Self-esteem without competence is a recipe for failure
For the longest time, in the United States and elsewhere,
educational policy makers bought into
the idea of self-esteem. Please understand that self-esteem is a good thing. Nobody's disputing that. However, according to this educational policy philosophy, for students to perform well in life, they need to have their self-esteem built up and encouraged early on.
Again, just like the observation that self-esteem is a good thing, this seems
pretty good on the surface. What's there to argue about.
The problem is, if you are going to be building your self-esteem based on affirmations and being made to feel good about who you are without any accomplishments or physical results produced by your efforts to back it up.
You are building your house on sand. This is precisely what happened with generations of youth fed on the steady diet of self-esteem stimulation.
That's really what it is. You just stimulated the formation of self-esteem not through actual achievements, accomplishments, sacrifice, hard work and other traditional indicators of success.
Instead, people got self-esteem by being respected for showing up. That's it. That's all you need to do. You just need to show up and you get a prize for participation. According to this school of thought, your feelings are paramount.
If only things worked that way.
Sadly, a lot of people who base their self-esteem on the fact that they happened to show up know deep down inside that their confidence is hollow. They know that this is not the way real life works. They know that the world may have some rude surprises waiting for them. No wonder, many people with supreme self-esteem
are very frustrated and confused
.
As long as you're feeling okay about yourself, then there's really not much difference between what you think and what everybody else thinks.
You are entitled to your estimation of yourself, the rightness of your action, so on and so forth.
What this created is
self-esteem that produced a
very hollow self-confidence. People definitely can feel that they can
do stuff, but they can only do it in theory. When they're
actually given challenges to produce and deliver results, most people,
who focus primarily on self-esteem without the matching competence, fall apart like a house of cards.
Self-esteem without competence is a recipe for failure.
If you're having a tough time in any area of your life or you feel you're frustrated or stuck in any area of your life, maybe it's because of this. Sure, you feel good about yourself and it seems like you have a high estimate of your ability to get things done.
Unfortunately, unless
and until that high estimation
is based on
actual experience and results, you're just wasting your time. It
's probably going to be very hard for you to overcome challenges. It's probably
very tempting for you to just quit the moment you're confronted with actual difficulty.
If you're suffering from any of these, thankfully there is a fairly straightforward and simple solution.
Click here for the solution.
Self esteem- who does not want to have a high self esteem? But today most people work superficially to build it- as you have written on the blog post “The problem is if you are going to be building your self esteem based on affirmations and being made to feel good about who you are without any accomplishments or physical results produced by your efforts to back it up. You are building your house on sand.”
ReplyDeleteThey manipulate things to build a high self esteem and that’s why, many people with supreme self-esteem are very frustrated and confused.
Wikipedia shares this about self esteem “Self-esteem reflects an individual's overall subjective emotional evaluation of their own worth. It is the decision made by an individual as an attitude towards the self. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself, as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame.”
Today many people have either very low self-esteem or very high self esteem whichever are based on just feeling and not facts which make them miserable. Today many suffer due to this mistaken self worth. It should be based on real stuffs , experiences and results as you shared. Rating ourselves correctly and working as per your guidance as you have shared here can help us grow our self esteem.