One of the things psychologists have done for the last 20 years
especially the social psychologist has pushed this idea of self-esteem you should feel good about yourself, and I think
Why would you tell someone 20 that it's like you should feel good about who you are it's like
No You shouldn't why should you feel good about who you are?
It's like you should feel good about who you could be
That's way better cuz you got 60 years to turn into who you could wait a minute
Are you what your accomplishments are or are you dis individual going through this journey, I mean
I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling good about who you are
As long as it's tempered by an understanding of potential and what you have accomplished versus what you can accomplish well
I think having confidence is a big part. It is it is
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have confidence, but like often you take young people say there are 16 to 22
And they're not really feeling that good about who they are right because their life is chaotic and and disorder
And they don't know where they're going and that they don't know which way is up a call so there could be bad parenting
And I think that's one of the reasons why people that resonates with people this idea of be happy for you about who you are
Right feel good about who you write, but but the thing is it has to be stated with precision. It's like yes
It's like you should you should treat yourself as if you're valuable
especially in the potential
but you should concentrate on who you should become especially if you're young and so let's say you're miserable and
Nihilistic and chaotic and depressed and all of that now, and you have your reasons you know terrible parenting abuse all of those things
It's like well. You should feel good about yourself. It's like no no it's not it's not the right message is that?
It's more like you should understand how much potential there is within you to set that straight
And then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and it will set it straight
And that's better than self esteem. It's like you're you're in a crooked horrible position, okay fine
There's a lot of suffering and pain associated with that
Yeah, you can't just feel good about that because it's not good, but you can do something about it
You can genuinely do something about it, and I think all the evidence suggests that that's the case yes
So I'm telling telling young people look. There's no matter how bad your situation is I'm not gonna pretend. It's okay. It's not okay
It's tragic
Tainted with malevolence and some we'll really get hurt by malevolent people like you know terribly hurt sometimes. They never recover. It's really awful
but there's more to you than you think and if you stand up and face it with with the positive with a
With a noble vision with discipline and intent
You can go far farther to overcoming it than you can imagine and that's the principle upon
Which you should predicate your behavior?
And I think that one of the things that's really nice about being the clinical psychologist is that this isn't just guesswork
Like one of the things we know two things in clinical psychology one is
truthful conversations redeemed people
Because if you come to a clinical psychologist
Whose Worth is salt? You'll have a truthful conversation the conversation is well. Here's what's wrong with my life
And here's what caused it
you know maybe it takes a year to have that conversation and
Both of the participants are doing everything they can to lay it out properly. Here's how it might be fixed
Here's what a beneficial future might look like and so it's a completely honest conversation if it's working well
And all that's happening in the conversation is that the two people involved are trying to make things better. That's the goal
Let's see if we can have a conversation that will make things better
Okay, so we know that works it does make things better and then another thing
We know is that well. Let's say. There's a bunch of things that you're afraid of that are in your way
So you have some vision about who you want to be maybe you have to you know you want to be
Successful in your career so you have to learn to talk in front of a group. It's like okay
Well, you're afraid of that no wonder. You don't want to be humiliated, so okay, so what do we do about that?
well
Maybe we first get you to speak in front of one person and then three people you know for five minutes and then for ten
minutes like
Graduated exposure to what you're afraid of voluntary graduated exposure to what you're afraid of is curative
And that's true it works the documentation is in it's how people learn so
So to to to tell people that if you confront the world forthrightly if you speak the truth
And you expose yourself
Courageously to those things that you're afraid of that your life will improve and so will the life of people around you
Like as far as I'm concerned
That's as close to undeniable fact as we as we've got and it also dovetails nicely with the under law
Typical stories the heroic stories it's like go out there find the dragon confront it. It's a dragon it might eat you. It's dangerous
But it's worse to cower at home and wait for it to come and devour you go out there confront it get the gold
Share it with the community. It's like yeah. It's the oldest story of mankind