Self Esteem

Does it really benefit you to have unyielding belief in yourself? Obviously if you feel good about yourself, your quality of life must be pretty high. But in terms of success... I would have thought that the higher your self esteem, the higher your achievement in life. That if you believe indiscriminately in your ability to do something, then that will lead you to go out and achieve it, where a person with less self esteem would falter, and be too unsure of themselves to take the next step.

In an article by Jonah Lehrer today, Self Esteem, it turns out that the better you feel about yourself does not translate directly into actual academic achievement:

"Self-esteem has gone up in the United States; achievement has not. If anything, compared with other countries, we have done worse, but our kids feel really good about themselves on average."

Now academic achievement and achievement in life are two very different things, and how do you even define achievement in life these days - everyone has different measures for success - but it will be interesting to see where these kids they are following end up in life.

It's quite a liberating discovery if in fact self esteem is not critical to success. It's painful to constantly question your own abilities and wonder when the world will finally see through your feigned attempts to brush over inadequacies.... I remember Padraig O'Morain's article about just this topic - The Common Experience of Feeling Like an Imposter... but if you knew that the low self esteem and consequent fear of rejection and failure are not necessarily detrimental to your ability to success, then you can go on and feel them in... comfort, I guess.

Those "kicks in the face", thanks Maura for the terminology, that we struggling writers are constantly on the receiving end of, must feel like... generous helpings of praise? How does that work?

I suppose having blind faith in an ability that may not exist can lead to embarrassing outcomes. That must be the reason for those deluded people who enter The X Factor, Pop Idol, or You're a Star, singing completely out of tune. I always wondered what was going on there...



I suppose just because you think you are good at something, doesn't necessarily make it true, but how much happier would you be if you had blind ignorance :)