Chapter 8: Agency and Self-Worth

Chapter 8: Agency and Self-Worth

            Healthy personalities know how to avoid longcuts. Healthy personalities protect their agency. As you read down the right-hand column, do you find yourself? Reading from left to right do you lean more to the left or the right? No matter where you are in these comparisons, there are deficits in every personality. It’s always an adventure and awakening to discover new ways to better meet your own potential. The desire to progress, avoid longcuts and protect agency, comes as you value yourself in healthy ways.

   If you don’t feel good about yourself, you:                If you do feel good about yourself, you                            

     Being self-indulging                                              Become self-nurturing         

     Seeking pleasure                                                    Seeking happiness                           

     Playing now to pay later                                       Paying now to play later     

     Grabbing the first marshmallow                         Waiting for the second marshmallow

     Being dependent                                                    Becoming independent

     Disrespecting sound principles                             Respecting true principles                       

     Being prideful                                                        Becoming confident

     Being conceited                                                     Becoming modest      

     Obsessing about outward appearance                 Concentrating on inner qualities              

     Manipulating others                                             Being open and honest with others          

     Creating addictive traits and habits                     Being free of addictive behaviors                           

     Giving up in despair during adversity                 Being patient but pro-active in adversity

     Being an empty well                                             Having reserve in reservoir    

     Being in unhealthy relationships                         Encouraging healthy relationships

     Eating dessert first                                                 Eating dinner first

     Developing dysfunctional behaviors                    Developing normal behaviors     

     Struggling with self-doubt                                   Feeling secure        

     Being undisciplined                                               Being disciplined        

       Taking longcuts                                                   Avoiding longcuts

            As you know, how you feel about yourself is termed self-esteem. I have problems with aspects of self-esteem as the bedrock solution to every human problem. I came to believe then disbelieve the popularized concept of self-esteem.

            I went into marriage thinking I knew a lot about marriage. I had observed my parents, aunts and uncles, and had watched Ward and June Cleaver’s marriage. (The show ran during my most formative years, 1957-63.) I also thought I knew a lot about parenting. Not only did I watch Ward and June parent Wally and Beaver but as the oldest of eight children, I felt I was entering parenthood having already taken parenting 101. This notion didn’t last long when our children started arriving. As the emotional, physical, and intellectual rigors of parenting took hold of me, I realized being an oldest sibling and watching “Leave It to Beaver” was insufficient preparation. Feeling inadequate, I began a more formal study of how to become a successful parent by reading all the parenting books in our local library. (It was a small library.)

            At the time, the self-esteem movement was in vogue and I sucked it in as gospel truth. I thought if I built each child’s self-esteem, they in turn would build mine, and we’d be a perfect family, like the little country bunny story. Round and round we’d go, taking turns building each other’s self-esteem—in loving harmony. I translated what I studied about self-esteem into three tangible to-dos: praise every good thing my children did; make life for my children as idyllic as possible; and be positive and optimistic about everything, day in and day out 365 days a year. I was very naïve and obviously had little understanding of how successful families are built. The result was that by the time the five oldest were teenagers, I wrote a book titled, Is Anyone Out There Building Mother’s Self-Esteem?

            You could say I had an awakening. I changed from living idealistically blind to realizing parenting and marriage are hard. I learned ideal families don’t exist and to raise children to become healthy adults, I needed to revamp my feelings about self-esteem. Hereafter, to be clear about self-esteem, I will refer to true self-esteem as “self-worth” and the popularized and misunderstood theory of self-esteem as “self-esteem.” Fake self-esteem praises a child for less than he is capable of and simplifies the realities of life. I know now that self-worth is honest and doesn’t pretend life’s problems are resolvable in one episode of “Leave It to Beaver.” What is real is that self-worth hinges on this truth: when you do good, you feel good.

            Daniel Goleman, in Social Intelligence, tells of several experiments purposed to settle the long-standing debate about whether a child’s self-worth comes by nature—a result of a child’s genetic code, or by nurture—a result of a child’s life experiences. Dr. Goleman said one of these studies encountered “a surprise factor.” He writes: “A surprise factor showed up as an independent, and powerful, shaper of a child’s destiny: the ways a child comes to think about herself. To be sure, a teenager’s sense of overall self-worth depends much on how that child has been treated and almost not at all on genetics” (Goleman 155). Self-worth, then, is molded by the people in a child’s environment. Self-worth can be defined as a gift the adults in a child’s life give to him/her. This gift allows the child to develop confidence that he/she can become a contributing member of a family and of society. One of the most important elements that builds self-worth is for the child to know he is loved and has value, and because he is loved and has value, his parents want what is best for him. As the child comes to internalize this fact, he will also accept the fact that his parents have a duty to set limits and have expectations. This process begins at birth. Even infants know if they are valued in healthy ways.

            You and I know people who had difficulty in childhood. We also know the resiliency of the human spirit which is exemplified in the life of Larry Miller as recounted earlier. The rejection he felt when he found his belongings in bags on the front porch of his home and all the doors locked stayed with him until his death. Men and women who overcome poverty or deprivation in childhood can achieve great heights. No matter how deficient the home of your youth was, you can come to value yourself and find happiness and success as an adult. You get two chances to live in a happy home and be part of a happy family—the home in which you were a child and the home in which you are an adult. The home of your childhood was out of your control. Conversely, your home life as an adult is within your control.

            Since our purpose is to avoid longcuts and if having a solid sense of your self-worth helps you avoid longcuts, how can you as an adult change the hurt of deep-seated feeling of not feeling valued or loved as a child? The truth is: nothing you do now can change the past. Your childhood experiences whatever they were are part of who and what you are today. There is no magic eraser to undo the fact that your father was an alcoholic or your mother a druggy. Even if you could erase your past, it would be very unwise because all that’s good about you also came from that environment. I had a dear friend whose doctor/husband traded drugs for sex. He even tried to kill her. When the marriage ended and he went to prison, her father said he wished he could wipe away the pain of the past ten years. “Oh, no,” she said. “This has been my education. I’m a better, stronger person for having had this experience.” And there’s another reason to learn the lessons of the past and then leave the past behind you. If you couldn’t progress without “fixing” or “finding peace” or “finding closure” about everything bad that’s ever happened to you, it could use up many years, perhaps the rest of your life. The wise course is to let the past stay in the past and move forward as a stronger and better person, building your life to become a left-column person.

             Self-worth is built on fact, and the facts are that if you don’t do good things, you won’t feel good about yourself no matter how you spin it. Self-worth is an outgrowth of self-confidence. If you lack confidence in yourself, the only honest way to improve your self-confidence is by personal achievement. If you lack self-respect, you need to act in a way that generates true feelings of regard for yourself. It’s all about doing good to feel good. Self-worth includes the ability to self-credit, to acknowledge to yourself that you did something good or right or better than yesterday. And of course self-worth also needs you to acknowledge when you do something wrong, which is part of seeing life as it really is. What do healthy personalities do when they do something wrong. I know from all too frequent personal experience that when I don’t live up to what I know I should and want to do and be, I feel disappointed in myself. The only way I overcome feeling down on myself is to make the wrong as right as possible by taking responsibility for my actions, saying “I’m sorry,” and making my actions match my words.

            An amazing way to build self-worth is by helping others. If I let a car go in front of me when I know I have the legal right-of-way, but the driver seems hurried or butts in, I can feel good about that moment in time that I didn’t butt back. If I contribute a few dollars to a charity, I can feel good about that. If I look for ways to help at home or at the office, doing one anonymous act no one will know I did, is evidence to me that I’m a good person. If I learn something new today or try something different, I can feel good about that. Just your desire to make a difference in other’s lives builds your confidence.

            An equally important aspect of self-worth is based on treating others with respect. When you treat others as they would like to be treated, they feel better about themselves and you feel better about yourself. Self-worth is not pride or placing false value on yourself. It is not arrogance, narcissism, conceit, egotism, or vanity. Self-worth doesn’t act with condescension, disdain, haughtiness, snobbery, presumption, boastfulness, and is not competitive for the wrong reasons or in the wrong way. Self-worth doesn’t need to be stoked or stroked often. Self-worth doesn’t take, expecting others to give. Self-worth can give without needing to receive in return. Although this may sound easy on paper, self-improvement can’t be Fed-exed overnight. Rather, it’s a lifetime project. But as you keep adding a drop at a time, soon you’ll have built a reservoir of self-worth. Life will be better. You’ll be doing good and feeling good. You’ll be a “right-column” person.

            In discussing ways to nurture your self-worth, be wary because self-nurturing has a counterfeit called self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is the mentality, fueled by Hollywood’s rich and famous, that suggests you need to pamper yourself and do things for yourself to make you “look good” which is worlds apart from genuinely feeling good because you do good. Self-indulgence and self-nurturing are opposites and can be measured by the fact: Are you willing to wait for the second marshmallow? We are a culture wherein our needs and most of our wants are met without much effort on our part. Most of us don’t have to help the Little Red Hen plant the wheat, pull the weeds, harvest or carry the wheat to the mill, or bake the flour into bread, but we still get to eat the just-out-of-the-oven bread. We get the reward without doing the work. We live in a leisure-seeking, pleasure-seeking, thrill-seeking society in which one more possession, one more vacation, one more piercing or tattoo, one more affair, one more whatever your weakness is will make you feel good about yourself. Don’t be beguiled. Self-indulgence never builds self-worth. It’s an empty vessel that can never be filled because it’s all about you and your needs. You can never get enough of what you don’t need. What starts out as indulgences can turn into cravings that become longcuts and destroy lives through gambling, smoking, drinking, abusing drugs, binge eating, shopping, sex, pornography—anything done in excess. Too often whatever gives a rush or a high is repeated until the person loses control. Self-indulgence violates the law of the harvest and the laws of nature. You can’t do bad and feel good. Self-worth, on the other hand, cultivates the ability to self-nurture and nurture others. If you do good, you will feel good.

            Hopefully as you analyze how you feel about yourself, you will be able to reposition any “left-hand-column” attitudes about your “self” by recognizing the truth that the only legitimate and long term way to feel good about yourself is to do right for right reasons.

To avoid longcuts:

1.    Take wisdom and counsel from those who have walked the road of life before you

2.    Never believe you will be the exception to the laws of nature

3.    Know you will harvest what you sow

4.    Learn the lessons of history so you won’t repeat the same mistakes

5.    Find the power in resisting impulse, persisting, and delaying gratification

6.    Develop personal integrity and make moral decisions

7.    Know that others see things you don’t and welcome their perspectives

8.    Work, Work, Work

9.    Make goals, write them down, use failure avoidance, prioritize, avoid procrastination

10. Value yourself. Know you can make a difference. Do good to feel good.