A lot of people believe self-esteem is something that is fixed at birth or at the very least very difficult to change.
Either it gets set early in life and stays that way, or it’s tied to how well things are going, how successful you are, how you look, how people respond to you.
That’s not what self-esteem is.
Self-esteem is a belief system. It’s how you value yourself, and it’s determined by the relationship you have with yourself. Contrary to widespread belief, your self-esteem has very little to do with external circumstance, the reality of your life or your qualities.
This is why you’ll meet people who appear to have everything going for them externally, successful, capable, well-regarded, and yet their internal experience doesn’t match that reality. They don’t feel as settled or satisfied as they ‘should’. Despite their obvious qualities and successes, their self-esteem still feels like it needs to be continuously chased and re-earned rather than something within them.
That’s externally sourced self-esteem in practical form.
When your self-worth is built on external things, on outcomes, on performance, on what other people think, it fluctuates constantly.
A good result and it rises. A setback or criticism and it dips. You’re always one piece of feedback away from feeling good or feeling inadequate. Although you may feel more confident within yourself when you’re performing well or achieving success, that’s not high internal self-esteem in any real sense. It’s self-esteem that is dependent on external validation, and the two are very different things.
The person whose self-esteem is externally sourced has to keep performing to feel good about themselves. Perfectionism, relentless productivity, the inability to switch off, a lot of that isn’t driven by genuine ambition or ‘wanting to do your best’. It’s driven by the need to keep accumulating evidence that you’re good enough. Without it, the self-esteem drops significantly.
Internally sourced self-esteem is different, and much more helpful. It’s built on a strong, healthy relationship with yourself, on how you talk to yourself, how you process your experiences, your efforts and the standard you hold yourself to internally rather than externally. As a result, it doesn’t fluctuate with outcomes or performance and doesn’t depend on other people’s opinions. It’s much more consistent and stable because it’s determined by healthy factors within your influence.
The good news is that this isn’t fixed. Self-esteem in this sense, real, internal, stable self-esteem, is a learned capacity. It develops through understanding what drives it, working on your relationship with yourself, and consistently processing your experiences in a helpful way that builds an internal frame of reference rather than undermining your belief in your own worth.
It’s a belief, and like any belief, it can be developed. The question is whether you know what you’re developing, and how.
