The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem Summary

My good friend Paul gave me The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem years ago, and I remember having to read most pages twice. It felt very complicated on the time. The concepts in it are for certain, Nathaniel Branden’s thinking is on a very high and abstract level. Of course you wouldn’t anticipate anything less from one of Ayn Rand‘s most devoted followers (and former lovers, ahem).

Branden devoted his life to the psychology of shallowness, which culminated in the publication of this book in 1994. He discovered six pillars of self esteem review pillars, which are the foundation on which one can develop a wholesome amount of vanity, to live a fulfilled life.

Listed below are 3 lessons from the book:

Self-esteem is like calcium: a lack gained’t kill you, however you may’t really live without it.
Accept yourself and take full responsibility.
Living purposefully and training personal integrity are the hardest pillars of self-esteem.
Ready to claim your right to be completely happy? Time for a pep speak!

Lesson 1: Self-esteem is like calcium: an absence won’t kill you, however you may’t really live with out it.
You possibly can read headlines like "10 Tricks to Seem More Confident" or"The right way to Enhance Your Self-Esteem" in every single place, but when I requested you to really explain what shallowness is, may you do it?

It absolutely must be more than the drunken confidence of frat guys trying tacky pick-up lines on women, proper? Yup!

Nathaniel Branden says vanity is the immune system of consciousness, with the power to resist, make it robust and regenerate it.

In a way, self-esteem is like calcium. Calcium is what makes your teeth and bones strong, making it an important part of a wholesome body. While a scarcity of calcium received’t kill you, in the event you stay depleted over a long time, living a fully engaged life turns into really hard, as your body gets weak.

The same is true for vanity and your psychological well-being. Certain, you may navigate via life with out it, but you’ll always get pushed round and not actually live in accordance together with your targets, purposes and values.

This is because vanity works like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you anticipate yourself to be capable of, the more these expectations affect your habits in a method that makes your actions align with them. Subsequently, your self-esteem is a strategy to flip your desires into reality.

Lesson 2: Accept yourself as you are and take accountability for one hundred% of the things that occur in your life.
I can’t describe all six pillars here, but number 2 and 3 are important. They're self-acceptance and self-accountability, which could also be a bit hard to differentiate at first, so let me try.

Self-acceptance is connected to mindfulness. You choose to value your self, just the way in which you are, without practicing judgment. For example, yesterday I bit my nails very badly. I may get mad at myself and remorse this, but when I select to simply accept that it happened, I can then ask why I bit in the first place. The reply is that I was careworn, because I felt behind on what I needed to perform for the day, and biting my nails was a physical aid for the stress that I created in my head when my expectations didn’t match reality.

Should you apply self-acceptance and dig deeper, you’ll make repeating this bad habits loads less likely. A caveat: Self-acceptance shouldn’t be confused with complacency. To the contrary. The only strategy to discover the drive to get better is to just accept yourself as you are now, in any other case you’ll waste all of your time agonizing over your previous mistakes.

Self-accountability is a direct results of self-acceptance. It means taking management of your life and happiness by becoming one hundred% resolution-oriented. Don’t waste even a second complaining, and instantly ask "What can I do about it?" every time an issue arises. Fully cease blaming others. Nobody’s pushing your buttons, no one’s actions are a pre-situation to your personal and it's nobody’s job to make you happy.

It’s all you, and that’s a good thing!

Lesson three: Try to live with a function and apply personal integrity (it’s hard!)
Pillars 5 and 6 are connected as well. The former is about living purposefully. Most of us really feel like we have now a way of what our function is, or not less than a rough concept of it. Living with objective means to try to hold clarifying that goal as you go along, while concurrently taking actions that’ll move us closer in that direction.

For example, I may say I wish to be a writer, but then just "wait until I have a good suggestion for a novel". Instead, I just build my expertise in the meantime, by writing for Four Minute Books each time I get a chance. I can figure out an idea for a novel later, not less than I’m living in alignment with my purpose.

Taking motion is the part that makes positive you full the sixth pillar, essentially the most troublesome of them all: personal integrity. It’s when the way you behave matches the words you speak. It begins with keeping small promises and speaking the truth even when just a little white lie can be more convenient. This is the hardest one to apply, because our society makes amorality appear regular – being a cynic and exhibiting bad habits is even considered cool these days (drinking, failing at a startup, not caring about your profession, etc.).

The fact that you and I are surrounded by plenty of dishonest hypocrites makes it all of the more clear and important that we've got to be different.