Gaining Self Esteem And Triumph

Self-esteem is defined as “Personal feelings or opinions of oneself”. Gaining self confidence seems to have come to be the third-most often occurring subject in psychological literature and by 2003, there were over 25,000 articles as well as books on the topic. Since that period, the quantity of new articles and books has grown significantly. Should you query “self-esteem books or self-esteem articles” on the internet, you get 2.27 million hits which reveals how preoccupied all of us are becoming with this subject.

Regrettably, psychologists can’t agree on whether or not self-esteem is good for you or perhaps detrimental. In fact, they cannot even concur on just what self-esteem is and what role it plays in an individual’s life.

What is known is that self-esteem encompasses a person’s beliefs about himself or herself. Psychologists typically consider self-esteem as an long lasting personality characteristic, though they also admit that short-term variations in a person’s self-esteem may be caused by outside situations that impact that particular person.

Should you do something well, especially if you happen to be praised by someone else for what you have done, your self-esteem will probably be higher than normal. Conversely, if you fail at something, your self-esteem will be lower than normal.

Self-esteem could apply to a particular characteristic or ability (for instance, “I believe I am a good golfer and feel proud of that particular ability”) or have an overall scope (as an example, “I believe that I am a good person and feel proud of myself in general”). Here, we are not talking about a narcissistic belief about your self, but a deep-rooted knowledge that you happen to be genuinely a good person. This deep-rooted knowledge will be backed up by your actions and deeds.

Self-help writers as well as psychologists have long believed that possessing good self-esteem ensured success at one’s endeavors. However, recent studies of students have uncovered that working to gain self confidence on it’s own, rather than increasing the student’s grades in fact caused them to decline. More studies in this regard are ongoing to find out why this happened and whether the lack of correlation between grades and self-esteem is factual or perhaps if the method of increasing the subject’s self-esteem was flawed and invalidated the results.

One interesting fact has become known from all these studies. It has been established that western societies are fixated on self-esteem as well as the role it plays in the person’s achievements, while many other societies, who place little emphasis on self-esteem, appear to have as many or even more successes.

Perhaps in our over zealous quest for success, we have placed so much importance on gaining self confidence and self-esteem that we have developed our very own fantasy. Perhaps success depends more on doing things than it does on beliefs and perceptions. What is your opinion?