Here are the six practices, or “pillars,” on which Branden argues self-esteem can be built. They prove that it is not just a choice to feel confident in yourself, but it many choices, made continuously, and with as much effort as possible.
Living consciously.
To live consciously is to not be controlled by your subconscious biases and desires. Your “shadow selves,” as they’re called, are out in the light. You understand what’s going on around you, and you can make informed choices based on that inherent understanding.
Self-acceptance.
You aren’t aggrandizing your looks or your intelligence or being willfully ignorant of the natural balance of traits and characteristics every person possesses. This is true self-acceptance. It is seeing your whole self without judging or condemning parts of it.
Self-responsibility.
You hold yourself accountable for your own happiness. You understand the phrase “it may not be your fault, but it is still your problem.” You are in control of your life because you are not letting other things do it for you.
Self-assertiveness.
You can stand up for yourself without being defensive. Defensiveness is born of fear; assertiveness is born of confidence.
Living purposefully.
You live mindfully and intentionally. You recognize that your “purpose” is just to be where you are, doing whatever you’re doing. In this, you infuse your days with a sense of purposefulness, as it is something you choose, not wait to find or have created for you.
Personal integrity.
You hold yourself to a certain standard of morals and ethics and accountability. You develop a code of conduct for yourself, rather than just
abiding by the one that you were conditioned to. You are able to look at choices objectively, even when the circumstances are difficult. You realize the importance of the phrase “the road to hell was paved with good intentions…”
12 Branden, Nathaniel. The Psychology of Self-Esteem. 2001. Jossey-Bass.
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WHY YOU SHOULD
THANK THE PEOPLE
who have
HURT YOU
MOST IN LIFE
01. The people who were able to hurt you most were also the people whom you were able to love the most. We aren’t profoundly affected by people who aren’t already deeply within our hearts. For someone to have that much importance in your life is sacred, even when it goes askew. It’s a gift to know someone who was able to truly affect you, even if at first it didn’t seem like it was for the best.
02. Difficult relationships often push you to change your behavior for the better. In feeling helpless, you learn to take care of yourself. In feeling used, you recognize your worth. In being abused, you develop compassion. In feeling like you’re stuck, you realize there is always a choice. In accepting what was done to you, you realize that nobody has control at the end of the day, but in surrendering the need for something we’ll never have, we can find peace, which is what we were actually seeking in the first place.
03. What you learn and who you become is more important than how you temporarily feel. That relationship may have seemed almost unbearable at the time, but the feeling is transitory. The wisdom and grace and knowledge that you carried with you afterwards aren’t.
They set a foundation for the rest of your life. The ends far outweigh the means, and to be grateful for what you’ve been through is to completely acknowledge that.
04. You don’t come across these people by accident; they were your teachers and catalysts. In the words of C. Joybell C., we’re all stars that think they’re dying until we realize we’re collapsing into supernovas—to become more beautiful than ever before. It often
takes the contrast of pain to completely appreciate what we have, and it often takes hate to incite self-recognition. Sometimes the way light enters us is, in fact, through the wound.
05. Even if it wasn’t your fault, it is your problem, and you get to choose what you do in the aftermath. You have every right to rage and rant and hate every iota of someone’s being, but you also have the right to choose to be at peace. To thank them is to forgive them, and to forgive them is to choose to realize that the other side of resentment is wisdom. To find wisdom in pain is to realize that the people who become “supernovas” are the ones who acknowledge their pain and then channel it into something better, not people who just acknowledge it and then leave it to stagnate and remain.
06. The people who have been through a lot are often the ones who are wiser and kinder and happier overall. This is because they’ve been
“through” it, not “past” it or “over” it. They’ve completely acknowledged their feelings and they’ve learned and they’ve grown.
They develop compassion and self-awareness. They are more conscious of who they let into their lives. They take a more active role in creating their lives, in being grateful for what they have and in finding reasons for what they don’t.
07. It showed you what you do deserve. Those relationships didn’t actually hurt you; they showed you an unhealed part of yourself, a part that was preventing you from being truly loved. That’s what happens when we finally get past hurtful experiences and terrible relationships: We realize we are worth more, and so we choose more. We realize how we blindly or naively said “yes” to someone or gave them our mind and heart space when we didn’t have to. We realize our role in choosing what we want in our lives, and by experiencing what seems like the worst, we finally acknowledge that it feels so wrong because we deserve so much more.
08. Truly coming to peace with anything is being able to say: “Thank you for that experience.” To fully move on from anything, you must be able to recognize what purpose it served and how it made you better. Until that moment, you’ll only be ruminating over how it made things worse, which means you’re not to the other side yet. To fully accept your life—the highs, lows, good, bad—is to be grateful
for all of it, and to know that the “good” teaches you well, but the
“bad” teaches you better.
37
TRYING TO
MAKE SENSE
of your life
IS WHAT’S ACTUALLY