Link to the episode.
Hello, and welcome to order within navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis. Many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?
How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism these questions? And many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek?
Hello everyone. And welcome. I'm your host Brandon Ward. We got a great show to dig into today. Very excited about the topics looking at self-esteem, you know, it's interesting how so much of these topics overlap and interrelate to what we're doing and, and the work. Inner work. The, these concepts, the goal is to hopefully find things that resonate with you, looking at all of these people who have studied and done work related to mastering ourselves and actualizing ourselves our best version of ourselves.
And so doing that by sharing all these different ideas, these different people, we can hope to find tools. That can aid us on our journey of selfhood and expression. And so today it's going to be the first of a three part series built around the work of Nathaniel Brandon. We're gonna be focusing on his book, the pillars, the six pillars of self-esteem.
And so it'll be broken up into three parts. The first part is going to be the basics of self-esteem from his perspective. The second part will be. internal factors of self-esteem and then the third part will be external factors on self-esteem. So I'm excited about this three part series. It's the first series version I've done of the show.
So hopefully y'all like it, but let's get into it. So first and foremost, Nathaniel, Brandon was. a psychologist. He studied. Self-esteem. So he was born in 1930. He's a Canadian American citizen. He passed away in December 3rd, 2014. So it's been almost 10 years now. And hi, he, his whole career was spanned over seven decades and I'm just reading from his.
His home, his website, Brandon focused on this, on the critical need to understand the psychology of self-esteem and its relationship to our daily lives. Through this work, he contributed to the evolution of the concept from security to greater levels of clarity and acceptance during his career.
Nathaniel, Brandon wrote nearly 20 books on self-esteem. in addition to his extensive work as a writer, he was a lecturer, a therapist, and a corporate consultant specializing in assisting modern businesses employ the principles of self-esteem to achieve greater levels of success. He also founded the Brandon Institute for self-esteem and counseling center in Los Angeles.
He was a thinker, compassionate teacher of rational values and ultimately a champion for happiness. He says his mission is to inspire readers, to honor their life and happiness. And I have to say that his work really aligns with that mission. And there's a lot of power in, in the work that he's done so far.
So there's, hopefully you'll find much to gain from this work and. What it means. So with that being said, I wanna start with the definition of how, how Nathaniel defines self-esteem. And so self-esteem fully realized is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life, more specifically self-esteem is one confidence in our ability to.
Confidence in our ability to cope with the basic challenges of life and confidence in our right to be successful and happy. The feeling of being worthy, deserving, and entitled to assert our needs and wants, achieve our values and joy, the fruits of our efforts. Now I love that because ultimately it's focusing in there on two things.
It's looking at our abilities. That we have our mind, our emotions, our thoughts, and then also that we are worthy of happiness. That there's a sense of worth around who we are and, and our desire and our entitlement to assert our needs and wants. Right. So that's, the entitlement can be a sticky word sometimes, but because of that, He, what he's describing though, is entitled to assert our needs and wants not entitled to things from others, but entitled to assert our needs and wants to express ourselves to look out and to care for ourselves.
And so what he focuses on. Is the, this basic pattern and around self-esteem. And so we're gonna go through a lot of, there's a lot of pieces here to unpack. So I'm this, this may be a little bit of a longer episode. I'm so lot to uncover a lot of notes that I have for the show here that I was writing out as I was reading through.
So the first thing that he wants to talk about that we're gonna talk about here is what he calls the basic pattern. and it's the power of this conviction about one self lies in the fact that it is more than a judgment or a feeling, it is a motivator, it inspires behavior. And I think that's one of the biggest things that reading through his work is understanding that self-esteem is a, is a feeling it's a.
It's it's more than that. It's, it's the driving force behind everything that we do. It influences how we experience things. It influences our relationships. It influences the work that we do. It influences the way we experience things. It influences how we are able to enjoy or not enjoy the things of our creation or our successes or our achievements.
So it's truly the baseline. For how we're interacting with life, which is why it's so important to learn what it is. And then put the time in developing these pieces. So I love this here, right? It's it's a, it's talking about trusting our mind. So it's, as if I trust my mind and judgment, I am more likely to operate as a thinking, being exercising, my ability to think, bringing appropriate awareness to my activities.
My life works better. This reinforces trust in my mind. So it's built around. the concept that we are trusting and engaging with ourselves. That's the whole idea of self-esteem is that it's driven from within it's built around our relationship with ourselves. And that's, what's funny is all these other, there's so many other tools and, and books that I've talked about on the show already.
And it all ties back to that. Common relationship, the relationship with ourself and the work that we have there around that relationship. And so that's what this shows about, and it's interesting to see how he describes, you know, high self-esteem versus low self-esteem. And ultimately when he's describing is that high self-esteem individual.
Are more likely to persist in the face of difficulties and challenges. They understand that things take time, there's process. They don't give up so easily. And what ends up happening is they persist through challenges and they ultimately end up achieving more because they persist. They understand that they have a trust in their abilities to solve problems, to think, to learn, to grow.
So they persist through difficulties, whereas a low self-esteem person. We'll be more likely to give up and not really try, not really give their best because ultimately they don't have that confidence. They don't have that belief that trust in themselves. The relationship with themselves is weakened is broken.
Therefore they don't have the reserves to push through challenging times because they don't think very highly of themselves. They don't believe in their abilities. And so research shows that high self-esteem subjects persist at a task significantly longer than self-esteem than low self-esteem subjects.
If I persevere the likelihood is that I will succeed more often than I fail. If I don't, the likelihood is that I will fail more often than I succeed either way. My view of my myself is reinforced. And there's some concepts here that we're gonna talk about kind of the, the self-fulfilling prophecy around what this means.
so the impact of self-esteem and some general observations from Nathaniel, Brandon. He describes high self-esteem and the characteristics as rationality, realism, intuitiveness, creativity, independence, flexibility, the ability to manage change, admit, and can correct our mistakes, benevolence and cooperation.
And then we can, we can unpack a little bit of that, right? There's a, we'll go a little deeper in some of those pieces later in the show here, and then low self-esteem is irrationality blindness to reality rigidity, fear of new, new, and unfamiliar information, inappropriate conformity, or inappropriate rebellion over controlling or overcom, complicit fear and hostility.
So very different, right? Very, very opposite ends of the scale from that perspective. it's then when you, so those are kind of the basic underlying aspects of what he describes as low and high self-esteem individuals. And then you look at in terms of love and relationships, and then how this ties into work and love and relationships.
And often in love because of that, wherever we stand on that scale on our, on our self-esteem scale, we're going to attract. Similar people and, and whatever that is, whether it's low or high will ultimately end up confirming our biases, our beliefs around this process. And so it's, it's interesting how, especially with love and work, we sabotage so much around where we are internally, how we feel internally, our beliefs that we have internally.
And so because of that, we end. creating these self-fulfilling prophecies. We basically what we fear becomes true. And so that's true in love and that's true in work. And as an example in love, let's say I'm a low self-esteem individual and I'm with someone that cares about me. And they truly love me and that person.
I mean, let's take my wife. For example, my wife does things every day to show that she loves and cares for me. She's kind, she's thoughtful. She's considerate. She's caring of our child. She's caring of our house. She understands the work that I do. We respect one another. Now I embrace that. I, I love her for that.
And I'm thankful for her for that. But if I didn't believe that I was worthy of that, love that care, no matter what she did, no matter the actions she took every day, no matter what she said to me, no matter how much she loved me, no matter how much she was affectionate towards me, it would never be enough because inside, I believe I am not worthy of that.
Love, therefore. Eventually she would be wor worn down because no matter what she did, and she would ultimately most likely leave me. This happens all the time in loving relationships, the same thing with. we self sabotage work or promotions based on our relationship and beliefs of ourselves. We ultimately can destroy good things because of how we think and feel about ourselves.
And if we get a promotion and we don't believe that we're worthy of that promotion, we will often go about doing things to undermine our work. We will make mistakes. We will drop into lazy patterns. There's all kinds of things that we can do. To self sabotage when we don't believe we're worthy or deserving of that promotion or that position, whatever it may be.
So it's interesting how these things tie together and love and work. And ultimately. How we create the pro we, we effectively create the beliefs that we have for ourselves. We ultimately end up expressing it regardless of what it is, whether it's a strong belief in ourself or a weak belief in ourself, they ultimately end up becoming true.
And this is something that I love here. It says the tragedy of many people's lives is that given a choice between being right and having an opportunity to be happy. They invariably choose being right. That is one of the ultimate satisfactions. They allow themselves. That is the one ultimate satisfaction instead of being happy, they prove to be right.
And you see that so much in our world right now. So many people are more focused on being right than being happy. And that's. According to Nathaniel Brandon's work, much of that is tied back to low self-esteem. And it's interesting because when you have a low sense of self, you're determined to have the world submit to your way to prove that you are right, because you are depending upon the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others more than we are ourselves.
All right. So. it's interesting too. Moving on a little bit here. Brandon views. The, and this is weird because his last name's Brandon, my first name's Brandon. So I'm not talking about myself. I LOA that the third party. So I'm talking about Nathaniel, Brandon here, not myself. I would say myself anyway. So the coming back to the work here, he, Nathaniel Brandon views self-esteem as a basic need.
That is important because it's, it's how we function and hit from his perspective. It's how we effectively function or not low. Self-esteem really inhibits our ability to effectively function. So we can't live without food and water. We have to, we, we need it to survive. We can't go without. Now self-esteem is not in the same line as that we can live without self-esteem, but can we function at a high level?
Can we live and be happy? Our abilities will be greatly handicapped if we have low self-esteem. And that's the biggest point here is that why? It's not like food and water that it's not optional. It's very much like if we have a mineral deficiency or a vitamin deficiency, we are going to be seriously handicapped if we have low self-esteem.
And so, because we need self-esteem to function properly in the world, we have to nurturing it and developing it is crucial. And so that's why low self-esteem can impair our ability to function on a day to day basis. it handicaps our ability to handle hard times. And that's a big piece too, is that we're effectively pulling from an empty, well, an empty, well within ourself, the, the, when we have high self-esteem when we develop high self-esteem, when we put in the work that's required to do this, it's not something that just happens.
We have a deeper well and reserve to pull. . And so because of that, we can function at a higher level. We have more to give, whereas low self-esteem people often have very little to give. And so the interesting thing is, is I, this is a lifelong journey. I will never stop doing this work, but I've had, I was very low self-esteem for many parts of my life.
I've since changed that I have a lot of work to do still. There's still things inside of. That I'm working on. It'll never end. We all do this. It's a lifelong journey as I had mentioned, but I can reflect on those times when I was younger and I, I was very down on myself. My relationship with myself was low and I had such little capacity to handle the struggles of life because my reserve was tapped.
It was minimal. and it's interesting to come back on the other side of this too much. Self-esteem can you have too much self-esteem and so I think there's a confusion around when people assume what self-esteem is. And often too much self-esteem usually is, is seen as boasting or bragging, but from Brandon's perspective, that's just a sign of insecurity.
You don't need to belittle or attack other people. He, he says here, persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others. They do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is in being who they are, not in being better than someone else.
So. When we think of too much, self-esteem really what we're looking at is people who are bragging and boasting, and most likely, very insecure within themselves. And they're looking to overcompensate. So too much, self-esteem really, isn't a thing it's, it's ultimately being wounded
and you're trying to compensate for that. But when, when you have confidence, you just feel good about who you. You don't need to boast and brag and, and, and do these things to do that. And so. The interesting thing is, is that the more insecure you are, the more you kind of have to put others down, you may feel less around other people who are confident.
So if you're a low self-esteem individual around a high self-esteem individual, you're naturally going to feel less about yourself and feel less then just by being around them because you, that sense that, that there's a visceral difference in low versus high self-esteem individuals. And so this is where.
Envy achievement comes into play too. And how that actually attracts, if you are a high achieving person, it does bring about potential attacks to you based on that achievement. because ultimately people are envious of you for creating and using things that you have, that they do not have. They're living from a sense of lack.
You're living from a sense of abundance and creating. And so that can create envious situations that we have to be mindful of. Another piece that's interesting too, is that. there's a component of never being satisfied when we have low self-esteem and, and a big piece of what Nathaniel talks about and much of his work is that there are things that inspire us or not based on influences in our life.
A lot of times we're driven by what our parents says. Our society says, and it's not what we truly want. And in those instances, people who seem to be successful. They are seeking to prove others wrong. They are looking for validation from others. And if that's the pursuit that is a void that can never be filled.
And you see that so much, the, the lack of satisfaction. In our achievements and when we have low self-esteem, it also takes away our ability to enjoy those achievements, because it's never enough. It's not about enjoying those moments. It's about being proving more and more and more worth outside of ourselves.
When
we have unconflicted, self-esteem joy is our motor not. that's the difference. There's a, it's, it's our desire to express ourselves, to live, to be who we are. And so it's, self-expression not self avoidance or self justification that we're seeking to achieve these things. Those are two very different motivators.
One is seeking to express itself in the world and share what lives within the other is seeking to prove or justify. ourselves or avoid that lack of self within. So we use achievement as a means to distract ourselves or sex or video games or any of the things that we can use today. There are lots of tools that we can use today to avoid ourselves in this work.
And ultimately that need to prove our work can never be filled. It's an endless chase that can never be filled. This void can only be filled from within that's. What I learned. Through all the things that I was doing by chasing money and positions and women and, and all of the stuff that I was doing, I realized that I was doing a, playing a, a fatal game.
That's impossible to win in that way. He also talks about something called the survival value of self-esteem. And so. It either empowers or limits our abilities to meet our needs. And so that's the component of the survival value. And that's where he was talking about earlier is the basic need of this.
And so in the modern world, this is, what's very interesting, and this is what I love about it, cuz it really ties back to the things that I talk about in this show is. the modern world has advanced so much. And what we're dealing with now is advancing work. That's increasingly more intellectually driven information driven compared to physical labor requires higher levels of self-esteem to navigate that because ultimately the world now requires us to innovate to.
To manage ourselves to be personally responsible to self-direct go look at job descriptions today, even entry level jobs, and they're written like you're running the company the way that you have to think and do, and act on your feet and be creative and be independent and manage yourself and do all of these things.
The world now requires us to do so much more because of the complexity, the competition, the sophistication. so we have to, we need self-esteem to effectively survive and function and do well in our world. , this is why the need has become economic and psychological. It's not just a psychological need anymore.
Our economic and material survival truly depends upon our ability to have a strong sense of self and a high level of self-esteem. And don't worry, like this is the point we get to in the other parts of the show talking and developing this self-esteem right. But this is elaborating on these ideas and concept.
All right. So the next phase that we're, that we're gonna talk about here is the meaning of self-esteem kind of the two pillars that we're we're talking about. And so the two pillars that we're gonna discuss currently are the self efficacy and self respect. So the basic confidence to face life's challenges is self-efficacy.
The other sense is of being. Worthy of happiness. And that is self respect. Self-efficacy means confidence in the functioning of my mind and my ability to think, understand, learn, choose, and make decisions, confidence in my ability to understand the facts of reality that fall within this fear of my interest and needs self trust and self reliance.
So that is a huge it's it's effectively. The confidence in our abilities to do things to live, to think to. And then self respect is the assurance of my value, an AF affirmative attitude toward my right to live and to be happy, comfort and appropriately asserting my thoughts wants and needs the feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright, what beautiful definitions, and also powerful definitions to live from ultimately with where we are and in the world today and how these things can help us grow.
all right, so he's got a formal definition here too. That's kind of deeping going deeper for self self-evaluation and it's self-esteem is the disposition to experience one self as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy OFS. whereas, so that's his perspective. That's the disposition of self-esteem it's our ability to experience life, but then low self-esteem makes people feel wrong or like as a person, their existence is wrong.
Like they, that's why life is painful. I remember. one of the things that I always consistently felt before I really began this work was that life was painful. Existence was painful. I felt this pain around living and being, it was very difficult to put my finger on, but all I felt was a constant suffering, a constant.
It was just a thread of a, a baseline of pain. This is where a lot of these suicidal thoughts came from because ultimately the only escape at points I thought were to perish so that I would no longer feel the things that I'm feeling. It also talks goes back in, in thinking about self-esteem internally and how it's that baseline motivator, how it's the underlying feeling to our existence?
I was low self-esteem, so therefore I was feeling that way. And so this all ties back to the root need of self-esteem. And so there's two basic facts. From Daniel Nathaniel Brandon's perspective, we depend upon our ability to master our environment for survival. So thinking the ability to think is crucial to our survival.
Second, we are not wired to do this automatically. We must choose personal responsibility is the second fact of that. So thinking and taking responsibility are two crucial elements that are rooted in the needs of our self-esteem. So when you think about life and all the complexity for our basic needs, like all the things that E imagine, electricity, water, food, all the farming, all the technology, all the things that have to go into.
What create our everyday basic needs for life that didn't just happen accidentally. It was done with intention with thought all of that requires thought, which is why our ability to think is so crucial to survival and also our ability to choose morality because ultimately that morality, that rightness creates that inner feeling about ourselves and how we're living.
it's, it comes back to the ability to turn up or down our consciousness so we can turn these things up and down like a dial. We have a, we, we can seek awareness or not. We can think, or not, we can respect reality or not. We can honor ourselves or not. We can honor facts or not. We can seek to improve and learn from our mistakes or not.
All of these things. That's the choice. So we have the ability to think, and then we have the ability to choose how we respond and engage with life. It's not wired in us. . And so there's a direct correlation between our choices and our existence. And this is how we build self-esteem over time. As we have to go through this process to learn, to make these choices every day.
And so. our self-esteem can literally rise and fall based on those choices. That's why periods in our life. We may have higher or lower self-esteem depending upon how we're living, depending upon the choices we're making, depending upon how we live each and every day. And the crucial thing is, is that our security can rest only in our abilities to.
Our with the world, as it is our ability to learn and grow is the most secure piece of life we can create for ourselves. That's the foundation of security is knowing that I have the ability to learn and grow and think, and I can handle the challenges of life no matter what comes my way. That's a piece of self.
Our sense of worth drives the relationships of all kinds. And that worth really dictates how we feel in those relationships. Do we believe we're deserving of loving relationships, of, of healthy, expressive work work that we enjoy of having a high quality life? Our worth is so crucial to this as well, because ultimately that's the underlying feeling of how we, we will interact with.
The world and all that we see around us
that worth will ultimately depend on it will dictate how we feel about our happiness too. It will drive how we feel in those moments. and it's interesting because when you look at the, that worth and then tying that back to the desire to be moral and right. And how it makes us feel inside it arises early in our development.
It's not a social construct. It. children begin exploring very early, the idea of right and wrong and exploring what impacts things in a positive or negative way based on how we respond to them and how the, and how, whatever they're engaging with responds. They're seeking that path of right and wrong early.
and because of that, like that morality piece matters deeply to our sense of self and worth. That's how all this ties back together. And so it's our ability to choose to think is what allows us to effectively healthily build self-esteem or not. so another piece that he talks about here, which I found to be very interesting is pride looking at pride.
But before we do, before we jump in, I'm gonna, I wanna read this thing real quick about he has this nice summary on three basic observations. If we respect ourselves, we tend to act in ways that conform and reinforce disrespect, such as requiring others to deal with us appropriately. If we do not respect ourselves, we tend to act in ways that lower our sense.
Our sense of our own value, even further, such as accepting or sanctioning inappropriate behavior towards us, by others, thereby confirming and reinforcing our negativity. If we wish to raise the level of our self respect, we need to act in ways that will cause it to rise. And this begins with a commitment to the value of our own person, which is then expressed through congruent behavior.
I love that. It's our ability to think our ability to choose and align with what is right within us. Morality and ethics are a part of our early development. And so it's important that we understand that for the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generate it out of fantasy and self delusion.
And that ties into pride and healthy versions. Pride. And from Nathaniel Brandon's perspective, healthy pride is feeling good about our progress and our self accomplishment, who we. For the sake of what we've done for the relationship that we have with ourselves, not to brag, to boast, but because we're proud of what we've created.
We're proud of who we are. We're proud of the way we think the way we live, we're proud of ourselves inside. It's not an external need. It's an internal piece. So there are healthy levels of. because it's rooted in reality, it doesn't deny our flaws. It's not delusional. It's genuinely feeling good about who we are as a person.
So pride can be healthy in instances where it's done with a genuine nature and expression of who we are and a love for who we are. Like, we should be proud of who we are when we're living authentically and genuine. That's a wonderful feat to achieve. All right. So the last two bits here that we're gonna cover, and then I'm gonna end the show.
Cause I know this is gonna be the longest show I've recorded yet, but there's just so much to unpack so much good stuff in here. We're looking at self-esteem in action and that, and then we're gonna cover the, the illusions of self-esteem and then we'll talk about and then we'll get into part two next week, which I'm very excited about.
So there's an interesting thing though, about relaxation. And that he brings up quite often. And it's talking about relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves and that we're not war at war within who we are. And I see that a lot. You can tell when you look at someone, whether they're relaxed, wherever they are, and it's an indicator of the relationship, what they have with themselves, relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves and that we're not at war with who we.
chronic tension, conveys a message of some form of internal split, some form of self avoidance, or self repudiation, some aspect of the self being disowned or held on a very tight leash. And so that relaxation. Is an indicator potentially of our relationship with ourselves. So that's something to, to look at and observe in ourselves and in others.
And so getting back to self-esteem in action, these were some of the pieces that he, we talked about earlier, rationality realism, intuitiveness, creativity, his, he talks a lot about strong reality orientation as a basic characteristic of healthy self-esteem. Being rational and connected to reality is a, is an intrinsic intrinsic value of high self-esteem.
We don't deny reality. And rationality means we are reasonable. It doesn't mean we are accepting dogma, but we are being rational and thoughtful about things. We are looking at facts through. So we're looking at alarm's going off here. So it's the generation of principles from concrete facts, induction the application of principle to concrete facts, deduction, and the relating of new knowledge and information to our existing concept of knowledge.
So that's the essence of rationality is we are open to information. We look at facts as they are, and we allow ourselves to move through them and discuss realistically where we. in our lives. So rational reality facts matter more than our beliefs. We're seeking truth more than we are the desire to be.
Right. And so that's a beautiful thing that means we have control over so much of this. And so even looking at more of some of these things, so realism again, we're looking at reality, we're addressing reality. We are being, we are honoring reality, no matter what. Because we know we can handle it. That's the difference when we, when we have self high self-esteem we embrace reality because we know we have the ability to handle it.
This comes in with intuitiveness, creativity, independence, flexibility. All of these are abilities that can, can expand. Or contract based upon where we are in our self-esteem movement and, and work here because intuitiveness is an example, same thing with creativity, where we're tapping into something that's beyond our, our, our conscious state.
We're leveraging deeper intelligence of ourselves. That's a very powerful place to be. Creativity is also very it's. It's. the productions of our own mind. People with high self-esteem tend to value their own creativity, their own productions of their own mind, whereas low self-esteem individuals do not.
They doubt themselves. They don't think that they have the worthiness of it. They're not worth, it's not worth, it's not valuable what they're creating. And then you tie in independence. Flexibility. You're light on your feet. When you have this ability, when you trust yourself, you flow with things you think freely, because again, you trust yourself, you rely upon your own abilities to think and feel so you don't need all this external authority to lie, to rely on.
You rely on yourself.
It allows us to handle change. Correct mistakes cooperate with other individuals because ultimately again, it ties back to the relationship with ourselves. That's truly the power of this is that it ties back to the relationship with ourselves and how we feel about who we are. And the interesting thing is, is people who tend to hate themselves.
hate others, murders, violence, all this. You can't do that unless you truly hate yourself. If you love yourself and you respect yourself, you, you, you value yourself. You come to value that in other people. That's why Bence benevolence and cooperativeness comes out of this because when we value ourselves, it's natural to value other people because how can you not?
It's another self. Who you've learned through your own relationship with yourself and you know, that that person has a relationship with themselves as well. And so they have a right to be, and you seek to honor them based on who they are. It's a very powerful process. All right. So now getting into the, the final piece here and looking at the illusions of self-esteem and really the, the underlying factor here is.
We're driven. Most people who are well, actually it's not most it's when we are low self-esteem, we're driven by fear. We are, we are driven by fear all of our actions and, and what we do is driven by fear, fear of life, fear of self fear of others, fear of our minds, fear of our emotions, fear of our sexuality.
It's driven by fear. It's a lack of, of trust and belief in ourselves to handle. What we have been given and who we are. And therefore we live in a fearful state, closed small afraid because of this, our feelings will encourage or discourage actions and thoughts. So if we're driven by fear, we're gonna be living in a very fearful way.
We're gonna be thinking, living, being very fearful.
So that's why these first steps are so hard. To raise that level of, of consciousness of self-esteem because ultimately it's in that moment, it's the, all those feelings that are pushing against us that we have to push through early on in this process. That's why it's so hard in the beginning.
And there's an interesting thing too, this last bit here that he talks about. So it's, it's understanding that when we have low self-esteem, most of what we're doing is being driven by fear. It's a fear of self and fear of others, and that the first steps are going to be the diff most difficult to overcome because we have all these fearful feelings.
But then the last part is, is about suedo self-esteem. And I think of, when I think about this, I think. Hollywood. I think about politicians. It's, it's projecting the illusion of self-efficacy and self respect without the reality inside there's turmoil, but they're fooling everyone. through doing certain things, appearing to be highly confident and respectful and efficient in all of these things, simply covering up the deep insecurity that they feel within themselves.
And what is driven by this is the way people go about doing this is they're seeking external. Signals to validate that they're a high quality person, high, high esteem person. So they're seeking to replace self-esteem with material, achievements, status, social achievements, popularity, sex, all of these things they're seeking to.
create the illusion of success and high value person, a high self-esteem person through their external achievements. And when you look at politicians, that's all they're doing. They're effectively trying to constantly show us the things that they've done to show their worth. It's a bizarre thing. And then I think it's so self-esteem is a very personal.
Peace. It's internal it's relationship to ourselves. It's not about others. And Soweto's self-esteem is focused solely on others, the perspective and opinions of others. And when you, and the interesting thing about this is that no matter what. People tell you if you have low self-esteem. I said this earlier, it won't matter.
You won. If everyone loves you, it won't matter. I think a prime example of this brilliant actress for her time is mil Marilyn Monroe. Everyone thought she was so gorgeous and beautiful, but she did not inside believe or feel that she was very troubled, had many addiction issues and ultimately. I mean, it there's a lot of debate about how that happened, but end ended her life early because of a very deep lack of.
Esteem. And she was so bent on getting the approval and acceptance of others and she truly was loved and, and people respected and thought she was gorgeous and, and an, a talented actress and all of these things, but it was never enough. There's so much of that in Hollywood and in politics. It's interesting how, when we're trying to fake self-esteem, it's driven by external appearances, external materialist.
Achievements as opposed to the internal relationship and strength that we build through developing self-esteem. All right. Y'all. This one last piece here, which I love innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. And ultimately it's the, the strength and ability to be absence of supportive feedback from their social environments.
They're more willing to follow their vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community, unexplored spaces do not frighten them because they have that confidence in themselves. And that's where we're going. That's your potential? that's you, the, the genius within you is waiting to be tapped.
It's just, we have to cultivate it. And that's why I'm doing this. And that's the aim here is to help you cultivate your inner genius, your inner power, your inner creator, because we all have one it's all within us. And it's all there waiting to be tapped. It's. We gotta take the time, the effort and the commitment to do it.
So I hope you enjoy this tune in next week for part two, where we're gonna be looking at internal influences on self-esteem part three will come out after that. And that will be external influences on self-esteem. So I really hope you all are enjoying the show. I certainly appreciate your support and hopefully you're finding some value in it.
And until next time y'all. Thank you for listening to order within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing rating and subscribing new episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM. Eastern standard time until next time y'all.