My battle and victory against self esteem

If you have suffered from low self-esteem, you always try and think of the cause.  The most obvious causes are: a parent who demanded straight As, an abusive spouse, etc. These are common forms of mistreatment that cause some people’s self-esteem to break.

For those of you who are reading this who’ve lived fairly easy lives, while surrounded by reasonably supportive people, low self-esteem has no obvious root.  What’s worse is that having an issue we don’t understand can make us feel weak or defective because the problem seemingly has no cause.

If you’ve suffered with low self-esteem, even if just occasionally or in certain situations.  Apparently,  there’s a surprising new link that can help us and it has everything to do with effort.

Sigmund Freud was right about something and it’s that what happens to us during childhood shapes us.  

Growing up when you are praised for being something, you feel a pressure that you don't feel when you are praised for a picture or for gaining a leading role in the nativity.  When you fail, or whenever I failed, I associated the failure with an innate quality instead of associating it with the amount or even the quality of work I did, this was damaging to my impressionable self image and actually wrecked my self image as an adult.  The low value falls on the self, not on the action taken.

This kind of praise conditioned me to think I was supposed to already be something without practice or trial and error. After falling short of this irrational standard a few times, my self-esteem dropped very quickly.

For much of my life, I wouldn’t try anything that I felt I wasn’t “innately” good at. I was big on beginner’s luck and anything I knew how to do intuitively, without much effort. Everything else I just wouldn't bother with. 

As I grew up, this subtle distinction wreaked havoc in my life. I would quit things at the first sign of trouble, becoming extremely discouraged, and sometimes even feeling ashamed at the slightest mistake.  Basically, how I behaved and my upbringing exemplified the above theory: I had no understanding of commitment and how it was the key to being talented in different areas. Instead, I fearfully avoided anything that required practice and stuck to things like Karate, Tennis and Golf (in my late teens) which I felt I had a “knack” for. I believed that what I did was who I was—for better or worse.

If, like me you’ve had self-esteem issues in your life, you may be familiar with quitting or shying away from certain efforts. Maybe you felt bad, like I did, when you weren’t immediately good at a new task.  

In my late thirties I have finally come to terms with the fact that - A failure of any kind does not reflect that you are a failure. It is simply that my action failed to have the impact I wanted.  I have worked so hard on consciously separating these two things in my mind. Each time I recognize this pattern, I remind myself that a failed attempt at something does not equate to me being a failed person.  When I intensely feel that I have failed at something, I remind myself that it is probably a common mistake and getting good at any task requires patience.

I know from my golf that you need to truly understand that failure is necessary for success.  I used failures to learn new opportunities, that helped propel me to the next stage within my golf. 

Dennis Pugh on Twitter always has valid discussions concerning talent and practice in Golf.  Extraordinary myth, perpetuated by meaningless phrases like “you either have it or you don’t!” Of course, it’s safe to say that we all have propensities for certain things, but that does not bar those who don’t from practicing and developing that skill too.

So the next time I hold myself to unrealistic expectations, I will always stop, think and remember that, I am not my effort.