Self-esteem

Self-esteem and Success ~ Dr. Patrick Mbajekwe

Self-esteem is defined as "Personal feelings or opinions of oneself". It has become the third most frequently occurring topic in psychological literature and by 2003, there were over 25,000 articles and books on the subject. Since that time, the number of new articles and books has increased dramatically. If you query "self-esteem books or self-esteem articles" on Google, you get 2.27 million hits which shows how obsessed we have become with this topic.

Unfortunately, psychologists cannot agree on whether self-esteem is good for you or detrimental. In fact, they cannot even agree on exactly what self-esteem is and what role it plays in an individual's life.

What is known is that self-esteem encompasses a person's beliefs about himself or herself. Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic, although they also acknowledge that short-term variations in a person's self-esteem can be caused by outside events that affect that particular individual.

If you do something well, particularly if you are praised by someone else for what you have done, your self-esteem will be higher than normal. Conversely, if you fail at something, your self-esteem will be lower than normal.

Self-esteem can apply to a specific trait or ability (for example, "I believe I am a good golfer and feel proud of that particular ability") or have an overall scope (for example, "I believe that I am a good person and feel proud of myself in general"). Here, we are not talking about a narcissistic belief about one's self, but a deep-rooted knowledge that you are truly a good person. This deep-rooted knowledge will be supported by your actions and deeds.

Self-help writers and psychologists have long believed that having good self-esteem ensured success at one's endeavors. However, recent studies of students have revealed that working to inflate one's self-esteem alone, instead of increasing the student's grades actually caused them to decline. Further studies in this regard are underway to determine why this happened and whether the lack of correlation between grades and self-esteem is factual or if the method of increasing the subject's self-esteem was flawed and invalidated the results.

One interesting fact has become known from all these studies. It has been determined that western societies are fixated with self-esteem and the role it plays in a person's success, while other societies that place little emphasis on self-esteem, seem to have as many or even more successes.

Perhaps in our over zealous pursuit of success, we have placed so much emphasis on self-esteem that we have created our very own myth. Maybe success depends more on doing things than it does on beliefs and attitudes. What do you think?