- Many people write to me
or indeed come to see me and say,
"Do you think my upbringing was
"the cause of me having low self-esteem?
"I'm really worried about passing it on to my kids,"
because as a parent,
you succeed as a parent to the degree that your child
has healthy self-esteem.
You can buy all the organic broccoli in the world,
put them in private education.
To raise really balanced kids,
they need to have high self-esteem.
So if you have low self-esteem,
you weren't born with that.
No baby says, "Oh, my mum is exhausted,
"I guess I really shouldn't cry.
"My mum just bought this organic broccoli,
"I shouldn't spit it out.
"My mum spent ages doing the laundry,
"I shouldn't get my clothes dirty."
Babies have very high self-esteem.
When they want attention, they cry.
When they want something, they cry.
And the belief that makes them cry is always,
'I'm worth it.
'Someone's going to come and attend to my needs,
'because I'm worth it.
'Someone's going to come and get me out of this crib,
'feed me, hug me, change me,
'because I am worth it.'
The problem is that even though we're born
with that innate self-esteem,
it's very easy to chip away at it
until it's almost non-existent.
And you can chip away at a child's self-esteem
by saying things like,
"Why can't you be like your brother?
"He could read when he was seven."
"What's wrong with you?
"Your sister, she never got food all over the floor."
"Oh, I wanted a boy and I was so upset
"when I had you."
And sometimes we don't say this, but other people hear it.
One of my clients said
that she remembered her mother telling her that
when her mother came home with a fourth daughter,
the father's friend said,
"You're not a man without a son."
That was his friend, by the way,
"You are not a man without a son."
People would say, "Oh,
"well, this one was a mistake.
"We weren't planning this one,"
or, "This is my devil child.
"This is the problem child."
People say it as a joke,
"This kid is driving me crazy."
And many teachers will say the same thing,
"What is wrong with you?
"Why can't you do that?"
"Oh, I wish I'd never had you.
"You're the bane of my life."
I'm a parent,
nobody wanted a child more than I did,
especially because I was told I couldn't have one.
But I can say I made so many,
many, many mistakes raising my daughter,
because with the best will in world,
we're dealing with our own stuff,
we get tired and cranky and irritable and resentful even
with this baby that we wanted so desperately.
It's very hard to get it right,
so if you think you have self-esteem issues,
look back at your childhood.
Did your parents love you because you were good?
Did they expect you to be a straight-A student,
neat and tidy, a good girl, a smart boy?
Did your parents criticize you all the time,
believing, 'If I criticize you,
'it'll make you make you better.'
Because we know that doesn't work.
Saying to someone, 'Wow,
'you've got so fat.
'Look at you,' makes them run back and eat more cake.
Saying, 'You know what?
'You lost a few pounds.
'It really suits you, you look so good.'
Makes them think, 'Yeah, and I'm going to do more.'
So praise builds people up
and criticism withers them.
Praise builds up your soul,
criticism withers it.
And many of us were brought up with critical parents,
because not that long ago,
a whole generation were told,
'If you want people to be good, put them down.
'We don't want any big headed people
'drawing attention to themselves.'
And so that was a generational fault.
And you probably did have a lot of criticism in your life
and it's very diminishing.
However, 'how do you get over it?' I hear you say.
Well, stop being a critic.
If you want to have high self-esteem,
praise yourself more and more and more
and criticize yourself less and less and less.
So you can say,
'I forgot to charge my phone today, silly me.'
Not, 'Oh, I've got rocks for brains.
'I'm a complete idiot.
'I'm a total loser.
'I'm a waste of space.'
No, you're not.
You're a flawed human being
who is allowed to make mistakes
and by the way, the only way you'll learn anything
is by making a mistake.
Once you make a mistake,
you tend to never make it again.
And so you're allowed to make mistakes.
You are not allowed, by the way,
to beat up your body,
to make it ill, to make it miserable,
because you made a mistake.
We all make mistakes.
Next time you make a mistake,
just say, 'Oh, silly me.'
I know that sounds silly,
'You silly thing,'
but you see, if I said to my daughter
or my husband, 'Oh, you silly thing,'
they don't go, 'Oh, you've really wounded me,'
because they know that it's such a meaningless word.
'You silly billy.'
I know how that sounds to you,
but I would never call myself a 'stupid moron,
'a complete airhead, an absolute idiot,
'a waste of space,'
because those words wound me.
They go in, they make a picture.
But silly, 'You silly thing,'
doesn't make a picture.
Allow yourself to make mistakes.
You learn from making mistakes.
When you make a mistake, say, 'Oh, I made a mistake.
'I'll never do that again.'
I, many years ago, had two sets of keys:
car keys, house keys.
I shut the car, put the button down
and then saw the keys dangling in the ignition.
It cost me $300 to call AAA out to get them out.
I never did that again.
That day I clicked the keys together.
And then I remembered another time
when I got locked out of my house
and luckily I had a friend in the next street
and actually taped a set of car keys into her tree.
If anyone found them,
they wouldn't know they were from my house
and I never had to again call out a locksmith
and pay $400 just for the privilege.
So when I made mistakes, I learned something.
We all learn.
I ran out of gas, that was so awful.
Now I never let the tank go down.
Allow yourself to make a mistake,
learn from it, benefit from it,
do not beat yourself up for being human.
Criticize yourself less and less.
When you make a mistake, go, 'Oh, silly me.
'That was a silly thing,
'but I don't need to do that again.'
And praise yourself so much.
You cannot praise yourself enough.
It does not make you big headed,
it makes you amazing.
And I'm going to end this with
a story that you may already know.
There was a school in America
when they took a teacher and said,
"You know, we've noticed that you are
"the smartest teacher in this whole school.
"You seem to have this phenomenal gift bringing out
"the best in children and we've identified these children
"who are geniuses.
"And we'd like to give you this class of genius children
"for the whole year and see what you can do with them,
"'cause you're the best teacher ever."
At the end of that year,
these kids had done amazingly well.
The teacher was like, "Well, of course."
They said, "Do you know what?
"Sorry to tell you this,
"but we picked the children at random
"and we picked you at random.
"It was an experiment to see what would happen
"if you believed you were the best
"and you were teaching the best
"and you've just proved us right."
So she had such high self-esteem
when she heard "You're the best,"
that she became the best.
Muhammad Ali said,
"I told myself I was the greatest
"when I wasn't when I didn't know I was,
"but I said it anyway,
"and guess what happened?
"I became the greatest."
What a concept.
Say 'I'm amazing, I'm wonderful, I'm gifted,
'I'm significant, I matter, I'm enough, I'm lovable.
'I'm here for a reason.
'I have something to offer the world.'
You know what, when you say those things,
they have so much chance of coming true.
And when you say, 'Nothing ever works out.
'I don't have anything to do.
'Who would want somebody with cellulite and five kids?
'I don't have an education.
'I'm never going to amount to anything.'
You can also make that true.
We make our words
and then our words turn around and make us.
Make your words amazing
and you'll make your self-esteem amazing.
Let in a lot of praise, no criticism
and don't criticize others too much either,
because critical people have low self-esteem
and they have the most criticism reserved for themselves
and they just show the whole world
that they are dissatisfied with themselves.
Sure you can give constructive criticism.
'Look, darling, I need you to remember your school books.
'I need you to go to bed at night.
'I need you to eat better,'
but not destructive,
'You loser, you idiot,
'you, whatever, don't do that.'
Don't do it to other people.
Definitely don't do it to yourself.
And finally, your mind,
when you criticize yourself, knows that,
when we say something mean to another person
and go, 'You're having a bad day.
'Obviously something's not working in your life
'and you're being mean, you're being spiteful.
'You're being nasty,
'but I'm going to cut you some slack,
''cause I think you've had a bad day.'
And when someone says something good,
we can go, 'Well, I wonder what you want,
'what's your agenda,
'what are you trying to get out of me?'
But when you say mean things,
your mind says, 'It must be true.
'You don't have an agenda.'
When you say wonderful things,
your mind says, 'Must be true,
''cause you don't have an agenda.'
So there's a great choice.
Tell yourself great things.
More praise, more praise, more praise.
Nothing will raise your self-esteem like praise.
Less and less and less criticism.
People with high self-esteem praise more
and they criticize very little.
Join that club of self-estimable people.
People with high self-esteem do estimable things.
They praise other people too
and they criticize them less.
You can do that and change your life.