Authentic Self-Esteem and Well-Being Part VIII: Development

This post focuses on the advantages of understanding self-esteem as a relationship between two important aspects of human behavior, namely, competence and worthiness. Although much work on self-esteem defines it as simply feeling good about oneself as a person (the worthiness factor), authentic self-esteem comes from actually earning positive feelings about oneself (competence). Consequently, authentic self-esteem is more substantial (Mruk, 2019, 2013). This time, we briefly look at how it develops.

The Importance of Self-Esteem Moments

Self-esteem develops in relation to what I call self-esteem moments. These are times in our lives when we face a challenge of living that forces us to make a choice. It is whether to do our best to successfully resolve an issue in a way that is worthy of a healthy, self-actualizing, and honorable person. Positive resolutions of these challenges result in, or even increase, authentic self-esteem because they demonstrate that we are both competent and worthy. Conversely, failing to try one’s best in these moments lessens our sense of ability and value, which lowers self-esteem. How we deal with these challenges over time adds up so that over time enough self-esteem moments occur to create a person’s basic level and type of self-esteem.

Domains of Life That Involve Self-Esteem Moments

Developmental psychologists sometimes discuss development in relation to how we deal with “domains” of life (Harter, 1999). Six of them are important for self-esteem and they have two things in common. One is that they involve dealing with challenges life presents to us, sometimes all of a sudden. The other is that these challenges often change as we move through the stages of the life cycle.

Three of the domains help develop a sense of worth as a person. One comes from how we are connected to other people, which is to say how others value us and how we treat others. The second is physical attractiveness, which includes such things as how people react to our body, appearance, voice, mannerisms, and so on. The third domain concerns our virtue or sense of morality as a person and how well or poorly we live up to it. These domains often involve acceptance or rejection, both of which may affect self-esteem (Epstein, 1979).

The other three domains related to self-esteem involve competence. The first is one’s ability to solve problems, something most of us use daily. Next is our autonomy or the ability to influence what happens in our lives as well as the directions they take, such as with careers. Last, but not least, is physical integrity or how well are able to use our bodies at each stage of the life cycle. These domains usually involve success or failure, both of which may affect self-esteem (Epstein, 1979).

Although the particular challenges these domains present change over time, they never leave us. From birth to death in one way or another we care about our relations with others, react to how they perceive us, are concerned with whether we live up to our standards, appreciate the dealing with problems, want to have some influence in the direction of our lives, and hope our bodies allow us to addresses physical challenges of living. I am sure each of us can remember times when acceptance or rejection affected our sense of worth and how success or failure had an impact on our sense of competence.

Personal Self-Esteem Moments

In addition to these general developmental forces, another set of experiences has a more direct positive or negative impact on a person’s level and type of self-esteem. They involve a challenge of living that I call a “cross road” of self-esteem (Mruk, 2019, 2013). The great English write John Mill seems to have coined the term self-esteem when describing one of them in his life (1642/1950).

It centered around an attack on his character as a person. The challenge was whether to stand up for his integrity or bow to the insult. He chose to do what most of us would understand as the right thing, even though it involved some risk. These types of self-esteem moments always involve those three elements. They are facing a situation that involves our integrity, having two choices one of which is clearly more virtuous than the other, and knowing that doing the right thing requires courage.

Whether it is as small as trying one’s best in a game as a child, as substantial as facing a bully, or as large as risking one’s well-being to stand up for the rights another who is being abused, these self-esteem moments have a large impact on self-esteem. All one needs to do to understand their meaning for self-esteem is to reflect on the last time one was in this situation and did the right thing – or not.