The argument in brief
- The question
- Where do the values we judge ourselves against come from, and can we choose better ones?
- The claim
- Our self-esteem rests on values we mostly inherited rather than chose. We can decide on better ones, and the most important is never to judge ourselves. Confidence: A personal reflection from my own experience as a parent and from my own practice. No studies cited.
- The evidence
- My own observation, as a parent, of how children learn which behaviour gets attention.
- My own experience that meditation and understanding the egoic mind help me stop a harmful inner narrative.
- A question I attribute to Jim Rohn's The Art of Exceptional Living, which I haven't checked against the text.
- The best counter
- Some self-judgement may be useful: it is part of how we notice mistakes and hold ourselves to account. The problem may be harsh judgement rather than judgement itself.
- What would change my mind
- Evidence that people who stop evaluating themselves altogether do worse, or that the values we hold are mostly temperament rather than learned.
- Open gaps
- 3 gaps. Statements I haven't verified yet. Each is marked in the text.
The question: Where do the values we judge ourselves against come from, and can we choose better ones?Writing about how you should work on your self-esteem is a very challenging topic. Not because it’s a difficult concept, but because it’s so critical to how we feel about so much in our lives, and each of us has a very unique relationship with our self-esteem. Simply put, I do not know how you will perceive what I say right now.
The values you judge yourself against
The way you think about yourself is usually based on opinion against some set of values you’re comparing yourself to. If you fail, you may call yourself a failure. If you struggle to find a special person in your life, you may call yourself a loser. There are endless examples of how your internal narrative can be damaging to your self-esteem.
But it’s just an opinion, and often misguided from a fixed mindset.
Where you get your values from
Your early years play a critical role in learning how the world works. As a child, you learn the feedback loop from your parents of what gets you attention and what doesn’t.
An assumption: This leans on my own experience as a parent. Children also differ in temperament, and not every behaviour is learned from how adults respond.Only as a parent do I clearly see this. If you want a child to act naughty, keep giving your child attention by calling them naughty. If you want a child to learn that screaming gets what they want, then keep giving in after a tantrum. A child is learning how to get what they want and will repeat those actions again, and again.
When a child becomes a teenager and starts interacting with peers, they’re looking to fit in. If they behave in a way that gets them rejected, they will avoid that behaviour. Often, a teenager will do what’s needed to be accepted by the group. This may involve looking and behaving a certain way and masquerading as someone they don’t feel they truly are.
All these experiences internalise the narrative of your self-esteem. It’s the way you judge yourself against the values. Do I look pretty? Did I get an A on this exam? And in a digital world, did I get enough likes on that photo? What you value yourself on can impact you for the rest of your life.
You decide on your values
Unverified: In the book The Art of Exceptional Living by Jim Rohn, he prompts the questionGap · unchecked quote: I haven't checked this against the text of The Art of Exceptional Living, so the question is my paraphrase from memory and may not be in that book.: when did you choose the values that you live by?
The short answer is, you probably didn’t. You probably inherited them, from your parents and peers, who also didn’t choose their values. Your values are a product of circumstance, not intent.
You have the power to decide on values that help you develop an antifragile ego.
The most important self-esteem value
A competing explanation: Some self-judgement may be useful. Noticing a mistake and holding yourself to account is a kind of judgement. The harm may come from harsh, global labels (“I’m a failure”) rather than from evaluating what you did.There is one value which you absolutely need to adopt. Claim, confidence:a personal view from my own experience: It is to never, and I literally mean never, judge yourself. You must also never judge yourself when you’re by yourself.
This can be hard if you haven’t developed this skill. It’s easy to slip into a self narrative that is harmful instead of helpful.
Limits: These are the techniques that have helped me. They won’t suit everyone, and they are not a substitute for professional help.There are two techniques which I’ve found extremely helpful with this. The first is meditation: the ability to switch off your internal narration and take a pause. Unverified: This can be an interrupt pattern that starts the process of rewriting your neurons to avoid judging your self-esteem.Gap · needs evidence: I haven't checked what the research says about meditation changing the brain; this is how I think of it rather than a finding.
The second is understanding the difference between your egoic mind and your human mind. This is a much deeper topic.
We all feel crappy some of the time
Our self-esteem can be hurt by any number of things, and in ways that we’re not consciously aware of. This will affect anyone at any time. What’s important, however, is having the toolset to introspect on what is driving your feelings and why. Only then can you help build a stronger and more robust set of values that can Unverified: calm your limbic system (otherwise referred to as the chimp brain)Gap · needs evidence: I haven't checked this against a source. The limbic system is a loose label for several brain structures, and 'chimp brain' is a popular metaphor rather than a scientific term..
What’s important right now
All you need to understand right now is that a lot of this can come down to the programming of your biological system and how it all plays out.
Books behind this essay
Not sources for any claim here. These are books I have finished that shaped how I think about this question. Where I rely on evidence, it is cited in the text.
The Silent Guides (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about how children's early experiences become the feelings they carry, which is where this piece starts.
Mindset (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about the fixed mindset behind the harsh labels we give ourselves.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about the values we measure ourselves against and the idea that we can choose them.
The Explosive Child (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about how children learn from the way we respond to their behaviour.
The Brain that Changes Itself (opens audible.co.uk, external site)
Shaped how I think about habits of mind as something that can be changed with practice.
