The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Branden, Nathaniel

No matter how nurturing our environment, rationality, self-responsibility, and integrity are never automatic; they always represent an achievement. We are free to think or to avoid thinking, free to expand consciousness or to contract it, free to move toward reality or to withdraw from it. The six pillars all entail choice.

  Living consciously requires an effort. Generating and sustaining awareness is work. Every time we choose to raise the level of our consciousness, we act against inertia. We pit ourselves against entropy, the tendency of everything in the universe to run down toward chaos. In electing to think, we strive to create an island of order and clarity within ourselves.

  The first enemy of self-esteem we may need to overcome is laziness (which may be the name we give to the forces of inertia and entropy as they manifest psychologically). “Laziness” is not a term we ordinarily encounter in books on psychology. And yet, is anyone unaware that sometimes we fail ourselves for no reason other than the disinclination to generate the effort of an appropriate response? (In The Psychology of Self-Esteem, I called this phenomenon “antieffort.”) Sometimes, of course, laziness is abetted by fatigue; but not necessarily. Sometimes we are just lazy; meaning we do not challenge inertia, we do not choose to awaken.

  The other dragon we may need to slay is the impulse to avoid discomfort. Living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears; it may bring us into contact with unresolved pain. Self-acceptance may require that we make real to ourselves thoughts, feelings, or actions that disturb our equilibrium; it may shake up our “official” self-concept. Self-responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness; it demands that we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer. Self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic, with no guarantee of how others will respond; it means that we risk being ourselves. Living purposefully pulls us out of passivity into the demanding life of high focus; it requires that we be self-generators. Living with integrity demands that we choose our values and stand by them, whether this is pleasant and whether others share our convictions; there are times when it demands hard choices.

  Taking the long view, it is easy to see that high-self-esteem people are happier than low-self-esteem people. Self-esteem is the best predictor of happiness we have. But in the short term, self-esteem requires the willingness to endure discomfort when that is what one’s spiritual growth entails.

  If one of our top priorities is to avoid discomfort, if we make this a higher value than our self-regard, then under pressure we will abandon the six practices precisely when we need them most.

  The desire to avoid discomfort is not, per se, a vice. But when surrendering to it blinds us to important realities and leads us away from necessary actions, it results in tragedy.

  Here is the basic pattern: First, we avoid what we need to look at because we do not want to feel pain. Then our avoidance produces further problems for us, which we also do not want to look at because they evoke pain. Then the new avoidance produces additional problems we do not care to examine—and so on. Layer of avoidance is piled on layer of avoidance, disowned pain on disowned pain. This is the condition of most adults.

  Here is the reversal of the basic pattern: First, we decide that our self-esteem and our happiness matter more than short-term discomfort or pain. We take baby steps at being more conscious, self-accepting, responsible, and so on. We notice that when we do this we like ourselves more. This inspires us to push on and attempt to go farther. We become more truthful with ourselves and others. Self-esteem rises. We take on harder assignments. We feel a little tougher, a little more resourceful. It becomes easier to confront discomfiting emotions and threatening situations; we feel we have more assets with which to cope. We become more self-assertive. We feel stronger. We are building the spiritual equivalent of a muscle. Experiencing ourselves as more powerful, we see difficulties in more realistic perspective. We may never be entirely free of fear or pain, but they have lessened immeasurably, and we are not intimidated by them. Integrity feels less threatening and more natural.

  If the process were entirely easy, if there was nothing hard about it at any point, if perseverance and courage were never needed—everyone would have good self-esteem. But a life without effort, struggle, or suffering is an infant’s dream.

  Neither struggle nor pain has intrinsic value. When they can be avoided with no harmful consequences, they should be. A good psychotherapist works to make the process of growth no more difficult than it needs to be. When I examine my own development as a therapist over the past three decades, I see that one of my goals has been to make self-examination, self-confrontation, and the building of self-esteem as unstressful as possible. The evolution of my approach and technique has had this intention from the beginning.

  One of the ways this is accomplished is by helping people see that doing what is difficult but necessary need not be “a big thing.” We do not have to catastrophize fear or discomfort. We can accept them as part of life, face them and deal with them as best we can, and keep moving in the direction of our best possibilities.

  But always, will is needed. Perseverance is needed. Courage is needed.

  The energy for this commitment can only come from the love we have for our own life.

  This love is the beginning of virtue. It is the launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations. It is the motive power that drives the six pillars. It is the seventh pillar of self-esteem.

  APPENDIX A:

  Critique of Other Definitions of Self-Esteem

  To set my definition of self-esteem in context, I want to comment on a few representative definitions that have been proposed.

  The “father” of American psychology is William James, and in his Principles of Psychology, originally published in 1890, we find the earliest attempt I know of to define self-esteem:

  I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deficiencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I “pretensions” to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse…. With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus,

  Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.

  I said in my Introduction that whoever speaks about self-esteem inescapably speaks about himself. The first thing James is telling us about himself is that he bases his self-esteem on how well he compares to others in his chosen field. If no one else can match his expertise, his self-esteem is satisfied; if someone else surpasses him, his self-esteem is devastated. He is telling us that in a sense he is placing his self-esteem at the mercy of others. In his professional life, this gives him a vested interest in being surrounded by inferiors; it gives him reason to fear talent rather than welcome, admire, and take pleasure in it. This is not a formula for healthy self-esteem but a prescription for anxiety. To tie our self-esteem to any factor outside our volitional control, such as the choices or actions of others, is to invite anguish. That so many people judge themselves just this way is their tragedy.

  If “self-esteem equals success divided by pretensions,” then, as James points out, self-esteem can equally be protected by increasing one’s success or lowering one’s pretensions. This means that a person who aspires to nothing, neither in work nor in character, and achieves it, and a person of high accomplishment and high character, are equals in self-esteem. I do not believe that this is an idea at which anyone could have arrived by paying attention to the real world. People with aspirations so low that they meet them mindlessly and effortlessly are not conspicuous for their psychological well-being.

  How well we live up to our personal standards and values (which James unfor
tunately calls “pretensions”) clearly has a bearing on our self-esteem. The value of James’s discussion is that it draws attention to this fact. But it is a fact that cannot properly be understood in a vacuum, as if the content of our standards and values were irrelevant and nothing more were involved than the neutral formula James proposes. Literally, his formula is less a definition of self-esteem than a statement concerning how he believes the level of self-esteem is determined not in some unfortunate individuals but in everyone.

  One of the best books written on self-esteem is Stanley Coopersmith’s The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. His research on the contribution of parents remains invaluable. He writes:

  By self-esteem we refer to the evaluation that the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself: it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, and indicates the extent to which the individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful, and worthy. In short, self-esteem is a personal judgment of worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes the individual holds toward himself.

  Relative to James, this formulation represents a great step forward. It speaks much more directly to what our experience of self-esteem is. Yet there are questions it raises and leaves unanswered.

  “Capable” of what? All of us are capable in some areas and not in others. Capable relative to whatever we undertake? Then must any lack of adequate competence diminish self-esteem? I do not think Coopersmith would want to suggest this, but the implication is left hanging.

  “Significant”—what does this mean? Significant in what way? Significant in the eyes of others? Which others? Significant by what standards?

  “Successful”—does this mean worldly success? Financial success? Career success? Social success? Success concerning what? Note he is not saying that self-esteem contains the idea that success (in principle) is appropriate; he is saying that self-esteem contains the idea of seeing oneself as successful—which is entirely different and troublesome in its implications.

  “Worthy”—of what? Happiness? Money? Love? Anything the individual desires? My sense is that Coopersmith would mean by “worthy” pretty much what I spell out above in my own definition, but he does not say so.

  Another definition is offered by Richard L. Bednar, M. Gawain Wells, and Scott R. Peterson in their book Self-Esteem: Paradoxes and Innovations in Clinical Theory and Practice:

  Parenthetically, we define self-esteem as a subjective and enduring sense of realistic self-approval. It reflects how the individual views and values the self at the most fundamental levels of psychological experiencing. … Fundamentally, then, self-esteem is an enduring and affective sense of personal value based on accurate self-perception.

  “Approval”—concerning what? Everything about the self from physical appearance to actions to intellectual functioning? We are not told. “Views and values the self”—concerning what issues or criteria? “An enduring and affective sense of personal value”—what does this mean? One the other hand, what I like in this formulation is the observation that genuine self-esteem is reality based.

  One of the most widely publicized definitions of self-esteem is given in Toward a State of Esteem: The Final Report of the California Task Force to Promote Self and Personal and Social Responsibility:

  Self-esteem is defined as: “Appreciating my own worth and importance and having the character to be accountable for myself and to act responsibly toward others.”

  In this definition, we find the same lack of specificity as in the other definitions—“worth and importance” concerning what? There is another problem with the task force statement: inserting into the definition what is obviously meant to be a basic source of healthy self-esteem (that is, being accountable for oneself and acting responsibly toward others). A definition of a psychological state is meant to tell us what a state is, not how one gets there. Did the people who offered this definition want us to understand that if we don’t act responsibly toward others we won’t possess healthy self-esteem? If so, they are probably right, but is that part of the definition—or is it a different issue? (Almost certainly such a definition is influenced by “political” rather than scientific considerations—to reassure people that champions of self-esteem are not fostering petty, irresponsible “selfishness.”)

  Finally, there are those in the self-esteem movement who announce that “self-esteem means ‘I am capable and lovable.’”

  Again we must ask, “Capable” of what? I am a great skier, a brilliant lawyer, and a first-rate chef. However, I don’t feel competent to assess independently the moral values my mother taught me. I feel, Who am I to know? In such a case, am I “capable”? Do I have self-esteem?

  As to “lovable”—yes, feeling lovable is one of the characteristics of healthy self-esteem. So is feeling worthy of happiness and success. Is feeling lovable more important? Evidently, since the other two items are not mentioned. By what reasoning?

  I shall not belabor the point by offering additional examples that would only reflect variations of the same difficulties.

  APPENDIX B:

  A Sentence-Completion Exercise for Building Self-Esteem

  I want to share with the reader a thirty-one-week sentence-completion program I developed specifically to build self-esteem. Some fairly complex theoretical ideas are embedded in these stems and in their progression, which cannot be appreciated without experience in doing the exercise.

  We have already seen the powerful role that sentence-completion work can play in facilitating self-understanding and personal development. The program offered here aims at facilitating understanding of the six pillars and their application to daily life. The reader will note that theme threading through the entire exercise. The issues raised in the program are explored in the course of therapy in many different ways and from many different angles; the client’s endings invariably suggest additional pathways of needed attention. What follows is the generic version, which itself keeps evolving and being revised.

  To make the program complete and self-contained, I have had to restate some points made earlier. Some stems introduced previously are brought together here, along with new ones, and organized in a particular structure that is intended to lead the individual to a progressive awakening: to increased self-understanding and a strengthening of self-esteem.

  It is as if half of this section were written in invisible ink—which becomes visible only over time, as one works with the stems and studies the patterns in one’s endings. I hope the program will be studied with that realization in mind.

  The Program

  When working with sentence completion on your own, you can use a notebook, typewriter, or computer. (An acceptable alternative is to do the sentence completions into a tape recorder, in which case you keep repeating the stem into a recorder, each time completing it with a difference ending, and play the work back later to reflect on it.)

  WEEK 1

  First thing in the morning, before proceeding to the day’s business, sit and write the following stem:

  If I bring more awareness to my life today—

  Then, as rapidly as possible, without pausing for reflection, write as many endings for that sentence as you can in two or three minutes (never fewer than six and ten is enough). Do not worry if your endings are literally true, or make sense, or are “profound.” Write anything, but write something.

  Then, go on to the next stem:

  If I take more responsibility for my choices and actions today—

  Then:

  If I pay more attention to how I deal with people today—

  Then:

  If I boost my energy level by 5 percent today—

  When you are finished, proceed with your day’s business.

  Do this exercise every day, Monday through Friday for the first week, always before the start of the day’s business.

  Naturally there will be many repetitions. But also, new endings will inevitably occur. Time spent meditating on these endings �
�stokes” the creative unconscious to generate connections and insights and to propel growth. When we intensify awareness, we tend to evoke a need for action that expresses our psychological state.

  Sometime each weekend, reread what you have written for the week, then do a minimum of six endings for this stem:

  If any of what I wrote this week is true, it might be helpful if I—

  This facilitates translation of new learnings into action. Continue this practice throughout the program on the weekend.

  In doing this work, the ideal is to empty your mind of any expectations concerning what will happen or what is “supposed” to happen. Do not impose any demands on the situation. Do the exercise, go about your day’s activities, take a little time to meditate on your endings when you can, and merely notice any differences in how you feel or are inclined to act.

  Remember: Your endings must be a grammatical completion of the sentence—and if your mind goes absolutely empty, invent an ending, but do not allow yourself to stop with the thought that you cannot do this exercise.

  An average session should not take longer than ten minutes. If it takes much longer, you are “thinking” (rehearsing, calculating) too much. Think after the exercise, but not during it.

  Never do less than six endings for a stem.

  WEEK 2

  If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my important relationships—

  If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my insecurities—

  If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my deepest needs and wants—

  If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my emotions—

  WEEK 3

  If I treat listening as a creative act—

  If I notice how people are affected by the quality of my listening—