Photo Alexander Grey
Sounds weird, right? We all have heard about the importance of boosting people’s self-esteem. For example, the idea that everyone’s a winner for participating and gets a medal. So how could high self-esteem get in the way of our success?
A bit of background first
From the outset, let’s be clear. High self-esteem is usually a good thing and low self-esteem can make life harder. Self-esteem is how we feel about and value ourselves. If we have high-self-esteem, we feel good about ourselves.
But, if we want to get things done we need self-confidence. Whereas self-esteem is inward looking and about valuing ourselves, self-confidence is outward-looking and about taking a bet on ourselves performing in the future. As the psychologist Ian Robertson says “liking yourself is fine if you just want to feel good. But if you’re going to get things done, you need confidence.”
Growing your self-confidence will grow your self-esteem. Reaching goals and performing challenging tasks will elevate how you feel about yourself. However, growing self-esteem will not necessarily grow self-confidence. You can value yourself and feel good about yourself, without being confident that you will perform well at a particular task. To add to all this, low self-esteem goes hand-in-hand with low self-confidence.
So, back to the original question
Is high self-esteem holding you back? Shoring up high self-esteem can take mental effort that could have been put to use taking action and achieving goals. Additionally, novel research at Northwestern University USA showed that the simple thought of doing some desirable activity in the future can boost our self-esteem, give us the feel-good factor about ourselves and reduce our need to actually carry out the desirable action.
Having high self-esteem is a good thing but, if it’s not supported by accomplishments, then it is of dubious worth.
What to do?
Aim for increasing your self-confidence. The good news! Self-confidence is one of the 10 components of emotional intelligence, meaning you can work on it and move the dial.
Uncover your values and set challenging goals that mean something to you and stretch you. Get the wins. This also means not setting goals that will be impossible to reach as this can doom you to failure (perfectionists take note!). Take the time to celebrate the wins.
Dispense with any ideas that your emotional and intellectual capabilities are fixed. Adopt a growth mindset. Work on anxiety, as it saps confidence and gets us to retreat, resulting in experiencing fewer confidence-building opportunities. It’s worth remembering, as Dr Martyn Newman, psychologist with RocheMartin says, “everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.”
And as regards liking yourself better? That’s important too. Liking yourself more will help you perform better at what you do. Learn not to depend on other’s approval to accept yourself. Consider expressing yourself more, instead of proving yourself.
All the above can be progressed with a good coach.
What is one thing you can do differently today, or start doing, to set you on your journey? Taking that first step...and the next...and the next is crucial. This is captured by the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi in his quote “The road appears with the first step.” As the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan said “It is easier to act your way into a new way of feeling than to feel yourself into a new way of acting.”
James O'Boyle MBA MSc
Emotionally Agile You Newletter - A smorgasbord of tools, techniques and scientifically driven advice to help you thrive.
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