The funny thing about needing to feel better about yourself is that it often starts with feeling that you are worse off than someone else. You can take a look at your accomplishments and feel like you’re on top of the world, but it only takes one guy who’s doing better to bring you back down to earth and right into the dumps.
Like other mammals that live in packs, we note whether our status is more or less than that of our equals, with a default value-calculator that bases worth on attributes over which we have limited control, like physical attractiveness, happiness, intelligence, and strength. In other words, we are hardwired to grade ourselves by comparisons and qualities we can’t actually do much about.
Meanwhile, you can have many other positive qualities—carefulness, loyalty, patience, etc.—that you do control and that are less superficial indicators of character and self-worth. Unfortunately, they’re qualities that, according to your instinctive internal-value calculator, come up as a zero.
Calculator aside, many people can’t take pride in the qualities they see in themselves because their standards are too high or their pond is too big and there are too many fish bigger than they are. Sometimes the qualities in their self-inventory, like intelligence, beauty, or strength, are substandard, weak, or obnoxious and, worst of all, limited. The horror.
It’s natural, then, to wonder how you can possibly feel better about yourself when you don’t like what you see, what you see may actually suck, and what you don’t like is probably not going to get better.
Some people would answer that you should love yourself unconditionally, either directly or by imagining yourself as loved by a deity or by your fellow deity-worshippers. Unfortunately, while boosting self-love in this way may make you feel better and act more confidently, it won’t stop you from acting like a jerk or overdepending on the support of your congregation and its leader, so this method may lead to Koran burnings, Kool-Aid parties, and other bad behavior that feels good because you’ve disconnected your sense of value from your own ideas about good, bad, and common sense.
Other people argue that you can feel better about yourself by finding what you enjoy and/or are best at, and devoting yourself to it, which would be perfectly good advice if it was something everyone could do. The sad truth is that some people don’t have any talent or interest, and sometimes life circumstances don’t allow them to develop whatever life talent they have. So while it’s certainly worthwhile to try to develop your talents and seek fulfillment, it’s dangerous to say you should be able to make it happen and thus make yourself responsible for producing a solution you don’t control.
Instead, accept the fact that sometimes you can’t and won’t feel good about yourself. That’s no reason, however, for stopping yourself from doing good things and writing off your feelings of low self-esteem as an unimportant by-product of a hard life, perfectionism, or subpar personal equipment.
As long as you do your best to be independent, be decent, and live up to your values, you’ll have more reason to respect yourself and actually feel good than if you were super smart, rich, and the fittest of the herd.
Here are telltale signs that feeling better is not an option:
• You’ve been doing a good job search every day, but you still can’t get an interview or afford to eat food that doesn’t come from a can
• Plastic surgery is outside your budget, and besides, medical experts say your schnoz is beyond help
• Your doctor talks about fibromyalgia and refers you to a pain specialist
• RuPaul says you need to love yourself before you love someone else, but at this point, you’ve given up and just—gasp—hate RuPaul
Among the wishes people express when they just can’t like or respect themselves are:
• To change what they don’t like about themselves
• To have therapy make them like themselves
• To figure out how to get their confidence back
• To purge themselves of self-hate
Here are three examples:
I’ve never liked myself or, to tell you the truth, been very likable. I know it just sounds like I’m putting myself down, but the fact is, I’m not especially good-looking, my grades in school were always average, and I’m a klutz who was always chosen last on any team and hates sports. Now I work at a boring job, live with roommates because I can’t afford to live alone, and date occasionally. I’d actually become comfortable with my status in life, but as the years go by and nothing changes, I’m starting to get restless. My goal is to figure out how I will ever, ever be a winner when there’s nothing about me or my life that seems interesting, attractive, or just plain worthwhile.
I’m glad my marriage has ended, but I just can’t seem to get over my divorce. I miss having a husband and the greater financial security and support I had when there were the two of us. The kids are good and they’re doing well, but I can’t seem to recover my confidence; I’m over my husband, but I won’t feel like I’ve moved on until I’ve found someone else and become a wife again, which won’t be easy since I’m no longer young and good-looking, and most men my age are no longer single. The only guys who want to date me seem to be creeps who are actually already married or just want to be with an older woman. My goal is to find the confidence I used to have, so I don’t drive people away and doom myself to a life of mediocrity.
In my twenties, I had confidence in myself and things were really going my way; I got a series of raises and promotions, girls were interested in me, and I was basically considered a hot property and likely to succeed. Then, a few years ago, I got a new boss who really didn’t like me, my career stalled, and I wound up having to take a dead-end job just to pay the bills. I know that if I were really competent I would find my way back to the fast track and get my career started again, but the economy has tanked and I just can’t make it happen. I’ve gone from star to peon in two years and it’s hard not to feel depressed. My goal is to get back my groove.
It’s hard to feel like a winner if you’re poorer or less accomplished than your friends, making less money that you used to, and seeing no prospects for doing better in the near future. By this logic, if others are winning, that means the loser must be you.
As a society and as individuals we buy into these measures of self-worth, in spite of knowing that bad luck is measured by being poor or alone or losing whatever you had, and that it happens to people who in no way deserve it. The nasty vicious cycle that threatens us all is that, if we let bad luck make us feel like losers, then feeling like a loser generates its own kind of bad luck. Either you protect yourself from taking bad luck personally, or taking it personally brings you down further.
In reality, many people who feel their lives are going nowhere or sliding downhill are actually doing a good job with an unfair mess, trying to do honest work, take care of relatives, and be good friends. They feel like they’re failing life’s trials but, in fact, they’re not, nor have they let low self-esteem drive them into addiction, self-absorption, or bitterness. Indeed, soldiering on when you feel diminished, lonely, and out-competed takes great strengths and is one of life’s ultimate accomplishments.
Having no hope of finding a partner is a major source of deep feelings of failure, yet it often happens to people who are not making social mistakes, neglecting their actual assets, or suffering from nothing other than a lack of confidence and decent selection procedures. It’s great when there’s a simple fix, but often there isn’t, because life is sometimes a social desert for people whose looks, age, skills, or other burdens put a wall between them and the society they’re stuck in and with. Plus, if they blame themselves