What is self esteem? How do you define self esteem?
There are many definitions of self esteem out there but to put it simply, self esteem is what a person thinks of her/himself.
A person’s internal valuation of his or her self worth. An assessment of ‘worthiness’.It is as simple as that.
But where does this sense of worthiness come from? And how does one go about ‘estimating’ his or her self worth?
Similar to how most evaluations on just about anything are done, a person determines his or her self worth by first identifying categories that are considered important (qualities that important in a human being), and then measures and ‘benchmarks’ against others and the socially determined levels to determine how a person ‘fares’.
All this adds up and helps determine where a person stands in relation to others and hence, that will determine how much self esteem she or he has.
For better or worse, that is what is self esteem to most people.
Of course the reality of things isn’t as simple of that. We all know that the human behavior is often times very complex and anything but straightforward.
Where self esteem truly comes from
Often times a person’s sense of self esteem has nothing to do with the reality of things. In the end, it is really a self evaluation, which is subjective and can end up being biased.
The actual accuracy of the evaluation is another matter.
That is why we can see many cases of bright, beautiful, brilliant and successful women having low self esteem, while there are people who are expected to have self esteem issues but are instead always brimming with confidence.
How much self esteem a woman has at any point in time is also largely determined by the company she is with at the time.
If she is in the presence of smarter, more experienced and more powerful people, that woman’s self esteem drops. However when she is with others who he deems to be not as good as she is, she will feel better about herself.
Another point is many of the qualities that are deemed important (by society) to a person’s self esteem are actually not that all that important.
Most of these are determined by society such as beauty, power and money which are all superficial and does not have true value but only an illusion of value.
Due to these factors, the concept of self esteem can be very destructive. It is destructive because any one of us could end up thinking ourselves to be completely worthless based on;
- Self evaluations that are ultimately subjective and probably biased,
- Comparisons with others (without really knowing the other person well enough) on qualities that aren’t important
What I’m trying to say is, don’t be a victim to low self esteem. Instead, conquer and reap the benefits from it.
No matter how talented or brilliant someone is, if she has a low self esteem she/he will not get very far. To be the best that you can be, you must have a high sense of self worth.
That is why it is so important to invest time and effort to learn about self esteem and how to get more of it.
This is especially important if you tend to show the common low self esteem signs. If that is the case, then getting involved in self esteem activities may help overcome this.
At the end of the day, how much self esteem you have is based solely on you. It depends on how much of it you are willing to give yourself.
