Building self-esteem that can't be taken from you

What determines your self-esteem?

In other words, what criteria do you use to determine how much you like and value yourself?

Many of us are taught, directly or indirectly, that it’s something we have to earn through things like success, popularity, a good job title, or the approval of the people around us.

Get enough of those, the thinking goes, and you'll finally feel good about who you are.

But here’s the problem. Even if we achieve these things, the feeling usually doesn’t last long before we’re chasing the next thing—the bigger success or someone else’s approval.

And, even more importantly, when we base how we feel about ourselves on these things, our self-esteem can come crashing down at any moment for reasons completely outside of our control. How we feel about ourselves becomes vulnerable to the whims of the world around us.

So where should healthy self-esteem actually come from?

The questions that expose the self-esteem problem

Let me ask you this:

Do you decide how much your loved ones are worth as people based on their success, popularity, income, or similar external factors?

Do you choose who you love, appreciate, and accept based on how confident, skilled, or impressive they are?

Would you stop loving someone close to you if their success, confidence, or skills lessened?

For almost everyone, the answer to these questions is a clear no.

It’s simply not how we measure the people we care about. We value them for who they are, for their values, the way they treat others, whether they try to do the right thing, and so on.

You’ve probably already figured this out, but here’s the kicker: When we struggle with our self-esteem, those are rarely the standards we’re using to evaluate ourselves.

When it comes to our own worth, we quietly switch to a completely different measuring stick—an external one. Did I achieve enough? Am I impressive enough? Am I liked enough?

We judge everyone we love by their character, and ourselves by our results. And that double standard, more than almost anything else, is what quietly wrecks people's self-esteem.

Set the same standards for yourself

The solution, of course, is to measure yourself the way you already measure the people you love.

When you do that, one of two things happens.

You either realize that you already are the kind of person you'd value highly. That you’re already someone who does their best to live up to the values and morals that you believe in, and that you’ve simply been refusing to appreciate yourself for it.

Or you discover which parts of your character you’d benefit from working on, to become the kind of person that you would value highly.

And that’s not a bad thing to find out, by the way. Don’t use this discovery to make yourself feel bad, because few things are more valuable than gaining that kind of insight into who you truly want to be.

So be encouraged and excited to start the journey forward. Learn what you need to learn from reliable sources and get to work on becoming your best self.

Why this kind of self-esteem can't be taken from you

Here's what makes this so powerful: self-esteem based on what you truly value in yourself doesn’t depend on your past, other people, or external results. It only depends on you consciously choosing to do your best to live up to your values and morals.

Even when you make the occasional misstep, mistake, or bad judgment call, your self-esteem won’t be obliterated, because once you do what you think is the right thing to do to fix it, make up for it, or move forward—you’re back on track.

External events outside of your control will also lose all their power over how you feel about yourself. When you know you're living as the kind of person you respect, a bad outcome is just a bad outcome. Someone's disapproval is just their opinion. Neither changes who you are.

That's the difference between self-esteem you have to keep re-earning from the world, and self-esteem that comes from being the kind of person you appreciate.

Your self-esteem building exercise

Make yourself familiar with the values and morals you actually believe in—deep down, independent of what you've been taught you should believe or value. Not the standards handed to you by your parents, your culture, your industry, or your social circle. The ones that are genuinely yours when you strip all of that away.

What kind of values are important to you as a person? How do you think it’s right to treat others? To treat yourself? To take care of animals, nature, or your home? What are your morals—the principles that tell you what is right and wrong? How do you live up to those morals? How, if at all, can you live up to them even more?

There’s no universal way to figure these things out, and it’s hard to do in one sitting, so take your time with this exercise.

Think about this regularly, in different moods and different settings. Discuss values and morals with others and see what comes up that you might not have thought of. Observe yourself and take note of what makes you feel good about yourself and what doesn’t.

Making this something you reflect on regularly, especially when you’re feeling a little down on yourself, makes it much easier to use this—rather than external results—to evaluate yourself, your choices, and your actions.

Once this becomes how you measure yourself, your self-esteem will grow every time you live up to your values and morals. And when you don’t, you’ll discover an opportunity to learn, adjust, and grow. Not to impress anyone else, but to be the kind of person that you respect.

None of us live up to our values all the time, but those of us who have learned to build healthy self-esteem recognize that part of being human is making mistakes, and what matters is whether we choose to grow from them or not.

All the best,
TJ

PS: Want to learn more about building healthy self-esteem from within? Check out my self-esteem course for free at https://selfesteem.tjswebsite.com

💻 Learn more: Check out my LinkedIn Learning courses about communication, confidence, and self-esteem.

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