Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem

As my psychotherapist put it yesterday: people that seek self-esteem in an unhealthy way are vampires. &quot;You have to become your own bloodsource&quot; she said.<p>When you seek self-esteem in an unhealthy way, you do things to get approval&#x2F;validation from others. You&#x27;ll suck some blood from girls who like you, suck some blood from jobs you apply for that want you, tell friends about all the high-end interviews you have and the cool things you&#x27;re doing. But after you&#x27;ve gotten what you need from the girls, the jobs, the friends, you realize you never really wanted any of them. And that you wasted your time in the process when you should seek what YOUR OWN PATH is. Self-compassion&#x2F;kindness is when you become your own sustainable bloodsource of self-esteem and it is critical for your survival and success.

There was an article about procrastination that really stuck with me and it argued something similar: One of the reasons we put off work is because we don&#x27;t look at our &quot;future selfs&quot; as the same person or even as someone you feel sorry for. Basically, we think &quot;I don&#x27;t give a damn, let my future self deal with the consequences!&quot;. By thinking of your future self compassionately, you can much better motivate your current self to do work you&#x27;ll depend on being finished at a later date.<p>This might sound weird but I try this sometimes. &quot;Thanks, past self, for having done this on time, now I can enjoy the weekend because I&#x27;m done with this tedious work!&quot; You don&#x27;t have to literally talk to yourself or anything, but it&#x27;s IMO a healthy state of mind. It&#x27;s also the only way I&#x27;ve found to directly tackle the underlying problem of procrastination instead of just telling yourself to &quot;not be lazy, stupid!&quot;.

I fundamentally agree with the basic insight of this essay, but I&#x27;d like to add that we should strive to be those friends to each other so we don&#x27;t need to &quot;auto-sympathize&quot; to such a degree. If the people that you value don&#x27;t value you for how hot your girlfriend is, or how much money you make, then you won&#x27;t feel the compulsion to build yourself up that way--to such a degree. Of course, the pervading culture still makes it difficult to ignore those sirens.<p>And of course, social media plays a huge role in this reduction of the complexity of emotional life to more superficial things, to what can fit in a camera lens or a blurb.<p>The kind of self-esteem that people have, I imagine, must be like malnourished populations that are also obese. They don&#x27;t have any lack of social interaction quantitatively, but they&#x27;re still emotionally&#x2F;spiritually hungry.

Friendship and community work better than both. I was actually in the middle of finding evidence to post, but its so numerous it really isn&#x27;t necessary. Form good <i>unconditional</i> friendships and your happiness will exceed to new heights.<p>How do you form good unconditional friendships you ask? Hey, I didn&#x27;t say I had all of the answers. One thing I might add is that, at least in my experience, a bad friendship is actually worse than being alone (though one might hesitate to call it a friendship to begin with), so tread carefully.

Whether it&#x27;s self compassion, self confidence, self esteem or some combination of them, what needs to be supported is a sense of agency. That sense that if one really needs to make a change or pursue an opportunity, that they have the wherewithal to do so.<p>Wherewithal might be &#x27;on my own&#x27; or with assistance or guidance from others. It might require creativity or just persistence. But without it, we feel helpless, hopeless and ultimately dependent and depressed.<p>How can people who lack a sense of agency develop it in a healthy way?

Albert Ellis (founder of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) railed against the concept of self-esteem most of his career. He remarked that you should rate your actions, not yourself as a person. This seems even more significant when you realize how important failure is to mastery:<p>&gt; Striving, by its nature, often results in setbacks, and setbacks are often what provide the essential information needed to adjust strategies to achieve mastery. (from the book on learning Make It Stick)<p>The self serves as a useful model for behavior, but it changes so much based on context. A universal self-esteem makes no sense when you accept the fact that a human being cannot ever exist in isolation (I always exist in relation to my environment).

Heh. My problem is that I am so damaged that when I become friends or find girls that care for me unconditionally, I devalue that relationship because it feels un-earned.<p>Something that comes un-earned to me has no value.<p>This extends to my relationship with myself. I&#x27;m hard on others so it only makes sense that I&#x27;m hard on myself.<p>This is what happens when your parents get divorced and you&#x27;re raised by a shitty step mom. Not that my own mother was that great to begin with (cheated on my dad etc.)

What always blows me away is when people who&#x27;ve been watching their minds most of their lives and lived through the most amazing insights we can imagine, witnessing directly how the mind creates the world, how self is an illusion etc. (what neuroscientists can only state from intellectual perspective) tend to say: compassion is the highest form of wisdom.<p>Kristin Neff, the author of the research in TFA, brought these terms directly from her buddhist experiences AFAIK. Karuna and Meta (compassion and kindness) are very important mind &quot;algorithms&quot; in the Buddhist framework that apart from social and behavioral effects also have quite significant cognitive function. It allows to see things so much clearer, when you understand how complex and interdependent the reality is and how little control over reality we all are.<p>It&#x27;s especially telling when you look at the natural progression of these mind states that one is encouraged to develop: Compassion -&gt; Kindndess -&gt; Symphatetic Joy (appreciating wellbeing of others) -&gt; Equanimity.

Reading this stuff is always eye opening for me. but actually making it a part of your thinking and perspective is a whole other ball of wax. Often, I end up just forgetting entirely as the days pass - not the content, because I can often recite that upon demand. But the actual adoption of it into ones own mindset.<p>Very often, I&#x27;ve found myself going &quot;oh yeah, i&#x27;m trying to do that!&quot;. Along with several other things as well. this is largely what drove me to build my project to adopt such changes in perspective (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;willyoudidyou.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;willyoudidyou.com</a>).<p>And in addition to yourself, it&#x27;s good to show compassion to others. But it&#x27;s definitely easier to do this for others once you have done it for yourself.

I think it&#x27;s a question of balance, depending on how strong a position you are.<p>If you are in a position of weakness, feeling sorry for yourself, recovering from something you are judging yourself on - then you absolutely should start with self-compassion, being kind to yourself.<p>To continue in this mode would ultimately hit your ambition and drive, so if you are in a bit of a stronger position mentally, a higher gear, then boosting your self-esteem is more important.

It&#x27;s interesting that both building high self-esteem and negative self talk (2 directions, same dimension) seem to be the basic activity of Default Mode Network - the mode of the brain activated during mindless mind-wandering. Usually people spend most of their lives in this state. The amazing part is that there&#x27;s strong positive corelation between the DMN activation level and how miserable we feel. Judson Brewer has done lot of great research on this. Most meditation techniques go directly against DMN and sometimes result in turning it off for good (look up eg. Gary Weber - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;QeNmydIk8Yo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;QeNmydIk8Yo</a>) .

Most boys think of themselves as attractive and this is stable?<p>Is this statement true for most of you?<p>I was a fat kid (and fat young adult) and always thought I was unattractive. Even though it may not have affected me as much as it would had I been a girl, it remains prominent in my self image

I find the terminology a little muddy in this article, as I would not characterise the &quot;narcissistic&quot; behaviours described therein, and the expected rewards, as having anything to do with self-esteem. In my book, self-esteem is inherently intrinsic; appreciating the unconditional value that you, those around you, and every living creature on Earth possesses.<p>This talk given by Irish comedian Blindboy Boatclub (of Rubberbandits fame) describes the concept as simply, succinctly, and beautifully as I have ever heard.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Zz82P0WqUh4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Zz82P0WqUh4</a>

There seem to be various definitions around. Even though a Psychology professor is cited, already at the beginning self-esteem and self-confidence are treated similarly. I really like the following definition of self-esteem: the feeling of (a) being in control of your basic needs and (b) deserving to feel good. This also solves the paradox stated, it just means that you should maintain a certain self-worth.<p>If your self-worth is too low, you may be used by other people. If it&#x27;s over the top, you may act arrogant. So yeah...<p>Self-confidence is more like the

Well, this article brings a very insightful perspective into view. It&#x27;s not often you come across content that might profoundly affect your world views!<p>Also, at the opposite end of the spectrum here is a reference to a show called &#x27;Black Mirror&#x27; with an episode which is about the need to constantly be seeking other peoples approval (for self-esteem boosting):<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt5497778&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt5497778&#x2F;</a><p>I highly recommend watching this, very sobering.

There&#x27;s an awesome book by Kamal Ravikant that relates to the idea of self-compassion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends-ebook&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0086BX8UE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Love-Yourself-Like-Your-Depends-ebook...</a>

&gt; try talking to yourself like you would your best friend.<p>So swearing at myself, basically? Strange advice.

&gt;There’s nothing wrong with being confident.<p>This is obviously false, counterexamples are everywhere you look.

This is why there&#x27;s York and Zach in Deadly Premonition!

In which a new set of overconfident, simplistic solutions harshly criticize the previous set of overconfident, simplistic solutions. If only we had known what we were doing when we unleashed the dark force of self esteem we could have stopped bullying!<p>I&#x27;m sure being patient and understanding with yourself (and with everyone else) is an approach to life that has a lot of benefits, but these articles are nothing more than pornography for our narcissistic idea that we have this huge power to shape who our kids are by simply embracing a new outlook from a paperback or using new words.