Low self-esteem, it happens all the time. How do we overcome low self-esteem? The
answer might surprise you a little.
In a previous video, we talked about how to
boost self-esteem and I shared with you some research that had been done and
some things that you may not have expected about self-esteem, we're going
to go a little different direction today as we overcome low self-esteem. I think
it's important to understand what the problem is and I get in trouble for this
sometimes but I'm going to shoot straight with you because you're my
family, okay. Low self-esteem is a problem with destructive pride. Now let that sink
in for a minute, that might surprise or shock some of you, some of you who know
me better are going to be likev oh yeahv I've heard this before.
Here's why.. Think about it for a moment and I'm inviting you to a level of
metacognition today. Remember, metacognition is a higher level of
thinking, it's thinking about thinking, let's go there. Metacognition is so
powerful and it creates a little space and in that space is where our choice is
so as you turn on your metacognition and think about your own thinking, let's take
on this self-esteem thing for just a minute. Have you noticed that everyone
has an opinion? Oh yeah, yeah, they do. Everyone has an opinion about what? Well,
about pretty much anything that they're familiar with including people so if
someone knows you, they have an opinion about you, right? In fact, you know what, I
have an opinion about you. Now those of you who I know personally, you're going to
be like, well yeah, okay. Those of you who haven't actually met me
face-to-face, guess what, I got an opinion about you too. I do. You're here on my
channel, you were watching this video, I've got an opinion about you and I can
tell you already that it's a very positive opinion. I just love you and I'm
glad that you're here. Now you might take my opinion and totally
blow it off, okay. You might just say, oh thanks, Dr. Paul, that's really nice but
you know, you're just supposed to be nice because you're my online shrink, right. No,
I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about an actual esteem that I hold for
you but notice that you're going to take my opinion and you're going to throw it out
the window because you've got an opinion too, don't you?
Now if I think that you are awesome and you think that you're not, whose opinion
do you believe? See, those opinions don't match so which one is right?
Ah yeah, see, what you're doing? You know that you're right, you've already thrown
my opinion out the window, it's like, oh yeah, whatever, you don't really know me
and then you take your own opinion and you hold it very carefully as the truth
about you, right? What about your family? Your family, they've got some opinions
about you, don't they? Yeah, now I don't even know what their opinions are, some
of them are positive, some of them are negative. Do their opinions match yours?
Of you, I mean. No, probably not. There's some differences, right? Who's right? Hmm
do you see? There again. You know you're right, you're going to hold your own opinion
to be more valid and more powerful and more true than anybody else's opinion
and you'll take my pain. I'm a psychologist for pete's sake. You know
what, I go to a social event or something and you know when you're talking to
somebody else and they're like well, I'm not a psychologist but and then they
give you their opinion about somebody. I am a psychologist and you're still
taking my opinion and throwing it out the window.
Why? Because of destructive pride, just notice that, okay?
Now I'm getting a little spiritual on you, okay, because that's a big part of
who I am and what drives me. I believe that we have a loving God, our Heavenly
Father who loves us and we're his children,
okay. Now coming from that perspective, whether you believe in God or not, if you
can wrap your head around the possibility that there might be a
creator involved here, that maybe there's a higher power. Do you think that God has
an opinion about you? Yeah, probably does, right? Yeah. Does God's
opinion of you match yours? Probably not, right? Who's right? Do you see how this
starts to look more like pride? This is so interesting because usually with low
self-esteem, we mistakenly believe that our low self-esteem
is a result of humility, maybe too much humility, right? It's not, it's destructive
pride and you can see it when we use the god example because if your opinion is
better than or more correct or more true than God's,
that sounds pretty prideful to me. It's like you're telling the supreme being
"Hey, sit down. You don't know what you're talking about. I know more than you do."
Right? Do see how prideful that seems? I'm introducing this to you as a dilemma,
okay. Because a lot of times, what we need to do to overcome low self-esteem is to
be more humble and that doesn't sound right to a lot of people, okay, but check
out exactly what I'm talking about here. Our opinion is just that it's an opinion.
You know what I think, we will not have a problem with low self-esteem
if we are sufficiently humble to let go of our own opinion for just
and maybe trust other people or powers or entities that may have reasons to
know. What if my opinion matched God's opinion of me and what if God
thinks I'm awesome? He created me, right? Maybe he thinks that. What if my opinion
matched his? I think that's true humility and it takes a little bit of
soul-searching to get there. It's not easy to take our own opinion and set it
aside and replace it with one that serves us better or that is more
affirming of who we are so I know you probably didn't expect this from this
particular video, how do we overcome low self-esteem. It's not about becoming more
prideful, it's about becoming more humble and you know what, I had one of my
clients share with me recently.. He said, you know Dr. Paul, there are two kinds of
people, there are those who are humble and those who are about to be. I kind of
like that because stuff happens and it's hard stuff. The hard stuff in our life, I
think serves one primary purpose and that is to help us to be more humble
which really serves us well because as we humble ourselves, when we realize you
know what, I'm not always right about stuff, I don't have this thing figured
out then we can put ourselves in position where we actually do the things
and experience the things that will allow us to actually overcome that low
self-esteem. I think I might have given you another little something to work on
today. You know what, I'm glad that we can work on this stuff together. Please share
this episode.