Self Esteem

The past few decades has been filled with books and general blather about how important having good self-esteem is. How to build it in kids and how to ensure you have good levels of self esteem. In fact unpacking a box a few days ago I found a trophy from my first season of baseball that I got for "having a good attitude". Woo. I still distinctly remember the frustration as a six year old when the adults refused to keep score of our games and would refuse to tell us who won.

Their is an issue with this whole question of whether someone has "good" self-esteem or "bad" self-esteem. The issue is the question is flawed. The issue is not good vs bad, but whether you are focusing on self vs other. If your focus is on self, you by definition have already lost and are going to have problems. Even if you manage to develop a good level of self-esteem all you have managed to do is add yourself to the generation of incredible people this self-esteem focus has led to.

According to a study of one million high school seniors (circa 2004, so my age): 70% rated their leadership skills as "above average" (only 2% rated themselves below average). Additionally 60% rated themselves as being in the top 10% in "their ability to get along with others" and 25% rated themselves in the top 1%.

Having very high self-esteem is bad because you become delusional about your abilities and prideful. "But wait" you may say "isn't low self-esteem super bad?" Well, yes, yes it is, but not because of the reason you'd think. Both high and low self-esteem are bad for the same reason. Pride.

When someone has low self-esteem they are there because of a deep seated belief that they are "better than this" that they are "a disappointment" or "underachieving". It is all pride. It is all focus on self.

The solution is to stop asking the question entirely and start looking outside of ourselves. Seek ways to serve others. Seek relationships for the others sake. Seek G-d and His kingdom. That is where our esteem needs to be.