Self-esteem: The Other Side of the Coin
On Wednesday, I wrote about confidence and promised to write on Self-esteem the following day. Apologies for not fulfilling my promise. Crazy things happened between Wednesday and today, but I'm here now.
It is the custom where I come from to offer someone something when apologizing. Cupcakes by my big sister. Pictures, of course by me.
Today, I want to talk about self-esteem. For a long time I thought that confidence and self-esteem mean the same thing, however, recently I was trying to figure out something on perception and it occured to me that self-esteem may be similar to confidence, but they are not the same.
Exempli gratias: I used to know someone who is confident in his ability to turn almost anything into business. He once said that if humans should disappear off the face of the earth leaving only him, he was not only going to survive, he would enjoy himself while at it. We believed him then. Confidence? Maybe, but walk with me.
Somehow, however, he never was able to muster up enough courage to walk up to his crush and tell her how he feels.
“She's out of my league,” he would say. “She deserves someone with more money.”
What does this mean? The guy was confident in his abilities to survive, come what may. He also perceived that his worth or value is tied to how much money he makes or has.
For me, I think confidence is what goes outwards while self-esteem is what's on the inside. Or you can look at confidence as a costume a skilled actor wears. The actor is who he says he is because of the costume he's wearing. Self-esteem on the other hand is like a mirror image of someone. The reflection the man sees is the man. However, others may see differently. For a very long time I stopped seeing a tiny scar on the bridge of my nose when I looked in the mirror. Yesterday, a student of mine asked me to tell her the story of the scar. She saw it.
You can see the scar here, maybe zoom in.
Self-esteem therefore has degrees, from low to high. Someone with a low self-esteem sees himself to be of little value, it does not mean that others see the same thing. I tried convincing a female friend of mine that her height (she's about 6”9) is not an impediment, rather it adds to her elegance, she disagreed citing that she does not get approached by many men. While she thinks she's on the negative side of attraction, I think she's very beautiful. Elegant! This affects her relationship with people. She doesn't seem to know how much she's valued.
From the foregoing, we can see that one disadvantage of low self-esteem is difficulty managing relationships. Other downsides to this may include mental health problems and increased stress levels.
I must not fail to mention that when someone thinks too highly of themselves (the high side of self-esteem), they become arrogant. This may also lead to difficulty handling relationships. Overconfidence is another downside of this thing we're talking about. Believing too much/erroneously in one's ability opens one up to disappointment which may lead to a mental health crisis.
Now, that's fried plantain and egg with too much esteem. They think they belong in a pie. I took this shot too.