Nathaniel Branden, the godfather of self-esteem – outlines the pillars to feel really great about yourself.
Memorable quotes
As an extension of human intelligence, a machine substitutes the power of thought for the power of muscles. While making physical labor less demanding, it makes it more productive. As technological development keeps evolving, the ratio keeps shifting in favor of mind. And as mind becomes more important, self-esteem becomes more important. The climax of this process of development is the emergence of an information economy in which material resources count for less and less and knowledge and new ideas count for almost everything.
What was so historically extraordinary about the creation of the United States of America was its conscious rejection of the tribal premise.
Freedom. Individualism. The right to the pursuit of happiness. Self-ownership. The individual as an end in him- or herself, not a means to the ends of others; not the property of family or church or state or society. These ideas were radical at the time they were proclaimed, and I do not believe they are fully understood or accepted yet; not by most people.
At the core of the American tradition was the fact that this country was born as a frontier nation where nothing was given and everything had to be created.
To work effectively with other human beings, which includes skill in written and oral communication, the ability to participate in nonadversarial relationships, understanding of how to build consensus through give and take, and willingness to assume leadership and motivate coworkers when necessary. To manage and respond appropriately to change. To cultivate the ability to think for oneself, without which innovativeness is impossible.
If more is offered to individuals than ever before in our history, in opportunities for fulfillment, achievement, and self-expression, more is asked of them in terms of psychological development.
If low self-esteem dreads the unknown and unfamiliar, high self-esteem seeks new frontiers. If low self-esteem avoids challenges, high self-esteem desires and needs them. If low self-esteem looks for a chance to be absolved, high self-esteem looks for an opportunity to admire.
In an area that demands partnership [at every level], a time when our emphasis must shift toward cooperative efforts, the individual paradoxically takes on far greater importance. We can no longer afford to operate companies in which masses of “hired hands” are chronically underutilized while a few “heads” at the top do all thinking…. Competing in an era that demands continuous innovation requires us to harness the brain-power of every individual in the organization.
It often disregarded tradition. It did not dread change but greatly accelerated it. Freedom could be intoxicating but it also could be frightening. Entrepreneurship is by its nature antiauthority. It is anti-status quo. It is always moving in the direction of making what exists obsolete. Early in this century the economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote of the work of the entrepreneur as that of “creative destruction.”
“If one thinks of the systematic resistance offered by people to the authoritarian method, and the admirable ingenuity employed by children the world over to evade disciplinarian constraint, one cannot help regarding as defective a system which allows so much effort to be wasted instead of using it in cooperation.”
What is needed and demanded today, in the age of the knowledge worker, is not robotic obedience but persons who can think; who can innovate, originate, and function self-responsibly; who are capable of self-management; who can remain individuals while working effectively as members of teams; who are confident of their powers and their ability to contribute. What the workplace needs today is self-esteem. And what the workplace needs sooner or later of necessity becomes the agenda of the schools.
The aim must be to teach children how to think, how to recognize logical fallacies, how to be creative, and how to learn. This last is emphasized because of the speed with which yesterday’s knowledge becomes inadequate to today’s demands: most work now requires a commitment to lifelong learning.
– The continuing and escalating explosion of new knowledge, new technology, and new products and services, which keep raising the requirements of economic adaptiveness.
– The emergence of a global economy of unprecedented competitiveness, which is yet another challenge to our ingenuity and belief in ourselves.
– The increasing demands on individuals at every level of a business enterprise, not just at the top but throughout the system, for self-management, personal responsibility, self-direction, a high level of consciousness, and a commitment to innovation and contribution as top priorities.
– The entrepreneurial model and mentality becoming central to our thinking about economic adaptiveness.
– The emergence of mind as the central and dominant factor in all economic activity.
Self-esteem does not find change frightening, for the reasons stated in the preceding paragraph. Self-esteem flows with reality; self-doubt fights it.
To trust one’s mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.
High self-esteem seeks the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile and demanding goals. Reaching such goals nurtures good self-esteem. Low self-esteem seeks the safety of the familiar and undemanding. Confining oneself to the familiar and undemanding serves to weaken self-esteem.
The lower our self-esteem, the more muddy, evasive, and inappropriate our communications are likely to be, because of uncertainty about our own thoughts and feelings and/or anxiety about the listener’s response.
Contrary to the belief that an individualistic orientation inclines one to antisocial behavior, research shows that a well-developed sense of personal value and autonomy correlates significantly with kindness
We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy. Negatives have more power over us than positives. If we do not believe in ourselves—neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness—the universe is a frightening
When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid. Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to “prove” our worth but to live our possibilities.
These developments create demands for higher levels of education and training than were required of previous generations. Everyone acquainted with business culture knows this. What is not understood is that these developments also create new demands on our psychological resources. Specifically, these developments ask for a greater capacity for innovation, self-management, personal responsibility, and self-direction. This is not just asked at the top. It is asked at every level of a business enterprise, from senior management to first-line supervisors and even to entry-level personnel. We have reached a moment in history when self-esteem, which has always been a supremely important psychological need, has also become a supremely important economic need.
We have more choices and options than ever before in every area. Frontiers of limitless possibilities now face us in whatever direction we look. To be adaptive in such an environment, to cope appropriately, we have a greater need for personal autonomy—because there is no widely accepted code of rules and rituals to spare us the challenge of individual decision making.
Social status is determined by how you behave around other people, how other people behave around you, and how you treat yourself.
“Workers” become “associates” in an atmosphere that is becoming increasingly collegial rather than hierarchical. In such a setting, interpersonal competence is a high priority. And low self-esteem tends to stand in the way of such competence.
What the company promised in exchange was lifetime protection and security. “Be a company man and the company will take care of you” was the promise. Self-denial for the good of the company was a value that found a ready audience, since, for thousands of years, human beings had been taught that self-denial was the essence of morality: self-denial for the tribe, for God, for king, state, country, society.
The 1950s and 1960s were the time of the “Organization Man.” Not independent thinking, but faithful compliance to the rules, was the road to success. Not to stand out, but to fit in, was the formula for those who wanted to rise. Just enough self-esteem to maintain a decent level of competence within the framework that existed.
Self-reliance and self-responsibility were seen as supremely appropriate in this new order of things, in contrast to the conformity and obedience more valued in earlier, tribal societies. Independence became an economically adaptive virtue. New ideas with commercial application were valued. The ability to perceive and actualize new wealth-producing possibilities was valued. The entrepreneurial mentality was rewarded.
The essence of entrepreneurial activity is that of endowing resources with new wealth-producing capabilities—of seeing and actualizing productive possibilities that have not been seen and actualized before. This presupposes the ability to think for oneself, to look at the world through one’s own eyes—a lack of excessive regard for the-world-as-perceived-by-others—at least in some respects.
When the Swiss were shown the first digital watches, their response was: “But this isn’t a watch; a watch has springs and gears.” When they woke up, they had lost their leadership position.
These are the three tenants of being a high status and a highly attractive man: treat others well, be treated well by others, and treat yourself well.
The less you talk about your shame, the more of it you have.
What you actually say doesn’t matter; WHY you say it matters.
Being non-needy means that your emotions and motivations are less affected by her than hers are by you. When you lavish gifts and praise onto a woman who has not done anything to earn it, you are sub-communicating a desperate need for her attention and validation — a willingness to sacrifice your self-respect and wealth to win over her affection.the only women who will go for a man like this are women who are superficial and willing to trade their affection for material and superficial gain — these women are soulless and suppress their emotions as much, if not more than the men who buy things for them.
When you’re willing to cut a woman off and tell her when she’s out of line, when you’re willing to tell a woman what you will and will not tolerate in your life, this subcommunicates the most powerful elements of attraction to her. Far more powerful than an entertaining story or game.
Often, they immediately apologize and say that they didn’t mean to be so flakey. Oddly enough, my honesty and complete willingness to be rejected (or to reject them) demonstrates my nonneediness and for the first time, makes them incredibly attracted to me.
Men who are not needy establish strict boundaries because they value their own time and happiness more than receiving the attention from a woman.
I value curiosity, education, intelligence and authenticity. I also don’t value “fake” looks such as pounds of make-up, bronzer, hair extensions or super tight skirts.
The reality of incompatibility defines our entire strategy of dating women. To base our strategy on anything else is inefficient at best and downright damaging at worst. The world is what it is, it’s our job to simply present ourselves as boldly and clearly to it as possible, accept the reactions and move on the opportunities. Anything else is a fool’s errand.
The alternative to excessive dependence on the feedback and validation of others is a well-developed system of internal support. Then, the source of certainty lies within. The attainment of this state is essential to what I understand as proper human maturity.
Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness—that is, the absence of supportive feedback from their social environment. They are more willing to follow their vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored spaces do not frighten them—or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them.
If we do not bring an appropriate level of consciousness to our activities, if we do not live mindfully, the inevitable penalty is a diminished sense of self-efficacy and self-respect. We cannot feel competent and worthy while conducting our lives in a mental fog.
Living consciously implies that my first loyalty is to truth, not to making myself right. All of us are wrong some of the time, all of us make mistakes, but if we have tied our self-esteem (or our pseudo self-esteem) to being above error, or if we have become overattached to our own positions, we are obliged to shrink consciousness in misguided self-protection. To find it humiliating to admit an error is a certain sign of flawed self-esteem.
Only a commitment to lifelong learning can allow us to remain adaptive to our world. Those who believe they have “thought enough” and “learned enough” are on a downward trajectory of increasing unconsciousness.
If capitalism offered a broader arena for self-esteem to operate in than had ever existed before, it also offered challenges that had no precedent in earlier, tribal societies—challenges to self-reliance, self-assertiveness, self-responsibility, and personal accountability. Capitalism created a market for the independent mind.
In the context of big business, to become entrepreneurial means to learn to think like small business at its most imaginative and aggressive: to cultivate lightness, lack of encumbrance, swiftness of response, constant alertness to developments that signal new opportunities.
If low self-esteem correlates with resistance to change and clinging to the known and familiar, then never in the history of the world has low self-esteem been as economically disadvantageous as it is today.
If high self-esteem correlates with comfort in managing change and in letting go of yesterday’s attachments, then high self-esteem confers a competitive edge.
There is a principle we can identify here. In the earlier years of American business, when the economy was fairly stable and change relatively slow, the bureaucratic style of organization worked reasonably well. As the economy became less stable and the pace of change quickened, it became less and less adaptive, unable to respond swiftly to new developments. Let us relate this to the need for self-esteem. The more stable the economy and the slower the rate of change, the less urgent the need for large numbers of individuals with healthy self-esteem. The more unstable the economy and the more rapid the rate of change—which is clearly the world of the present and future—the more urgent the need for large numbers of self-esteeming individuals.
To acquire appropriate knowledge and skills, and to commit oneself to a lifetime of continuous learning, which the rapid growth of knowledge makes mandatory.
To go beyond paying lip service to “the importance of the individual” by designing a culture in which initiative, creativity, self-responsibility, and contribution are fostered and rewarded.
To recognize the relationship between self-esteem and performance and to think through and implement policies that support self-esteem. This demands recognizing and responding to the individual’s need for a sane, intelligible, noncontradictory environment that a mind can make sense of; for learning and growth; for achievement; for being listened to and respected; for being allowed to make (responsible) mistakes.
When prospective employees ask themselves, “Is this an organization where I can learn, grow, develop myself, enjoy my work?” they are implicitly asking, whether they identify it or not, “Is this a place that supports my self-esteem—or does violence to it?”
It is said that the successful organization of the future will be above all a learning organization. It can equally be said that it will be an organization geared to self-esteem.
1. People feel safe: secure that they will not be ridiculed, demeaned, humiliated, or punished for openness and honesty or for admitting “I made a mistake” or for saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
2. People feel accepted: treated with courtesy, listened to, invited to express thoughts and feelings, dealt with as individuals whose dignity is important.
3. People feel challenged: given assignments that excite, inspire, and test and stretch their abilities.
4. People feel recognized: acknowledged for individual talents and achievements and rewarded monetarily and nonmonetarily for extraordinary contributions.
5. People receive constructive feedback: they hear how to improve performance in nondemeaning ways that stress positives rather than negatives and that build on their strengths.
6. An organization whose people operate at a high level of consciousness, self-acceptance (and acceptance of others), self-responsibility, self-assertiveness (and respect for the assertiveness of others), purposefulness, and personal integrity would be an organization of extraordinarily empowered human beings.
7. People see that innovation is expected of them: their opinions are solicited, their brainstorming is invited, and they see that the development of new and usable ideas is desired of them and welcomed.
8. People are given easy access to information: not only are they given the information (and resources) they need to do their job properly, they are given information about the wider context in which they work—the goals and progress of the company—so that they can understand how their activities relate to the organization’s overall mission.
9. People are given authority appropriate to what they are accountable for: they are encouraged to take initiative, make decisions, exercise judgment.
10. People are given clear-cut and noncontradictory rules and guidelines: they are provided with a structure their intelligence can grasp and count on and they know what is expected of them.
11. People are encouraged to solve as many of their own problems as possible:they are expected to resolve issues close to the action rather than pass responsibility for solutions to higher-ups, and they are empowered to do so.
12. People see that their rewards for successes are far greater than any penalties for failures: in too many companies, where the penalties for mistakes are much greater than the rewards for success, people are afraid to take risks or express themselves.
13. People are encouraged and rewarded for learning: they are encouraged to participate in internal and external courses and programs that will expand their knowledge and skills.
14. People experience congruence between an organization’s mission statement and professed philosophy, on the one hand, and the behavior of leaders and managers, on the other: they see integrity exemplified and they feel motivated to match what they see.
15. People experience being treated fairly and justly
16. People are able to believe in and take pride in the value of what they produce: they perceive the result of their efforts as genuinely useful, they perceive their work as worth doing. To the extent that these conditions are operative in an organization, it will be a place in which high-self-esteem people will want to work. It will also be one in which people of more modest self-esteem will find their self-esteem raised.
If degrees of self-esteem are thought of on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 representing optimal self-esteem and 1 almost the lowest imaginable, then is a leader who is a 5 more likely to hire a 7 or a 3? Very likely he or she will feel more comfortable with the 3, since people often feel intimated by others more confident than themselves. Multiply this example hundreds or thousands of times and project the consequences for a business.
Our idea of “the individual,” as an autonomous, self-determining unit, able to think independently and bearing responsibility for his or her existence, emerged from several historical developments: the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, the Reformation in the sixteenth, and the Enlightenment in the eighteenth—and their two offspring, the Industrial Revolution and capitalism.
Not long ago these values were regarded as very “Western,” very “American”—and now more and more of the world is embracing them. These values reflect human needs.
To the extent that a culture suppresses the natural impulse to self-assertion and self-expression, it blocks creativity, stifles individuality, and sets itself against the requirements of self-esteem.
In passivity neither our reason nor our passion nor our creativity nor our imagination fulfill themselves. We only half live our existence. This perspective may be Western, but I believe it is arguably superior to the alternative.
Raised in a culture in which not the individual but the group is primary, he had difficulty understanding this; his whole orientation was to the social collective
The essence of the tribal mentality is that it makes the tribe as such the supreme good and denigrates the importance of the individual. It tends to view individuals as interchangeable units and to ignore or minimize the significance of differences between one human being and another. At its extreme, it sees the individual as hardly existing except in the network of tribal relationships; the individual by him- or herself is nothing. It is a premise and an orientation that disempowers the individual qua individual. Its implicit message is: You don’t count. By yourself, you are nothing. Only as part of us can you be something. Thus, any society, to the extent that it is dominated by the tribal premise, is inherently unsupportive of self-esteem and more: it is actively inimical. In such a society the individual is socialized to hold him- or herself in low esteem relative to the group. Self-assertiveness is suppressed (except through highly ritualized channels). Pride tends to be labeled a vice. Self-sacrifice is enjoined.
Throughout history, wherever religion has been state enforced, consciousness has been punished.
They were not encouraged to believe that they were born with a claim on the work, energy, and resources of others. This last was a cultural shift that occurred in the twentieth century.
The values of our community can inspire the best in us or the worst. A culture that values mind, intellect, knowledge, and understanding promotes self-esteem; a culture that denigrates mind undermines self-esteem.
A culture in which human beings are held accountable for their actions supports self-esteem; a culture in which no one is held accountable for anything breeds demoralization and self-contempt.
A culture that prizes self-responsibility fosters self-esteem; a culture in which people are encouraged to see themselves as victims fosters dependency, passivity, and the mentality of entitlement. The evidence for these observations is all around us.
To honor the self—to honor mind, judgment, values, and convictions—is the ultimate act of courage. Observe how rare it is. But it is what self-esteem asks of us.
The other dragon we may need to slay is the impulse to avoid discomfort. Living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears; it may bring us into contact with unresolved pain.
Self-responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness; it demands that we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer.
Self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic, with no guarantee of how others will respond; it means that we risk being ourselves. Living purposefully pulls us out of passivity into the demanding life of high focus; it requires that we be self-generators. Living with integrity demands that we choose our values and stand by them, whether this is pleasant and whether others share our convictions; there are times when it demands hard choices.
First, we decide that our self-esteem and our happiness matter more than short-term discomfort or pain. We take baby steps at being more conscious, self-accepting, responsible, and so on. We notice that when we do this we like ourselves more. This inspires us to push on and attempt to go farther. We become more truthful with ourselves and others. Self-esteem rises. We take on harder assignments. We feel a little tougher, a little more resourceful. It becomes easier to confront discomfiting emotions and threatening situations; we feel we have more assets with which to cope. We become more self-assertive. We feel stronger. We are building the spiritual equivalent of a muscle.
But a life without effort, struggle, or suffering is an infant’s dream.
The energy for this commitment can only come from the love we have for our own life. This love is the beginning of virtue. It is the launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations. It is the motive power that drives the six pillars. It is the seventh pillar of self-esteem.