Podcast Transcript for Ep. 17
The Pillars of Self Esteem - Part Five - External Influences | Ep. 17
[00:00:00]
[00:00:43] Welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with order within, we are now on. The final part of the five-part series on self-esteem. Hopefully you found it valuable so far as we unpack the dynamics of self-esteem. And the practices that we can leverage on a daily basis to influence self-esteem in a positive direction.
[00:01:08] The last episode that we're going to discuss today is around. The external influences. On our self-esteem. The main components of this are going to be parenting teaching psychotherapy.
[00:01:27] And culture and society as a whole. We're really going to focus in on those first pieces. Around parenting and schooling. And then eventually I'm going to do a separate episode where I go deep into societal influences, cultural influences on self-esteem and how a culture can impact our self esteem and how it.
[00:01:48] Moves us or takes us further or closer to healthy. Self-esteem. So with that being said, though, the first component of this is going to be parenting and nurturing a child. Self-esteem now. This is relevant, whether you're a parent or not. If you're a parent, this is fantastic because you can look to apply these learnings and principles to raising your own child. If you are not, you can use these.
[00:02:15] This knowledge as a way to reflect upon your own childhood. And realize things that may be holding you back today because the stories that we learned. And accepted as children.
[00:02:28] Influence us throughout our lives until we recognize them and move forward. So starting off with nurturing a child self-esteem. Nathaniel Branden goes on to say the proper aim of parental nurturing. Is to prepare a child for independent survival as an adult. An infant begins in a condition of total dependency.
[00:02:49] If his or her upbringing in successful, the young man or woman will have evolved out of that dependency into a self-respecting and self responsible human being who is able to respond to the challenges of life competently and enthusiastically. He, or she will be, self-supporting not merely financially, but intellectually and psychologically.
[00:03:10] I love that definition. That is the aim here for this work is for us to be healthy. Self responsible accountable individuals who are empowered to live the lives that we truly desire.
[00:03:22] As parents. And really as humans are our primary aim as humans is to evolve into selfhood this deeper self. Now. This process of selfhood can absolutely be. Exposed interrupted, broken, alienated, all of those things. And what ends up happening is as people we feel. That fragment that.
[00:03:51] Splitting that alienation that we carry within ourselves. Those feelings that we carry around, alienation separation isolation. Are often the way that we feel about our true self from within.
[00:04:03] Relative to parenting an old and excellent adage is the effective parenting is that can effective parenting consists. First of giving a child roots to grow from, and then wings to fly the security of a firm base and the self-confidence one day to leave it. That is crucial. Our goal is to provide the security and then the ability to flourish on our own. If you grew up in a childhood or if a home.
[00:04:28] That did not nurture those pieces you will have work to do as adults. That's the sad reality of this. This work is hard. It takes commitment and dedication to this, but it's absolutely doable. And the fruits that it bears are truly. Undescribable. And it's well worth it. Having the feelings of confidence, strength, peace.
[00:04:53] Excitement. All of those things can come from doing this work.
[00:04:58] So a child can experience the appropriate balance of protection and freedom, or have the overprotectiveness that influence. Infant and tile. Oh, my goodness infantiles rises them. So keeps them childlike. Or the under protectiveness that demands of the child resources that they may at not exist. And we'll talk a little bit more about that.
[00:05:20] Such experiences as well as others, we will discuss in that sense around how under protectiveness can.
[00:05:30] Impact children growing up.
[00:05:32] So a big focus of this as the antecedents of self-esteem. So the basis, the foundation and. And this basis it's based on. Stanley Cooper Smith's study on the antecedents of self-esteem. And so the five conditions associated with high self-esteem in children are the child experience is total acceptance of thoughts, feelings, and the value of his or her person. That doesn't mean we agree with them, but we accept them as they are.
[00:05:58] The child operates in the context of clearly defined and enforced limitation limits that are fair, non oppressive and negotiable. The child is not given unrestricted freedom. There are boundaries. We have a society that currently exists without boundaries and it's, we're all suffering for it.
[00:06:17] The child experience has respect for his or her dignity as a human being. The parents do not use violence or Hume, humiliation, or ridicule to make them feel a certain way to try and control them, manipulate them. The parents uphold high standards and high expectations in terms of behavior, and performance, their attitude is not anything goes. They have both moral and performance expectations that they convey and a respectful, benevolent and non oppressive manner. If you don't have a child, this is the standard that we must uphold, regardless.
[00:06:46] This is the way that we must live. If we are serious about being the change in the world and giving the world what it needs today. And the fifth one is the parents themselves tend to enjoy a high level of self-esteem. They model self-efficacy and self-respect, they lead by examples. They are living examples for those children.
[00:07:06] And that's the key here. And so the practices that we've discussed in the prior three, well, there's four parts. The first was explaining what self-esteem is. And then the past three episodes we've discussed and dived into the six practices. Those practices provide. A foundation to parenting, whether it's ourselves or our children.
[00:07:29] And by living to that. And honoring those practices. They, today we can help build that self-esteem in our children and in ourselves. It's. The basic safety and security of.
[00:07:45] Of where we are with the first condition of life is for children is to have that basic safety and security. They are totally dependent upon their parents. And so that's the first aspect of work that we have to do as parents. And if you look at this ourselves, we also have to provide that basic safety and security for our own wellbeing.
[00:08:05] One of the things that Nathaniel Branden talks about is his work with adults is the long-term effects of one form of trauma associated with the frustration. Of this need a child's repeated experience of terror at the hands of adults. So instead of basic safety and security, they were terrorized, they were abused. They were mistreated.
[00:08:28] And that can break a child's trust. And if you yourself were abused, mistreated, traumatized at a young age. Uh, Those wounds. May still be hurting you today and understanding that experience can limit the way you live today. Bye. Those lingering pains, that lingering trauma. That has never been honored, felt.
[00:08:52] And embraced.
[00:08:55] So it's there's. Really two ways that typically this happens. Is the environment. Of the choice of which the child grew up in the treatment they received in that environment. So that's the one component of it. And then the. Second aspect. Is the innate disposition to experience anxiety. There is individual thresholds within individuals.
[00:09:20] On whether it's higher or lower in their ability to experience anxiety, trauma, things of that nature in different ways. So it's the experience, the environment that we grew up within and our own individual capacity to experience these things. So it's understanding. Where we are. Through awareness and reco re recollecting our experiences as children.
[00:09:45] And. Identifying these patterns or these pieces that may have influenced our childhoods that could be lingering today.
[00:09:53] This is a good piece here that he says the greater child's terror and the earlier it is experienced, the harder, the task of building a strong and healthy sense of self to learn the six practices on the foundation of an all consuming sense of powerlessness. Traumatic powerlessness is very difficult.
[00:10:10] It is against this destructive feeling that good parenting aims to protect a child. And if that is what you experienced growing up, then getting some help, having. Some support around this process to unpack that trauma, to help heal that trauma is crucial, but recognition of it is the first step to do anything about it. You don't have to live.
[00:10:31] Feeling horrible, isolated, miserable, and suicidal. You have a beauty within you that is waiting to be cultivated. And you deserve that.
[00:10:42] Another piece. So now we're getting into. The aspects of more and one of those P with nurturing children and their self-esteem, and one of those is nurturing through touch now. Healthy, loving touch. It's. Touch can be one of the most powerful ways to convey love and care. And that's just gentle touching, touching of the hair, touching of the hands, holding.
[00:11:05] Snuggling kissing on the cheeks, touching hands, all these little things, just the constant little tiny touches throughout the day are a great way to show someone that they are valued, that they are cared for that they matter. It's a way to show presence. We are here. We will share our love. We will give to you.
[00:11:23] But when there's not, you have the deprivation. For children. And this. This physical deprivation. Is often repressed and consciousness contracts and psychic numbing is evoked as a survival strategy to make existence tolerable self-awareness is avoided. This is often the start of a pattern that lasts a lifetime. So when that neglect is inherent, we go about ways to survive through denying, suppressing, and avoiding that awareness.
[00:11:54] Because one of the main influencing factors of us is to avoid discomfort. We are seeking, we solve problems and we also seek to avoid discomfort. And so one of the ways we S we avoid discomfort is we suppress things. And we can't get better until we bring those things into the light.
[00:12:11] It's interesting. How in this expression of touch can be shown in adults. Adults may avoid intimacy with other human beings. Emory withdraw from human encounters, expressing feelings of fear and unworthiness, a failure of self assertiveness among many other things, or. We see compulsive sexual promiscuity, an unconscious effort to heal the wound of touch.
[00:12:35] Deprivation. But in a way that humiliates without resolving and personal integrity and self-respect are two of the casualties. Both responses, leave the eyes and both responses. Leave the child and the adult isolated. This is so prevalent in our society today. That second piece, many of us retreat, but many of us are now trying to overcompensate.
[00:12:57] With promiscuity. Unhealthy touch and relationships through sexuality. And behaviors trying to fill that void.
[00:13:05] So the next aspect of this moving away from touch into love is accepting. Embracing. And instead of. Instead of. Focusing on the behaviors of our child, the things that they do, the way that they behave, we internalize their. The feelings we share with them, things that mean. We share with them ideas and thoughts that are pointed at their being, not there, their efforts or what they're doing themselves, but.
[00:13:37] But who they are. It says you are not enough. And many of us received these messages. It says you can, you have potential, but you are not acceptable as you are. You must do these things. You must change. And then I will love you. You must do this. And then you will make me happy. Or you must do this and then I will love you.
[00:13:59] It's the conditional based pieces. Love is meant to be done unconditionally. And that means we accept all that is. When we. Do not do that with our children and ourselves. We enforce the idea that we are not enough. And that we. Can only be enough when we feel these expectations, these external expectations.
[00:14:20] I am enough, does not mean that I sit and do nothing. It just means that I am enough as I am, and that my value is not in what I do. And the things that I create in the world, but the way that I am, my presence, my consciousness, my awareness. My, my ability to be kind to others. My state is a human.
[00:14:40] That's. The value that I hold. And I express the value of myself. Through my life, through my activities, through my words, through my intentions.
[00:14:50] So that ties into the next piece, which is acceptance. A child whose thoughts and feelings are treated with acceptance tends to internalize the response and to learn self-acceptance. Acceptance is conveyed, not by agreement. But by listening to and acknowledging the child's thoughts and feelings now by chastising, arguing, lecturing, psychological arising, or insulting, we do this a lot. I catch myself doing that with my child and myself.
[00:15:18] Ashley. And I recently been playing around with this. She's been studying and learning about Montessori. And one of the things that she's learned recently is that instead of trying to change the child, we step into the child and say, we. We align with that. So if our daughter is upset as an example, instead of saying, no, don't do that. We say, oh, Annabel's upset. She's not happy. She's mad. And I swear, it's mind-boggling.
[00:15:42] When you validate her feelings, she often pivots and changes and smiles at you. Thank you for seeing me. We don't have to agree with. Ourselves our feelings, our thoughts to accept them, to acknowledge them. To understand them.
[00:15:59] Few attitudes of parents can be so helpful for the child's healthy development as the child's experience that his or her nature, temperament, interests, and aspirations are accepted, whether or not parents share them. It is not our job to make our kids like us. I hear this a lot. Now, there are obviously.
[00:16:19] Reflections of who we are and our kids, but when people refer to their children has many MES. They're not many use. They may have pieces of you. They do. They've taken. DNA from two people and then came out their own unique being. Because they brought within them into the world, a third piece, their selfhood. So it's the parents and the child making the whole human.
[00:16:46] So we need it. We have to let go of this idea that our children are property of us. They're not. They belong to the universe and they come from the universe. We come from the universe we bring about with us in the world, unique aspects of ourselves. And we combine that with our parents to be who we are. That's what makes us unique.
[00:17:04] If differences are accepted, self-esteem can grow.
[00:17:08] This other aspect here is respect. A child who received respect from adults tend to learn self-respect is conveyed by addressing a child with the courtesy one normally extends to adults. So being respectful to them. So instead of criticizing them, here we go. If a visiting guest accidentally spills a drink, we do not say, oh, you're sloppy. What's the matter with you?
[00:17:30] Why do we do that with our children? We wouldn't do that to a friend. It's a mistake. So if our kid does it, why do we do it? It's what I was just talking about. We view them as extensions of ourselves. So we try and control them. But secondly, we haven't separated ourselves. From children, adult within us either. So we go about projecting a lot of this behavior onto our kids that we have not addressed in ourselves. A lot of times we're repeating.
[00:17:58] The stories that we've been told as children and passing those beliefs onto our kids. This is the power of breaking the cycle and healing.
[00:18:06] Parents need to be informed, be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you. So before you call your kids stupid or clumsy or bad, Is this how I consider the question? Is this how I want my child to experience him or herself? If a child grows up in a home where everyone deals with everyone else with natural, good natured courtesy, he or she learns principles that apply both to self and to others.
[00:18:30] Respect of self and others feels like the normal order of things, which properly it is when it's facilitated. But most of us do not grow up in homes that facilitate that care like that.
[00:18:43] Next up is visibility. Being seen. If I say, or do something and you respond in a way that I perceive as congruent in terms of my own behavior. If I become playful and you become playful and turn, or if I express joy and you show understanding of my state, or if I express sadness and you convey empathy, or if I do something I'm proud of and you smile and admiration, I feel seen and understood by you.
[00:19:08] I feel visible. This is what I was talking about earlier when our daughter's upset, we're not encouraging her to be upset, but we're saying I see you. I know you're upset. You don't like the diaper change. Or you don't want to be put down, you want to crawl or you want to stand. They don't think logically yet.
[00:19:25] All they know is their feelings. And so when we recognize that we're showing them that we see them, we hear them. We understand now this is especially important with very young children and as they get older, we can explain the logic of these things. But early on visibility is one of those first critical pieces.
[00:19:45] That we have to. That has to be developed and be seen. And if we don't get it as children, then we have to learn to cultivate it in ourselves as adults.
[00:19:52] A child has a natural desire to be seen, heard, understood, and responded to appropriately to a self that is still forming. This need is particularly urgent. This is one of the reasons a child will look to a parent for a response after taking some action. If you have a kid or you're around kids, they do this all the time.
[00:20:13] They will do something. And then look at you. Or they will be in the middle of doing something, looking at you. They're looking for your response. Our response is show them what's appropriate or not. And if we don't respond to them appropriately, they learn inappropriate responses and they carry those things throughout their life.
[00:20:34] And if that's something that happened to us, we have to unlearn those behaviors as adults.
[00:20:39] So think about this. If a child burst into the house full of joy and excitement, and mother says smiling, you're happy today, the child feels visible. What does a child feel? If a mother screams, do you have to make so much noise? You're so selfish and inconsiderate. What's the matter with you?
[00:20:54] A child. Struggled to build a tree house in the backyard. And a father says admiringly, even though it's hard, you're sticking with it. The child feels visible. What does the child feel? If father says impatiently, God, can't you do anything? If a child is out for a walk with a father. And father comments on a wide variety of things he sees along the way. And the father says you really notice a lot. The child feels visible. What does a child feel? The father says irritably, don't you ever stop talking?
[00:21:25] When we convey love, appreciation, empathy, acceptance, respect. We make a child visible. When we convey indifference scorn combination ridicule, we drive the child self into the lonely underground of invisibility. And so much of us have been raised like this. Our society operates like this in so many ways.
[00:21:46] Visibility a key piece here to visibility should not be acquainted with praise, watching a child struggle with the homework assignment and saying, math seems hard for you is not praise saying you're looking upset right now. Want to talk is not praise saying you wish you didn't have to go to the dentist is not praise.
[00:22:05] Saying you really seem to enjoy chemistry is not praise, but such statements do evoke the sense of being seen and understood. There's a difference. It's recognizing simply seeing the acknowledgement of people's feelings in our partners and our friends. Not offering to change, to fix, to do anything is such a powerful practice.
[00:22:27] People desire to be seen.
[00:22:29] You could actually, I don't know if you can hear this now, but you can actually hear Ashley downstairs in our garage. Doing this activity, she was just upset. And I get here Ashley saying. Annabel's upset. Like affirming her feelings. We're not encouraging her getting to get upset all the time, but when she is it's appropriate to honor that.
[00:22:51] And as they get older, you adjust and explain to them. Carrying into our discussion here, age appropriate, nurturing. That children require nurturing is obvious. What is sometimes less obvious is the need for nurturing to be age appropriate or more precisely. Appropriate to the chair child's level of development. So age is actually irrelevant here. It's their development that we're really looking for.
[00:23:15] An infant being dressed by an adult. It makes sense. But six year old can properly dress themselves. So if you continue to dress a six year old. Is that going to help them? When they're 16. No, they won't be able to do it themselves.
[00:23:32] But when a six year old ask a question, you want to take it seriously versus a one-year-old the way we engage with children at their appropriate level of development is key.
[00:23:43] There was a he and he shares stories, especially in marriages, right? In relationships you see how people were raised, the habits that were created early. And when as parents, we don't allow our children to learn things on their own. They become dependent. And then they go about, they carry those dependencies in relationships, and then they expect their partners to fulfill those obligations. They're entitled to those things to be done.
[00:24:07] If someone never learned to do their own laundry and they had their laundry done for them, their whole lives. Do you think they're just magically going to switch that when they become married? No. They're going to expect the other person to do it. This is the problem with inappropriate age. Criticism and management around age appropriate, nurturing or not right. Directing.
[00:24:30] Them during those moments.
[00:24:33] So you don't tell your, so as an example your kid may not know it's freezing out and they want to wear shorts and sandals. That's not okay. We have to set them boundaries, but what we can do is say, look, honey, I understand you want to wear those it's cold out. But how about this? We have to wear a sweater. So you get to pick between these two sweaters or any of these five sweaters. It's your choice. But we have to wear a sweater that's applying appropriate boundaries and allowing the child to decide though,
[00:25:00] One wants to turn over choice and decision-making to a child as fast as the child can comfortably handle them. This is a judgment recall. This it's a judgment call requiring consciousness and sensitivity from the adult. The point is. Be aware of the ultimate objective as we talked about earlier. To allow the individual to be on their own healthy, independent.
[00:25:23] Psychologically financially, all of those things healthy whole humans is the aim of parenting. And again, if you're not a parent and you didn't have this experience growing up, then the power now lies on lies in you to be the parent that you seek. That you needed when you were a child?
[00:25:40] Praise and criticism, moving into praise and criticism.
[00:25:44] Many years ago, I learned from ham. Gunno an important distinction that between evaluative praise and appreciative praise. It is a value to praise that does not serve a child's interest. Appreciative praise and contrast can be both productive and supporting self-esteem and reinforcing desired behavior.
[00:26:03] So this is from the quote Ganos TA a teacher and child. And psychotherapy a child has never told you were a good little boy. You are doing great. Carry on your good work judgemental. Praise is avoided. Why? Because it is not helpful. That's a judgment on the characters on the child's being right there.
[00:26:21] It creates anxiety, invents, invites, dependency, and evokes defensiveness. It is not conducive to self-reliance self-direction and self-control. These qualities, demand freedom from outside judgment. They require reliance on inner motivation and evaluation to be himself. One needs to be free from the pressure.
[00:26:40] Of evaluative praise. If we state what we like and appreciate about the child's actions and accomplishments, we remain factual and description. Descriptive. We leave it to the child to do the evaluating. And here's two examples.
[00:26:56] Marsha age 12, help the teacher rearrange the books in the class library. The teacher avoided personal praise. Example, you did a good job. You're a hard worker. You're a good librarian. Instead she described with Marsha, what Marsha accomplished. The books are all in order. Now it'll be easy for the children to find any book they want. It was a difficult job, but you did it. Thank you.
[00:27:18] The teacher's words of recognition allowed Marcia to make her own inner inference. My teacher likes the job I did. I am a good worker. So she made that conclusion. She came to that conclusion.
[00:27:30] Phyllis H 10 wrote a poem describing her reaction to the first snow of the season. The teacher said your poem reflected my own feelings. I was delighted to see my winter thoughts put into poetic phrases. Uh, smile crossed the little poet's face. She turned to her friend and said, Mrs. A really likes my poem. She thinks I am terrific.
[00:27:49] She inferred that the teacher did not tell her that, but that's how she felt once she was given objective factual praise about the work that she did. So instead of focusing on the child themself, we focus on their efforts to things that they are doing. Making it as objective as we can. The more specifically targeted our praise. The more meaningful it is to the child.
[00:28:12] Praise it is generalized and abstract leaves the child wondering what exactly is being praised. It is not helpful.
[00:28:18] Many devoted parents with the best intentions in the world, but without the appropriate skills have turned their children into such approval addicts by saturating the home environment with their loving evaluations. If we wish to nurture autonomy, always leave space for the child to make his or hone evaluations.
[00:28:37] After we have described behavior, that's the important piece, right? I leave the child-free of the pressure of our judgements, help create a context in which independent thinking can incur. As to criticism, it needs to be directed only at the child's behavior, never at the child. That's a key distinction, never at the child.
[00:28:56] The principle is described the behavior, hitting a sibling, breaking a promise. Describe your feelings about it. Anger, disappointment. Describe what you want done. If anything, in emit character assassinations. When I speak of describing your feelings. I mean, statements like I feel disappointed or I feel dismayed. I feel angry. I do not mean statements. Like I feel you are the most rotten kid who has ever lived. That's again.
[00:29:21] It's talking about our own feelings, how I felt in this moment, when you hit me, I felt sad. Because it hurt. And I was sad that you hit me. You wanted to hurt me. I didn't say you're a rotten kid for hitting me. I said, I'm sad because you hit me. You connect the child with their behavior. And the consequences of their behavior. They, that made me feel sad.
[00:29:44] Therefore they learn. Oh, wow. Hitting makes daddy feel sad. I don't want daddy to feel sad. I want daddy to be happy because children are intelligent. They have this natural inclination towards truth and goodness. So they understand these things. They learn, they get it.
[00:30:02] No good purposes ever served by assaulting a child self esteem. This is the first rule of effective criticism. We do not inspire better behavior by impugning a child's worth intelligence, morality, character, intentions, or psychology. No one was ever made good by being informed, he or she was bad.
[00:30:21] This is the difference. We have to focus on behaviors, how they impact us, how we feel about them, so we can direct our child. Now, these things that I'm learning to write. And it applies again to ourselves, to others work, you can apply the same type of critic, criticism, and praise to all that we do in life.
[00:30:40] Specific to behaviors, not about the person themselves, but the behaviors.
[00:30:44] Rational parents parenthood. This the next piece here is. Parental expectations. So rational parents uphold. Ethical standards to which they hold children accountable. They also uphold standards of performance. They expect children to learn master knowledge and skills and move toward increasing maturity.
[00:31:02] How we deal with mistakes. We'll be critical for how we handle a child. Self-esteem. Again, this is coming back to rejecting a child, chastising the child for making mistakes. We've talked about this we're around the growth mindset. Mistakes are a part of learning. Mistakes are part of childhood mistakes. They're truthfully, there are no such thing as mistakes in the sense that.
[00:31:25] We learn through messing up through doing things incorrectly. It's the way we learned to get them right. We grow and evolve by trying missing. Trying again, missing, trying, missing, trying, missing, and eventually landing. That's the process of growth. So if we stifle a child's growth through.
[00:31:44] Criticizing mistakes. They'll never grow. They'll never change. This is the concept of the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And the fixed mindset, mistakes are fatal to the perceptions of someone's identity. The growth mind says, says mistakes are critical to evolve to get better. One embraces mistakes. The other resistant.
[00:32:09] So that's a critical aspect there.
[00:32:12] Looking at sanity. So sanity is a huge need for children. And a lot of us grew up in somewhat insane environments. There, he goes on to say there's perhaps nothing more important to know about children than they need to make sense out of their experience and effect. They need to know that the universe is rational.
[00:32:29] And that human existence is knowable, predictable and stable on that foundation. They can build a sense of efficacy without it. The task is worse than difficult. What does sanity mean? In this context? It means adults who, for the most part, say what they mean and mean what they say. It means rules that are understandable, consistent, and fair. It means not being punished today for behavior that was ignored or even rewarded yesterday, it means being brought up by parents whose emotional life is more or less graspable and predictable and contrast to an emotional life punctuated by bouts of anxiety or rage or euphoria, unrelated to any discernible calls or pattern.
[00:33:09] And means a home in which reality is appropriately acknowledge and contrast to a home in which, for instance, A drunken father misses the chair. He meant to sit on and crashes to the floor. While mother goes on eating and talking as though nothing had happened. It means parents who practice, what they preach, who are willing to admit when they make mistakes and apologize. When they know they have been unfair or unreasonable.
[00:33:31] Who appeal to a child's wish to understand, rather than the wish to avoid pain who reward and reinforce consciousness in a child rather than discourage and penalize it. And this ties in to structure. All of these things build with one another. We need structure, child children's security and growth needs are met in part by the presence of an appropriate structure.
[00:33:55] The structure pertains to the rules, implicit or explicit. Operative and a family rules about what is, or is not acceptable and permissible. What is expected, how various kinds of behaviors are dealt with who is free to do what, how decisions affecting family members are made and what kind of values of hold are upheld.
[00:34:16] And this is all done with honoring the individuals. This is how you create a house, a structure, a society for that matter of order. When things are clear, transparent, consistent. A lot of us don't have this. But. This is what we have to go about recreating because a lot of us didn't experience that we didn't know what this was like. And now we have the chance to change that as adults, and then do it differently. If we decide to have kids.
[00:34:43] This is the breaking of this cycle.
[00:34:46] So there's a little bit here left. And one of the things that Nathaniel Brandon's big on is a family dinner once a week, to make sure that everyone gets together. I think that's a great idea building on that as much as you can to have people together, committed, focused, no phones committed to one another and connecting and sharing.
[00:35:02] So I think that's a good practice to have there. But then it rolls into. Abuse child abuse. And there's a whole section here that I'm going to share in the. Exercise for this episode around how to go about navigating. Some of these pieces relative to.
[00:35:21] Trauma and issues that we experienced as children, how to go about effectively. Improving upon this, exploring this. He has a huge sequence of questions that I'll set up here. It's like 24 questions. That allow us to work through some of the traumatic things that we may have experienced as children.
[00:35:38] An aspect that he talks about here. And this is what I was mentioning earlier, in terms of growing up in volatile or violent or abusive environments, some children have the ability to strategically detach from. There. Childhood. And so he goes on to say often, and this is really what strategic detachment is effectively. What Alice Miller covers in her book, the drama of the guests, the child, this is strategic detachment is what she's describing.
[00:36:07] But often children who distraught does survive extremely adverse childhoods have learned a particular survival strategy. It's called strategic detachment. This is not the withdrawal from reality. That leads to psychological disturbance, but an intuitively calibrated disengagement. From noxious aspects of their family life or other aspects of their world.
[00:36:28] They somehow know this is not all there is. They hold the belief that a better alternative exists somewhere. And that someday they will find their way to it. They persevere in that idea. They somehow, no mother is not all women. Father is not all men. This family does not exhaust the possibilities of human relationships. There is life beyond this neighborhood.
[00:36:52] This does not spare them suffering in the present. But it allows them not to be destroyed by it.
[00:36:58] That's such a powerful piece. Because that is, to be honest, this is the way that I learned to survive. When I was very young. I knew that this wasn't all that there was. And so if you struggle with that, Remembering knowing that this isn't all that there is no matter how brutal your childhood may have been the experiences that you had when you were young. This is not all that life is. And you can change if you've managed to survive and are still an adult listening to this, you have the power to make change in your life.
[00:37:27] I promise you that. It's just, you got to do the work relative to what it takes.
[00:37:33] All right. So that was a big portion of that. The remaining bit of the show, I'm going to talk a little bit about self-esteem in schools and how this really is. It's a lot of the same principles though. That's why I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, because I th I feel like the parenting aspect of this section goes deep into these principles, and then they apply throughout society, but it starts with parenting.
[00:37:52] And as I had mentioned, if you're not a parent, these principles apply to parenting yourself. So that's why we're all parents, whether we have external children or not, we all have an internal. Child that we must manage and care for. So looking at schools. Self-esteem in schools can often be seen as the second chance.
[00:38:11] For an opportunity to acquire a better sense of self and a better vision of life that is offered in their home. A teacher who production projects, confidence in a child's competence, and goodness can be a powerful antidote to a family in which such confidence is lacking and which perhaps they, the opposite perspective is conveyed.
[00:38:28] Children teachers can be very heavily influenced. They can be very influential in children's lives, obviously. And this is driven by.
[00:38:37] Their own ability to lead by example. To be high self-esteem individuals, themselves to teach these principles, to nurture the child's ability, to think, to learn, to grow, to explain to them the concepts of growth and learning and mastery. This doesn't really happen anymore. I don't know if it ever has, but it's certainly not happening today.
[00:38:58] Because it seems to be the education system is getting worse. Because when we're looking at it, the goals of education really. Is too. Create good citizens, good humans. That's not at all what we have today, though in our education system, more than anything. It's just. A education system of rule followers of people that will be.
[00:39:23] Go along with whatever they're told to not challenge authority to really just basically be test takers, loop jumpers, all the things that. Dependent, basically we become dependent. Automatons in a lot of ways is what our education system is. Teaching today is not teaching independent thinking and action, how to understand our emotions, how to manage ourselves, how to live, how to master.
[00:39:49] It doesn't do any of that. And in today's world. The age of the knowledge worker. Robotic obedience is not going to allow people to thrive. People need to be able to think, and that's the goal of education, but we're so far from that. It's one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing because the world in that sense is failing us. And so we have to rely upon our own.
[00:40:16] Structures our own systems. Now our own teachings from all these brilliant minds throughout history to leverage these principles and practices. As I was mentioning, the teachers self-esteem is going to be a big indicator of your experience. I'm sure we've had experiences with low self-esteem teachers and high self-esteem teachers. Some teachers that really taught us, we can do.
[00:40:37] Anything we're willing to put our mind and efforts into. And then those that were abusive that were mean that were very downgrading.
[00:40:46] It's the disparity of our experience here. In the education system. The next aspect of that is going to be the environment, the class environment. Are you going to nurture a child's dignity? Is there going. So one of the painful things about being a child is that one tends to be not taken seriously as adult. So is the child is the educational environment.
[00:41:09] Providing a seriousness and dignity to the child. Is there justice. In the classroom because children are extremely sensitive to issues of fairness. If they're not, it can break that. Is there self appreciation. Teachers can help children feel visible by offering appropriate feedback. They encourage self-awareness.
[00:41:27] Attention. Every child needs attention and some children need more attention than others.
[00:41:32] Discipline. And every classroom, there are rules that must be respected. If learning is to progress and tasks are to be accomplished. It's another key piece there.
[00:41:42] Compassion and respect do not imply a lack of firmness. So that's where that structure, that discipline that consistency is so crucial. It actually shows love.
[00:41:52] It actually shows us through consistency through our actions. What love is it's speaking and shown through our efforts. That's the power of it. Again, Understanding our emotions. If a proper education has to include. An understanding of thinking. It also has to include. An understanding of feelings. Unfortunately, many parents implicitly teach children to repress their feelings and emotions or those.
[00:42:19] For those or those which parents find disturbing. So whatever feelings, emotions, thoughts. Expresses that children may have many times parents suppress that they tell them to stop it. They ridicule that. And so when we don't understand our emotions, when we don't embrace those emotions, when we're not taught how to embrace those emotions,
[00:42:39] We ended up creating a disowned self, a separated self. Uh, teachers in a position to help kids with their feelings to understand them without being ruled by them.
[00:42:49] Another aspect of school and education is it helps you to deal with others. Another subject is that, as you grow up as the interpersonal competence learning to interact with other people, that's an idea and aspect of school that can be helpful. But when it's not facilitated in healthy ways, you get bullying. You get comparison, especially today with all the social media.
[00:43:11] It creates toxicity.
[00:43:13] So the interpersonal aspect of education is a big component that's missing today.
[00:43:18] It should be a part of a child's education, but it's not another aspect is going to be competence and skills, specific skills that we can learn and leverage and use in the marketplace. Again, not a lot of practical skills are taught in schools these days, unfortunately.
[00:43:36] The grading curve is another aspect that limits our ability. To grow. It places, every student in an adversarial relationship to every other student, because the higher the grading curve goes, the one, the lower, the ones that people at the bottom there's this pitted against one, another aspect that grading curves do that we need to throw out.
[00:43:57] Because cognitive individuality is real. We learn differently. Our abilities and skills are different. Having standardize. Ways to say, this is what it means for someone to be a good student is limiting our ability to teach kids how to grow and be unique. Just because you're good at math does not mean you're not a brilliant writer.
[00:44:20] Or just because you're not an engineer doesn't mean that you can't be a doctor or whatever it is. There's so many ways that this could be spun. That we don't facilitate in today's world. And. Nathaniel Branden talks about creating obedient students is, uh, creating a BD students versus responsible students.
[00:44:42] Right now our systems built around making a BDN students. We need more responsible students and those responsible students are the ones that are built around the practices of self-esteem growth mindset, taking responsibility, being accountable, putting in effort. These are the aspects that we're trying to teach in schools, but we're not.
[00:45:02] All right. The moral implications of all this to anticipate one of the conclusions toward which. I am heading is what Nathaniel brain is talking about. I want to draw attention to one moral aspect of the shift from the ideal of obedience to the ideal of responsibility. Whereas the obedient student will under different circumstances, sacrifice self or others. This has been the practice of obedient people throughout all of human history.
[00:45:27] The responsible student ideally will be taught to operate outside the sacrifice paradigm. Right now we have so much of the sacrifice, paradigm, self sacrifice, or sacrifice of others, always for the greater good is the way it's positioned. But it's a fallacy. It's a lie.
[00:45:45] So those are a lot of the components that could make up. Education systems that support and facilitate self-esteem. We've got a long way to go. This is where the work comes into play within us. Now. There are larger aspects here relative to this work. Work self-esteem and work how that influences. We talked a little bit about that. Absolutely work can facilitate our self-esteem depending on how we're treated.
[00:46:11] How we're engaging our skills, the environment that we look at, all the things that we discussed earlier apply to work as well. Now, I, in the future, I may do an episode around this specifically, and I'm also going to go deeper into the. Societal cultural aspects from a global perspective, looking at examples.
[00:46:30] Of values and beliefs that were perpetuated at the societal level and the impacts that had on humans. That's a whole episode that I'm going to do separately because that's another piece of. The work here is looking at the aspects of culture and how it influences self-esteem and then the outputs from those hopes, cultures and societies.
[00:46:51] I think America is an interesting example because we've gone through a lot of changes in the short history that we have, and the priorities and values are shifting right now. And there's a lot of the cultural aspects and battles happening. I think that's a prime example. Of how shifting societies, cultures, values impact the humans that live within them.
[00:47:10] All right. So the rolling up here, I'm going to, I'm going to finalize this bit here around challenges in our economy and the market. And an economy in which knowledge, information, creativity, and their translation into innovation. Are transparently the source of wealth income and of competitive advantage. There are distinct challenges, both to individuals and organizations to manage that. And without these practices, without these tools of self-esteem and building these tools, we struggle. It's inherent that we're going to struggle because ultimately our ability to manage the ever-changing complex world, that we live within our ability to think, manage our emotions, manage ourselves, be consistent with our efforts.
[00:47:52] Will depend will dictate our experiences and the outcomes that we have in life.
[00:47:57] All right. Y'all one final thing. And then I'm gonna wrap the episode here. So a leader's role. Everything we've talked about clearly applies to leaders, the CEO or company president, as much as managers, but I want to say a few. So this is about leaders. Particular the primary function of a leader in a business enterprise is to develop and persuasively convey a vision of what the organization is to accomplish and to inspire and empower all those who work for the organization to make an optimal contribution to the fulfillment of that vision.
[00:48:26] And to the experience that in doing so they are acting in alignment with their self-interest. The leader must be an aspire and persuader. How do you get the organizational goals to align with the individual goals? Of the person and that's how you establish this vision. And then you drive towards that patient. So these are ways again.
[00:48:45] This is how all this stuff that we do, this inner work. Layers into the world that we live in. The work that we do as humans. The businesses we work for the relationships that we had, the schools we go to, the families were raised and born into all of these factors, influence what we do. And how we live as individuals.
[00:49:05] So I have absolutely. Loved this role. This.
[00:49:12] Series. I hope you found it valuable. The Daniel, Brandon goes on to say that the goals of psychotherapy, obviously this is not psychotherapy, but the work that you're doing is the work that we do is psychotherapy within ourselves. We can have support along the way to do that, but this is an important close. Then I'm going to wrap the episode.
[00:49:30] Psychotherapy has two basic goals. One is the alleviation of suffering. The other is the facilitation and enhancement of wellbeing. While the two projects overlap. They are not the same. To reduce or eliminate anxiety is not equivalent to generating self-esteem although it can contribute to that end.
[00:49:48] To reduce or eliminate depression is not equivalent to generating happiness, although again, and can contribute to that in. So it's becoming our best self and also alleviating the pain suffering and the deep struggle that we feel within us, our shadow self. We need both. We need the expression and we have to do the shadow work. This.
[00:50:11] Revolves around doing the shadow work. And if you have the courage to do this, which I know you do because you're tuning in, you have the capacity and power to make this change. All right. Y'all. Oh, my goodness, almost an hour. There's so much to talk about with this work though. That's why it's so important. And there's so many different components to it. So I really hope you've enjoyed it.
[00:50:33] I'm excited about the next few episodes that we will have coming out. I'm going to continue to do. More of this work going deeper into the inner work. That's so important for us to find success, fulfillment and peace in our lives in a crazy. Nuts world. So with that being said y'all until next time.