Self Esteem

You can't touch it, but it affects how you feel. You can't see it, but it's there when you look at yourself in the mirror. You can't hear it, but it's there every time you talk about yourself. What is this important but mysterious thing? It's your self-esteem!

We hear a lot in our culture today about self esteem, self image, self confidence, self worth etc. All of these things are really just different ways of saying the same thing. It’s all about how we view ourselves.

It is a universally accepted truth in psychology and psychiatry today, that a person’s self image is foundational to their behaviour. You operate out of, and make decisions from, your beliefs about yourself.

A close relationship has been documented between low self-esteem and such problems as violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and low academic achievement.

Self-esteem isn't bragging about how great you are. It's more like quietly knowing that you're worth a lot (priceless, in fact!). It's not about thinking you're perfect - because nobody is - but it’s about knowing that you're worthy of being loved and accepted.

If I were to suggest to you that the most important thing you can do is to love someone else, you probably would agree with me. But it might seem strange to you if I would suggest that the most important thing you can do is to love yourself. But that’s exactly what I am suggesting.

Your whole capacity to love others and to find God in a loving relationship is dependant on whether or not you love yourself. Almost all Christian psychologists agree that when Jesus said “Love your neighbour as yourself”, that can be effectively re-worded as “Love yourself and you will love your neighbour”. Of course the opposite is also true, hate yourself and you will hate your neighbour also. It’s almost like the human person is a bowl, and whatever fills you is going to spill out onto other people.

So if your happy within yourself, if there’s a sense of self esteem, a real sense of self celebration, of self appreciation, you’ll be a loving person because you’ll be free to go out and love other people. If you don’t love yourself then you wont go out you’ll use other people and you’ll always be looking around for someone who can fill your emptiness.

I am not suggesting that you be selfish. I must make the point that a selfish person and a person who loves himself are two totally different people. A selfish person thinks only of himself but a person who loves himself is someone who is free to love others.

Every one of us, I believe, has a pain inside that keeps us from really loving, and the way you get it is by losing confidence un your own worth. And you lose confidence in your own worth when you are loved only conditionally. There are two kinds of love, conditional and unconditional, and unconditional love is the only kind of love that really helps anybody. In fact I would like to say that it is the only genuine love at all.

Conditional love says I love you if…if you keep the house clean, if you look pretty, if you get grades in school, if you love me back, if you treat me well.

Unconditional love says…I love you no matter what. I am your man. I am for you. I am on your side no matter what happens. No matter what you do or what you say, I am on your side.

With conditional love, my worth isn’t in me, it is in my performance…my worth is in what I can do for you.

With unconditional love, my worth is in me. I am loved and valued for who I am and not what I can do.

There is an old movie called ‘Butterflies are free’. And in that movie a young woman played by Goldie Hawn is having a love affair with a blind man played by Eddie Albert.

Goldie Hawn is breaking up with Eddie and when he quizzes her ‘why are you leaving me?’ she replies ‘I’m just tired of you, that’s all’. He asks ‘doesn’t anyone ever get tired of you?’ And she says ‘I don’t know, I never hang around long enough to find out. Besides, your crippled.’

And Eddie says to her ‘Oh no. I’m not crippled. I’m only sightless. You are crippled. You are crippled because you can’t commit to anybody. You are cripple because you cant put your life on the line. You can’t make a wager of your life. You have no person to call home. I’m only sightless, you’re crippled’.

Unconditional love is what a person needs if they are going to come into the fullness of life. When you start pulling those conditional levers – I’ll love you when – I’ll love you if – I’ll love you until – you’re not loving me, your using me. You are loving my success, or my money, or my good looks – if I had any - or my ability to do whatever.

But you’re not loving me, your loving what I can offer you, and that just leads to emptiness and internal pain and turmoil.

Now the emptiness that comes from being loved only conditionally ought to be filled with a sense of self celebration and self love, a contend ness deep within your soul regarding the person you are.

I don’t know if any of you are struggling with this, but very often people say that to have self love or self celebration is to be proud and conceited and so we should avoid these things. But that’s not right at all. When Jesus Christ says love your neighbour as yourself, He’s strongly implying that you must love yourself.

If you hate yourself and you love your neighbour that way, you wont treat them very well will you? No you must love yourself to love your neighbour. I don’t know how this self rejection bit got into Christian doctrine. I’m bad I'm bad I'm awful. Your not awful. Are you glad to be you? I you really are, if your really comfortable within yourself, if there’s no civil war raging within you, of self hatred and push pull, you will love other people. You’ll be a very loving person, because you don’t have that internal pain to distract you and to magnetise your attention.

If you are not happy with who you are, if there is a civil war raging inside of you, you simply won’t have the ability to reach out to others in genuine love – all you can do is reach out in need.

I have said that these thoughts on self esteem are universally accepted truths. What is more difficult for some people to accept however, is that the image that each of has of himself or herself, is really the product of what other people have told us about ourselves. The truth is that we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of those around us. The deepest need of every person is acceptance, particularly self acceptance. Each one of us desperately needs to see in the mirror of another’s eyes, our own goodness, our own worth, our own beauty and our own acceptance – if we are to be truly free.