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Psychologists today
generally agree that your level of self-esteem, or how much you like
yourself and consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person, lies
at the core of your personality. Your level of self-esteem determines:
Your level of
energy and the quality of your personality how much you like other people
and, in turn, how much they like you your willingness to try new things and
to venture boldly where perhaps you have never gone before the quality of
your relationships with others-your family, your friends and your coworkers
and how successful you are in your business, especially if you are in sales.
But before you
begin enjoying the wonderful effects of high self-esteem in your life, you
have to learn to accept yourself unconditionally. And even before you
achieve self-acceptance, there are other steps you have to take.
Self-acceptance
begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other
important people. As a child, you have an overwhelming need for love and
approval and acceptance from the important people in your life. A developing
child requires this emotional support the way roses need rain. Healthy
personality growth is absolutely dependent upon it. A person grows up
straight and strong and happy to the degree to which he receives an
abundance of nurturing in his formative years, prior to the age of five.
Someone once said
that everything we do in life is either to get love or to compensate for the
lack of love. Almost all of our problems, as both children and adults, can
be traced back to “love withheld.” There is nothing more destructive to the
evolving and emerging personality than being unloved or unaccepted for any
reason by someone whom we consider important.
As adults, we
always strive to achieve what we felt we were deprived of in childhood. If
you grew up feeling, for any reason, that you were not totally accepted by
your parents, you will be internally motivated throughout your life to
compensate for that lack of acceptance by seeking it in your relationships
with other people. To the growing child, perception is reality; reality is
not what the parents feel toward the child, but what the child feels that
the parents feel. The child’s evolving personality is shaped largely by his
perception of how he is seen and thought about by his parents, not by the
actual fact of the matter. If your parents were unable to express a high
degree of unconditional acceptance to you, you can grow up feeling
unacceptable-even inferior and inadequate.
It’s quite common
for a youngster to grow up in a household where he or she feels a lack of
acceptance by one or both parents, especially the father. When the young
person becomes an adult, the psychological phenomenon of “transference”
takes place. The individual goes into the workplace and transfers the need
for acceptance from the parents to the boss. The boss then becomes the focal
point of the individual’s thoughts and feelings. What the boss says, how the
boss looks, his comments and everything that he does that implies a feeling
or an opinion about the individual is recorded and either raises or lowers
the individual’s level of self-acceptance.
Your own level of
self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted
by the important people in your life. Just as the Law of Correspondence says
that your outer life tends to be a reflection of your inner life, your
attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you
think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think
highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight
up. However, if you believe, rightly or wrongly, that other people think
poorly of you, your level of self-acceptance will plummet.
The best way to
begin building a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and
your motivation. Toward this end, I’d like to introduce what is called the
“Johari window” and explain its effect on your personality.
The Johari window
provides a view into your psyche. According to this theory, your personality
can be divided into four quadrants, like a square divided into four smaller
squares.
The first part of
this window is the box in the upper left-hand corner. It represents the part
of your personality that both you and others can see. This is the open part
of your personality. The lower left-hand box of this window into your psyche
represents the part of your personality that you can see but that others
cannot see. It is a part of your inner life.
The upper
right-hand box of this window represents the parts of your personality that
others can see but of which you are unaware. You have somehow blocked these
parts from your consciousness.
Finally, the lower
right-hand box represents that part of your personality that is hidden from
both you and other people. It’s the deeper, subconscious part of your
personality that represents urges, instincts, fears, doubts and emotions
that are stored away below a conscious level, but that can exert an
inordinate impact on the way you behave, often causing you to feel and react
in certain ways that sometimes even you don’t understand.
One of your goals
is to develop a fully rounded personality, to become a fully functioning
human being with a sense of inner peace and outer happiness.
A measure of your
maturity is often manifested in the way you treat different people. When you
are at your very best and your self-esteem is at its highest, you’ll find
that you are genuinely positive and friendly toward everyone, from the taxi
driver to the corporation president. When your personality is completely
together, you treat everyone with equal respect.
The way to move
toward a higher level of personality integration and, therefore, a higher
level of peace and personal effectiveness, is to expand the area of your
personality that is clear to both you and others. And you do this through
the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand
yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your
past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have
to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of
those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won’t make you
feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.
The second part of
personality development follows from self-disclosure, and it’s called
self-awareness. Only when you can disclose what you’re truly thinking and
feeling to someone else can you become aware of those thoughts and emotions
If the other person simply listens to you without commenting or criticizing,
you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are and why
you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the
Buddhists call “detachment.” You can stand back from yourself and your past
and look at it honestly. You can “disidentify” from the intense emotions
involved and view what has happened to you with greater calmness and
clarity.
Now we come to the
good part. After you’ve gone through self-disclosure to self-awareness, you
arrive at self-acceptance. You accept yourself for the person you are, with
good points and bad points, with strengths and weaknesses, and with the
normal frailties of a human being. When you develop the ability to stand
back and look at yourself honestly, and to candidly admit to others that you
may not be perfect but you’re all you’ve got, you start to enjoy a
heightened sense of self-acceptance.
One of the keys to
happiness is to “live in truth” with yourself and others. And one of the
ways to live in truth is to stop trying to be perfect and to see yourself
honestly, as you really are. Attempts to achieve needless perfectionism, and
an intense, often unconscious desire to impress people with how good you
are, are real time wasters and energy killers.
There is a joke
that cuts to the heart of this issue: “When you are in your 20s, you are
very concerned about what people think about you. When you are in your 30s,
you don’t really care that much about what people think about you. And when
you get into your 40s, you discover the real truth: Nobody was even thinking
about you at all.” A valuable exercise for developing higher levels of
self-acceptance involves doing an inventory of yourself. In doing this
inventory, your job is to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative.
The real difference between optimistic people and pessimistic people is that
optimists are always looking for the good in every situation, the
opportunity in every problem, while pessimists are always looking for the
down side and the problem in every opportunity. When you honestly analyze
yourself during this inventory, you will be amazed at how extraordinary you
really are and how incredible your potential is for accomplishing the things
that you really desire.
Begin your
inventory by recalling your accomplishments. Think about all the things that
you have achieved over the course of your lifetime. Make a list of them.
Think of the subjects you passed and the grades you received. Think of the
awards and prizes you won. Think of the people you have helped and the kind
things that you have done for others. Think of the adversities that you have
triumphed over. Think of the goals that you have set and achieved. Look at
the material parts of your life; think about all the things that you have
managed to acquire as the result of hard work and disciplined effort.
Now, to increase
your level of self-acceptance, think of your unique talents and abilities.
Think of your core skills, the things that you do exceptionally well that
account for your success in your profession and in your personal life right
now. Think of the results that you have achieved by applying yourself to the
challenges of your world. Think of your earning ability and your ability to
accomplish your goals. Think of your ability to make a contribution to your
company and to your family and to the world around you. Think about all the
things that you have to offer to your world.
Finally, to boost
your level of self-acceptance, think about your future possibilities and the
fact that your potential is virtually unlimited. You can do what you want to
do and go where you want to go. You can be the person you want to be. You
can set large and small goals and make plans and move step-by-step,
progressively toward their realization. There are no obstacles to what you
can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind.
Here’s an important
fact to keep in mind when it comes to self-acceptance. What we work for more
than anything else is respect. The British author E. M. Forster once
explained, “I write to earn the respect of those I respect.” Almost
everything that we do, or refrain from doing, is somehow associated with
gaining, or at least not losing, the respect of the people whom we respect
the most. And only when we feel that we are respected by those we respect do
we accept and like ourselves to a great degree.
One way to raise
your level of self-acceptance, then, is to pick a role model, someone you
admire and look up to and want to be like, and then pattern your life and
your work after that person’s. Many businesspeople have become top
executives by selecting a role model who had already reached the top and
then patterning their lives along the same lines. Everything you do that you
feel is consistent with what someone you admire would do increases your
level of self-acceptance.
A second way to
assure a higher level of self-acceptance is to develop good work habits and
to work efficiently and effectively toward the accomplishment of high-value
results. The most respected people in any organization are those who can get
the job done. Your level of self-efficacy, in other words, your belief in
your ability to do what is expected of you, has an incredible effect on how
much you accept yourself as a good and valuable person.
A third way to
increase your level of self-acceptance is to be very aware of your image and
the way you appear to people. If you want to be respected and admired by
others, you need to act like a person who is worthy of respect. And
remember, everything counts. Everything you do or don’t do can either
contribute to or take away from your image and the impression you are making
on others. When you know that you look absolutely excellent on the outside,
your level of self-acceptance shoots up.
A fourth way to
raise your level of self-acceptance is to take complete responsibility for
the various parts of your life. Refuse to make excuses or to blame other
people. Never complain; never explain. Volunteer for assignments and
responsibilities, and then carry them out without comment.
The key to
achieving a feeling of mental well-being is having a sense of control, a
sense of self-determination and internal mastery. This sense of self-control
is tied directly to your willingness and ability to accept full
responsibility for every part of your life. When you criticize others, or
you make excuses for things that you did not do well or complete on time,
you actually feel more negative about yourself, and your sense of
self-acceptance declines. When you take charge of every part of your life,
you feel terrific about yourself, and your level of self-acceptance and
self-esteem goes up. A fifth way you can build up your level of
self-acceptance is by interpreting events in a positive way. Dr. Martin
Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania calls this your “explanatory
style.” He concludes that high-performing men and women have a tendency to
talk to themselves in a positive way and to explain things that are
happening to them and around them in a way that! allows them to stay
optimistic.
Look for the silver
lining in whatever cloud may be hanging over your head right now. Look for
the lesson or opportunity in each obstacle or setback. Look for reasons to
excuse others and let them off the hook, rather than becoming angry or
upset. Play mental games with yourself to keep your thoughts on the things
you want and off the things that you fear or that make you unhappy.
A sixth way to
raise your level of self-acceptance is to become a habitual goal setter.
Write down clear goals and a plan for what you want to accomplish and then
work your plan every day. Develop of clear sense of direction for your life.
Work on track and on purpose. Know exactly who you are and where you are
going. Each step that you take toward the accomplishment of a predetermined
objective raises your self-esteem and improves your level of self-acceptance
at the same time.
Finally, a seventh
way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to practice the Law of
Indirect Effort, or reverse effort, and realize that everything you do or
say to another person rebounds and causes the same effect on you. Whenever
you are warm and friendly and courteous to another, you improve your own
level of self-respect and self-acceptance. Whenever you do something nice
for another person, you tend to feel better about yourself. Whenever you do
or say anything that causes another person to like himself more, you find
yourself liking yourself more as well.
One of the great
riches of life is the self-acceptance that leads to self-esteem and maximum
performance. By being aware of and practicing these recommendations, you can
increase your self-acceptance to the point where you can confidently move
forward toward the realization of your full potential.
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