareness, you accept yourself more. Then you take more responsibility, which means you assert yourself more, live more intentionally, and you act with more integrity. Savvy? Because it's worth mentioning that in psychology, there's something called dissonance theory, where if you act out of line with your beliefs, you'll change your beliefs so they align with your behavior. This is kind of what we're going to hijack.

Okay, Point number one: Live with awareness. Look at all of the realities affecting you in your life, accept them, and act accordingly. Because what you want to avoid in this pillar here is ignorance, as our little fellow is demonstrating down here. If you notice there's a problem in your life or something that you want to change, but you actively ignore it, that's a bit of a problem. So, two, is it if you gather all of the necessary information you need, but you don't act on it? Because think about it this way, in terms of the decisions you make in your life, the decisions you make reflect your level of awareness. To give you an example, if you're constantly buying stuff you cannot afford, that reflects a low level of awareness. So too, if you're continuously avoiding tough conversations in your relationships. So by improving the level of awareness you have in your life, which is to put it shortly, looking at all of the things in your life, no matter how ugly they are, and accepting them, you give yourself again, as we mentioned at the beginning of this video, the mechanism you need to rely on in order to address the problems, all of which will improve your self-esteem because you'll act in accordance with your real reality, which means you'll make better decisions.

Now, in case that sounded like a load of waffle, here's what you can actually do to improve this: Allow yourself to feel your negative emotions. Because the main reason why you don't is because when you feel your negative emotions, you likely blame yourself for their existence. For example, if you end a relationship and you feel an overwhelming surge of grief, that will probably make you blame yourself for not being attentive enough in the relationship. Or if you start to pay attention to your back pain, hopefully you're not that old enough to have back pain, but if you start to pay attention to your back pain, then you probably blame yourself for sitting down too much. But tap into your negative emotions through the lens of compassion. Because remember what we said, what you resist persists. So if you're currently in a state of loneliness, but you hate that emotion so you're ignoring it, by giving yourself the opportunity to tap into it and see it, no matter how ugly it is, you give yourself the feedback to see, "Oh, I'm not socializing as much at the moment, and I have a very big social need. So let me address this." And so the loneliness becomes happy because it's been paid attention to.

Okay, number two: Accept yourself. What you do here is you simply choose to not live in conflict with yourself. The one thing the self-esteem movement fails to clarify is the difference between approval and acceptance. To accept something does not mean you approve of it, which is to say you can accept the reality of your life right now and how you don't like certain things about yourself or the situation in life you're in. You can accept that, but it doesn't mean you approve of it and you want it to continue forever. Now, Nathaniel Brandon says there's three ways you can foster your acceptance, and I'm going to add some ideas of my own, if I may. Number one: Realize that you're on your own side already. Just to play devil's advocate, in all of those moments when you feel so incredibly self-reprehensible and you hate yourself up until this point, because I'm basing what I'm about to say on the fact that you are watching this video and you are a breathing, breathing, breathing, living organism, you've gotten yourself out of bed every morning so far. I might even go as far as to say that you've brushed your teeth as well each morning. So there is a force within you that is acting already within your best interests, no matter how lowly you think of yourself right now. Number two: Accept all your emotions and your behavior. Remember, to accept doesn't mean you approve. Lads, don't worry, accepting all of your emotions doesn't mean you have to become overly emotional and all of that. Because remember, you can only change what you first accept. And number three: Treat yourself with kindness. Instead of judging the way you act, question it. Why did I behave in that way? But most importantly, ask yourself, what unmet need was I trying to fulfill? For example, if you fall into a pit of doom scrolling each evening, then instead of judging yourself, simply ask that question, and you might realize you're just trying to relax and chill out. So if it's not serving your life at the moment, that particular habit, replace it for one that addresses the unmet need.

Right, this is going to get risky now because I'm going to add some ideas of my own. Accept your flaws. Do away with this one word: perfect. Do I spell that right? Yeah. Perfectionism is an attempt to alter other people's perceptions of you. It is a grasping, grope of approval with the belief driven in it that if you do anything less than perfect, you will lose out on love and be undeserving of your achievements. It's an attempt to gain approval and avoid the feeling of shame. But imperfections, my lovely snowflake, does not mean there's something wrong with you. Think about it. Have you ever seen a badly designed cloud? Have you ever seen a wrong wave? But if you want some harsh truth, because I know you're into all of that stuff, here it is: you're pretty average. So am I. So are most people. And that's fine.

Now, there's one imagination technique you can use if you do want to accept yourself more. Take that thing you want to change about yourself or your life, maybe that you've been conditioned to believe you need to change by some [ __ ] on social media. Now imagine a potent gas is released into the environment which makes it impossible for you to change that thing. So now that you know you'll never be able to change it, consider how would you now live your life differently? Would you do anything differently? Would you continue to hate yourself for not having this thing or not changing it? Remember, this gas isn't your fault, it just prevents you from making any change. Would you find a better way to handle this situation? Would you face it? How would you cope more effectively? How would you take better care of yourself if you weren't worrying so much about this thing? What else would you expend your energy on? Okay, that's enough of the [ __ ] mystical voice.

Point number three: Take responsibility. Nathaniel Brandon encourages us to take an active rather than a passive stance to life. [ __ ] helicopter, is that a helicopter or a plane? Sounds like a plane. Why does every [ __ ] in England have a bloody plane? Yes. So active rather than passive. Because when you take responsibility for things in your life, well, looking at it through the other lens, when you don't take responsibility for things in your life, you have no feeling of control, no action, no improvement, and no sucky, no feeling of control. If you don't take responsibility for your life, you will diminish your ability to feel capable and worthy to rise to the challenge. Furthermore, if you don't realize your self-esteem levels are your responsibility, you won't take action to improve them, and you'll make statements such as this: "If only it's their fault." If you're using those statements, you're not taking responsibility. And finally, not taking responsibility results in no improvement because you'll be waiting around forever believing that one day someone will come and save you. But of course, you already know this, no one's coming to save you. That's the harsh truth of life. And even still, if someone does come to save you, then you'll become incredibly dependent on them, which isn't good. Your self-esteem is your responsibility. Even though a few minutes ago we did cover some potential childhood reasons as to why your self-esteem is a bit low, but that's other people's fault. It's your responsibility.

Number four. Number four: Assert yourself. Love this because it's hitting on the topic of communication. Don't know why I looked over there. There's no one there. What we learn about people who are assertive is they are assertive because they like themselves. Think about it. If you didn't like yourself, you wouldn't stick up for yourself and assert your needs, wants, and opinions in your relationships. Asserting yourself gives you that feeling of capability and worthiness. But most importantly, utilizing the work of Carl Rogers, you want to create the feeling of congruence in your relationships and all of your interactions, which is a direct harmony between what you're feeling inside and what you voice. Now, that doesn't mean you have to act with radical honesty all the time, but you can openly communicate your wants, needs, and opinions to others by noticing what you think and feel inwardly and then trying to communicate that as accurately as possible. Now, of course, I've done videos about this in the past, and I've got a big video coming up about how to do this. In particular, check out this video on how to assert yourself. That will teach you everything you need to know. But in congruence, of course, is you feel something within, but then you communicate the exact opposite. Get used to telling people what you need and what you want and how you feel. And furthermore, and this is going to be very easy for me to say, but stop seeking validation from other people so much. That's another way you can assert yourself. Because the more you enter the social domain through the lens of wanting other people's approval in order to fill up the internal lack and emptiness you feel inside, sorry, that's a bit harsh, but that's usually how it goes down. The more you're going to alter your behavior into the realm of incongruence, where you're just acting, tiptoeing around, being a creepy crawly person to not upset others. And the last thing to know about validation is, if you rely on people to make you happy, guess what? They can also make you sad, obviously, when they stop validating you. So the way to do this is, don't aim for appreciation from others, aim for the usefulness you can offer them. Aim to help other people for the sake of helping them. Because the more you rely on your efforts going appreciated, the more again you're going to tailor what you do in order to get that appreciation.

Now, of course, there's a big aspect here of, "One can hear your voice screaming behind the camera, Lewis, a few minutes ago you said how social we are and how we can't not rely on the validation from other people." So yes, okay. The whole point is to get the validation you want from others down to a minimum. Or most importantly, understand that you have a chimp inside your brain, a very old region of your brain that wants to belong to a troop. You cannot not fully care about what people think about you. So the trick is to choose the select people whose opinions you care about, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry on social media. Telling you that from experience, and that might be one person for you, that might be two or three select individuals who you think, "Okay, I really value this person's opinion. This is the person whose validation I will listen to and use as feedback." But to go one step further, and you creative individuals will love this, a great way to assert yourself and be yourself is to engage in creative things. Because Krishnamurti, who was an Indian philosopher back in like the 1970s, is a fascinating man, very wise. He had this idea of something called anonymous creativity, whereby he said, if you do something and you want validation for it, that shows you don't love what you're doing. True creativity doesn't care about being noticed. So when you engage in a creative act, whatever it is for you, it could be dancing, it could be making music, it could be drawing, whatever it is, it could be writing, that's a great way to assert yourself because you're doing it as a full expression of who you are, not as a means to have someone say, "Oh my God, that's so good, well done." But the last thing I want to end this sequence on asserting yourself on is, you cannot assert yourself without exposure. They come as a package deal. Oh, another helicopter. I can't believe it. I cannot, cannot believe it. I wish I had an RPG somewhere. Just spy plane, friendly RPG inbound. Everything I do is for people, but people in helicopters. The rocket, the [ __ ], the RPGs, faced backwards. Uh, what was we saying? Yeah, asserting yourself and exposure come as a package deal. You can't have one without the other. Which is to say, asserting yourself doesn't mean everyone will like your assertion. Expressing what you genuinely want, need, and value will make some people run for the hills. But that's the whole point. That is how you sift out who you should actually keep in your life and who you shouldn't.

Okay, two more points before I start levitating because I've been fasted for so long. The fifth pillar of raising your self-esteem is: Live intentionally. Don't just react to life. Choose your long-term goals and the values you wish to uphold and cultivate plans in order to do so. Or through the lens of what James Clear says in Atomic Habits, decide on the person you want to be and then do that work. Because the most important thing you have to understand about setting a plan in your life and actively working to actualize it, you give yourself that feeling of self-efficacy, which is what we've been saying again and again throughout this video. Remember, self-efficacy is your belief in your capability. So when you actualize a plan or when you follow through on something, you give yourself that positive feedback of, "Oh, I now have the confidence because I've done that thing, which means I now have the self-esteem behind me to do things like that in the future." For example, if you learn one language, you now have the confidence in your ability to learn any language because you've nailed the process. So remember what we said in a couple of sequences ago, becoming is better than being, as Carol Dweck says. I wanted to change your self-esteem perception away from present-focused and more towards what you can achieve in the future.

And lastly, when it comes to deciding on things or avenues you should pursue in your life, I want you to really understand the definitions of a strength and a weakness. A strength is anything that makes you stronger after you do it. A weakness is anything that makes you weaker after you do it. For example, you can be great at math, but you hate it, so that's a weakness. You can be a brilliant basketball player, but every time you're forced to play a game, you feel drained after, that's a weakness because it makes you weaker. However, you can be great at speaking to people and you love when you do it, so that is a strength. I just wanted to give you that point of reference for framing when you're considering potential avenues to go down in your life. And I'm just thinking about it now, remember what we said before we dive deeper into these six pillars, they all start a virtuous cycle of linking into each other. Because the more intentionally you live your life by making your own decisions, the more responsible you feel for them. All of which enables you to accept yourself more, meaning you live with more awareness, all of which increases your self-esteem because each step forward you make in life is based on who you genuinely are and who you are genuinely becoming. Enough of the poetry though.

Point number six: Finally, act with integrity. Here we are primarily talking about your values. Because there is no easier way to ruin your life than by not living with integrity. And by integrity, what we specifically mean is, what you say is what you do. So examine the current beliefs you have in particular domains in your life and question why you have them. Then, whatever sticks and you like, of course, keep those beliefs. But in other areas, change your negative beliefs for more positive ones. But in more particular detail, cultivate values in your life so they can guide all of your future decisions. A lot of people on the internet talk about finding your purpose, and I think it's a very important thing to find, but it's a bit overrated when it comes to values. Because values are the steps that glow in a luminescent splendor when you're looking forward as to the path in your life, and they highlight clearly where you need to step next. You can not feel as if you've discovered your life's task or your life's purpose, but still live a purposeful life by acting in line with your values, if that makes sense. But the one thing I learned about values very recently is, it's not just enough to know all of your values, you need to rank them in a hierarchy of most important to least important. Because this will help you when it comes to making decisions in your life. For example, if your values are mental health, family, discipline, courage, enthusiasm, but all of these have the same level of importance as the next, if you're faced with a decision in which two values conflict, you're going to really struggle to make that decision. For example, if your family want you to do something that contradicts with your mental health, which one do you prioritize? But if you have them in a structured hierarchy with mental health at the top, you can realize that no matter what your family want you to do, you're never going to compromise your most important value. So that's how you act with integrity. You highlight your values and you just aim to uphold them each and every day. If you want a philosophical exploration into the opposite of this, I recommend reading Albert Camus' book, The Fall.

So those were the six pillars of self-esteem as highlighted by Nathaniel Brandon. If you want to improve the self-esteem of others in your life, whether you're a manager, a team leader, you have children, or friends who you want to improve the self-esteem of, just encourage them to take more initiative and responsibility in their life. Because to herald the point again, the more responsibility and initiative you take, the more you feel accountable to your decisions, which means when you follow through on them, you give yourself that feedback of positivity. "I've done something. Now I feel good about myself. Let me continue doing things that make me feel good about myself."

So we've covered a lot in this video so far, and there's been a lot of information. But I really want to be done with this topic forever and never have to revisit it. So in order to clarify one important thing, we're going to finalize this video by differentiating between pride and narcissism. Because you might be thinking, "At what point does believing in myself become dangerous?" Utilizing the work of another fantastic psychotherapist, Leon Garber, whose work I will put a link to in the description of this video, he says that pride comes before self-esteem. And pride is that feeling of joy you experience after a personal or a collective achievement. The reason pride comes before self-esteem is because, going back to the example we gave about basketball about 10 to 15 minutes ago, if you have one good basketball performance, you'll feel proud. But if you continue to have good basketball performances, you'll convince yourself that you're a good basketball player, enhancing your self-esteem.

But here's where things get a little bit tricky, because we have to introduce a popular word online nowadays: narcissism. At what point does pride become narcissism? Well, we need definitions. So what we mean by narcissism is narcissistic personality disorder, which is characterized by the exaggeration of your self-importance. Narcissism isn't the feeling of being proud after passing an exam or doing well on a particular day at work. It's the belief that no matter what you do, you are the most important person, and no matter what room you enter, you are the smartest person in that room. And the tricky thing we haven't mentioned already is the intense religious underpinnings to this word we have in our culture. Pride, and rightly so, because of course, many Christians see it as one of the deadly sins, and we're often warned against cultivating any sense of pride. But it's hard to imagine a world in which Einstein never felt proud of his achievements and motivated to discover more, or football teams never feel proud.

of their winning the title and thus spell themselves into forward positive momentum, or that you never feel proud of anything you do in your life.

So, what the therapist Leon Garra proposes, of course running contrary to a lot of cultural narratives, is you can feel proud of an achievement without exaggerating in your value. Appropriate pride doesn't have to snowball into fragile narcissism. So, what we're talking about here is a healthy assessment of your strengths and your weaknesses without discounting one or the other. For example, if you're a salesman, you can recognize you're not the best at cold calls while still cultivating a sense of pride in your ability to help people face to face.

To get technical, what we're differentiating between is authentic pride and hubristic pride. This one being the the one that's most demonized. Authentic pride is a recognition of the specific effort you've put in to achieve something. Hubristic pride is your grandiose self-assessment thinking, "Oh, I'm the greatest of all just because I've done this thing." So, when people argue against pride, they're not differentiating between the different types of pride. They're mainly arguing against this thing because, as Leon Garba says, people tend to imagine a life with too much pride but fail to consider a life without it.

And one of the main messages we hear in argument against pride is pride is at odds with future accomplishments. The standard view is if you allow yourself to feel pride, you'll get complacent and lazy. But just think about people with depression. When you're depressed, you experience intense self-doubt. So, when you allow yourself to feel a little bit of authentic pride, you create a spiral ladder of success. For example, you get yourself out of bed, you brush your teeth, and have a shower. That gives you the feeling of wanting to do a workout. That makes you feel proud of yourself to then treat yourself with a nutritious meal.

I'm saying this with the full understanding of the religious underpinning against the argument of pride, but when I analyze my own life, even when I consciously understand pride is a deadly sin and we should guard against it, I still naturally feel proud of myself for things. I don't know whether that's I have to go deeper into my spiritual development, but I just can't see a life in which no one feels proud of anything they do.

So, how can you cultivate authentic feelings of pride and guard against narcissism? Well, Leon Garber says there's a few things you can do. The first thing you need to do is you need to challenge your underlying beliefs and assumptions. As always, you might think, "If I feel satisfied and proud, won't it sap my motivation?" The short answer is no. Think about the hedonic treadmill we're always running on as human beings, always chasing for the next thing and next thing, never satisfied. It's not within our nature to be satisfied as human beings. Your personality traits don't change that much throughout your life. So, if you are the type of person who's a high achiever and a go-getter, you're likely always going to be that way.

Number two, you might think, "Won't feeling pride make me a bad person or a narcissist?" The trouble is that religion creates this dichotomy between good and bad in the sense of it sees people as either good or bad. But regardless of religious view, because we're talking about it from a psychological lens, is anyone ever truly good? Your authentic pride doesn't have to conflate with your belief in God. Remember, it's a fair assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

Thirdly, you might consider, "Did I dismiss an achievement because I didn't see it as good as another?" This is something known as disqualifying the positive. It's something your brain does where it ignores positive feedback and it only focuses on the negative. But to combat this, compare your current achievements to previous smaller ones, not things of higher magnitude.

And lastly, you might think, "Am I denying myself pride because of unrealistic expectations?" By unrealistic expectations, we mean perfectionism, which is of course very toxic. Through the lens of perfectionism, you'll postpone your feelings of pride until you achieve perfection across the board. But perfectionism is incredibly context-dependent, which means if you're waiting to achieve perfection across the board, you're going to be waiting forever until you allow yourself to feel pride. Think about it from an evolutionary point of view. An animal in one environment develops a thick fur, which means in a warmer, hotter environment, it's not able to flourish. Your perfectionism has adapted itself for you to thrive in one situation and it doesn't carry across in other situations or environments. So, train yourself, no matter how hard it is, to celebrate your smaller accomplishments.

The second thing you might like to do is something called mental time travel. Imagine your younger self thinking about who you are today. Would they feel proud of you? Would it surprise them to know the person you've eventually become and becoming? If that's hard to imagine, reflect back on your previous achievements. Could your younger self have imagined you achieving all of those things? Look at yourself through the eyes of your young younger self and marvel at who you are. And at times, you might be annoyed at the speed at which you're changing. But again, think about evolution. Does evolution happen quick or slowly? Happen slowly, silly.

And upon this point, we might as well add it in here. Don't compare apples to oranges, otherwise known as take a realistic look at your role models. Look at the people you admire and really consider how long did it take for them to become that person you now admire. That your heroes, no matter how great they are, didn't suddenly morph into their present selves like that. Look at their story through the lens of the obstacles they faced and the progression they had to go through. And if you hear the sound of hooves, assume it's a horse, not a zebra. Which is to say, when someone has achieved something great, assume it is because of an immense struggle and hard work, not just because of some innate talent.

There's three more things, but we'll speed them off. View your life realistically. Don't postpone your feeling of being proud of yourself until future success comes. Consider what do you like about your life and yourself now. Two, create pride time frames. If you are a bit ambivalent as to whether pride is just going to make you be very lazy and be at odds with future progress, create specific time frames in which to feel pride because it's not black and white as in you're either prideful and lazy or go-getter and unprideful. There's gray areas. So, when you achieve something, you might say, "Okay, for the next two days, I'm going to allow myself to feel that sense of pride and then get straight back to the next thing." When you're done, and based on the effort you put into the achievement, use that as a time frame for how long you'll allow yourself to feel pride.

And lastly, keep a record of your failures and achievements. Narcissism does not allow the recognition of weakness and failures. So, if you're worried about allowing yourself to feel prideful and slipping into the slippery slope of narcissism, each strength and thing you're proud of that you record, put a corresponding failure and weakness to balance it out. You can even go so far as sharing your list with other people to determine whether you should feel proud of something if you're really unsure. But to avoid the potential unhealthy obsessions that self-love can spark and pride, keep this book, Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, by your bedside table and read it every day to give yourself that balance.

Righty ho, let's summarize again. How does one summarize that? What we spoke about today was mainly authentic self-esteem, which is an attitude towards yourself, mainly comprised of worthiness and capability. I implored you to change your time perception of self-esteem from present to future-focused because becoming is better than being. Mainly, I want you to remember to love yourself, behave in ways you admire because remember, people with high self-esteem have high self-esteem because of their previous accomplishments, successes, and obstacles they faced.

But in more particular detail, the six pillars of self-esteem as highlighted by Nathaniel Brandon are: live with awareness, accept yourself, take responsibility, assert yourself, live intentionally, and act with integrity. And lastly, through the lens of figuring out what has affected your self-esteem levels to this day, you might like to see your self-esteem not as a given, but as an origin.

Thank you very much for your time and attention. I really appreciate it. I hope the value exchange was worth it. If you made it this far into the video, I would love to hear that you did so. So, go down to the comments and comment an emoji of a dragon and a dolphin, and your favorite emoji is the third one, so I can like it. Stay disciplined, playful, and dangerous.