The Psychology of Self-Esteem

“There is no value-judgment more important to man—no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation than the estimate he passes on himself.”
“Happiness or joy is the emotional state that proceeds  from the achievement of one’s values.  Suffering is the emotional state that proceeds  from a negation or destruction  of one’s values.”
“The collapse  of self-esteem is not reached  in a day, a week,  or a month:  it is the cumulative result  of a long succession  of defaults, evasions,  and irrationalities a long succession of failures to use one’s mind  properly.”

Nathaniel Branden

This book  popularized the concept  of self-esteem. Previously most psychologists  recognized  that  how we perceive ourselves is important, affecting our behavior  in areas such as work  and love, but few had looked  into exactly why. The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  attempts to get to the roots  of personal estimation—what increases it, and what  diminishes  it.
Nathaniel Branden  was a disciple and lover of Ayn Rand,  a famous Russian-American philosopher and author of the classic novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. As a result,  for a work  of psychology his book  is very philosophical, driven along by Rand’s notions  of supreme rationalism and individualism.
The Psychology  of Self-Esteem  takes as its premise that we are rational beings in full control  of our destiny. If we accept this truth  and take responsi- bility for it, we naturally see ourselves in a good light. If we fail to take responsibility for our life and actions,  that  estimation falls into danger.
Many  readers  find this book  tough  going, especially the first half, but it is one of the earliest classics of the popular psychology genre and still has the power  to change minds.

Conceptual beings
Branden  devotes many pages to highlighting  how humans  are different  to other  animals.  His chief point  is that  while other  animals  may have conscious- ness, or at least awareness, only humans  require  a conceptual  framework by which to view themselves. Other  animals  can perceive green-colored objects, but only we have the idea of “green.” Dogs can perceive individual  people, but only we have the concept  of “humankind.” Only humans  can ask questions about  the meaning  of life. There is nothing  automatic about  such conceptualiz- ing; thinking,  therefore, is for us an act of choice.
Branden  refutes the two schools of psychology that  were dominant at the time he was writing.  Freudian  psychoanalysis had humans  as an “instinct- manipulated puppet,” while behaviorism  saw us as a “stimulus–response machine.” Neither  took  account  of our powerful  conceptual mind that  gives
us self-awareness  and the ability to reason.  Branden  recalls Ayn Rand’s remark:  “The  function  of your stomach,  lungs or heart  is automatic; the function  of your mind is not.”  We have the power  to regulate  and shape our own consciousness  to achieve our goals.
We are created  to think,  and we must do so in order  to esteem ourselves highly. If we dim our awareness, or are passive or fearful, step by step we kill our greatest  gift. The result is that  we hate ourselves. To love ourselves, we must cherish our ability to think.

Emotions  and self-esteem
Have you ever been in a position  where you know  intellectually  you should  do something, but emotionally cannot  bring yourself to do it? Psychological maturity, according  to Branden,  is the ability to think  in terms of principles, not emotions.  Psychological  immaturity is being swamped  by the moment  and the emotion  so that we lose sight of the broader picture.  When we sacrifice thought and knowledge  to feelings that  cannot be justified rationally, Branden notes, the result is that  we subvert  our self-esteem.
Only if we have a rational approach to our emotions  can we be free of paralyzing  self-doubt, depression,  and fear. This does not mean becoming  a robot  or a cold person,  but simply having the awareness  that  emotions  must be contained within  a larger personal  life philosophy. Neurosis,  on the other hand,  occurs when we let our feelings dictate  our thoughts and actions.  It is impossible  to be both  happy  and irrational, Branden says; someone  in com- mand  of their life, if we look carefully, lives according  to reason.
We think  of happiness  as an emotion,  but it is one that  stems from values that  have been consciously chosen and developed—we  are happy  when we achieve or fulfill what  is most important to us. When we deny or erode those values, we suffer. Branden  remarks  that  anxiety  tends to happen  only “when  a person  has not done the thinking  about  an issue he should  have.”  By not thinking,  the person  has “thereby rendered  himself unfit for reality.”
Physical pain is a mechanism  designed for our bodily survival, but Branden suggests that  psychological  pain also serves a biological  purpose: When we feel anxiety,  guilt, or depression,  that  is telling us that  our conscious- ness is in an unhealthy state. To correct  it, we must reassert  ourselves as an individual  and assess our values, perhaps  forming new ones. In contrast, when we sacrifice reason  to our emotions,  we lose trust  in our own judgment.

Not sacrificial animals
People high in self-esteem are guided by objective facts. They have a good rela- tionship  with reality, and always seek to stay true to who they are.
Their opposite  is someone  whose life is not really their own, who lives to satisfy the expectations, conditions, and values of other  people; they want  to
be seen as “normal” at all costs, and feel terrible  if others  reject them. Branden calls such people “social  metaphysicians” because their philosophy of life revolves around others,  not themselves. Of course, this person  will label their style of life as “practicality,” as if self-sacrifice were quite rational. However, every step along this path  leads them away from what  is real and toward a loss of their true self.

Final comments
Branden  disabuses the reader  of the idea that  self-esteem is a “feel-good  phe- nomenon.” Rather,  it is a deep need that  cannot  be satisfied by shallow  means. It must come from within,  and like a muscle will get stronger  the more we develop it. The more decisions we make that  reflect our highest good, the better  we will naturally feel. The more “shoulds” (I should  do this, or do that, because…) we have in our life, the more justifications  we have to come up with. We become covered in a cloak of excuses, while inside our confidence slowly ebbs away.
If you are a very confident  person  and all is going well, The Psychology of Self-Esteem  may not mean much to you, but read it when faced with diffi- cult choices in your life and it may come alive. For a more practical  and less philosophical approach to self-esteem, you may prefer one of Branden’s subse- quent  books,  such as The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem  or The Art of Living Consciously.

Nathaniel Branden
The author  was born Nathan Blumenthal in Ontario, Canada in 1930.  He attended  the University  of California, Los Angeles, where he received a BA in psychology, and completed his psychology PhD at New  York  University.
Branden  first met Ayn  Rand  in 1950,  later becoming  leader of the “collective” or inner circle around  her, which  included  his wife Barbara Branden and Alan Greenspan,  later chairman  of the US Federal Reserve Board. In the late 1950s  Branden  established  the Nathaniel Branden  Institute to pro- mote  objectivism, and was considered  the movement’s second voice. Despite being more than 20 years her junior, Branden  had a lengthy  affair with  Rand, but only after they had gained the consent  of their spouses. The romantic  and professional  relationship  ended in 1968,  when  Rand  learnt of Branden’s affair with  the actress Patrecia Scott. His book  My Years with Ayn Rand  gives a good insight into the period, and although  he has since criticized the cult of personality  around  Rand,  her ideas continued to be reflected in his writing.
Branden  co-wrote  several books  with  Rand,  including  The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)  and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).  Other  titles include The Psychology of Romantic Love (1980),  Honoring the Self (1983), and Taking Responsibility (1996).
Based in Los Angeles, Branden  is a practicing psychotherapist and runs self-esteem  seminars.

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Lateral Thinking

“Lateral thinking  is like the reverse gear in a car. One  would  never try to drive along in reverse gear the whole time.  On the other hand one needs  to have it and to know  how  to use it for maneuverability and to get out of a blind alley.”
“The purpose of thinking  is not to be right but to be effective.”

Edward  de Bono is inevitably  associated  with the word  “thinking,” and no one is better  known  for getting people to work  on the effectiveness of their thought patterns and ideas.
De Bono’s early books  were among  the first in the popular psychology field. The writing  style is not exactly bubbly,  but the quality  of the ideas made them bestsellers. De Bono coined the term “lateral thinking,” now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary, in The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967),  but it is Lateral Thinking (subtitled  Creativity  Step by Step in the United States and A Textbook of Creativity  in Britain) that  is more widely read and still in print.

What is lateral  thinking?
When de Bono started  writing  in the 1960s  there were no practical,  standard- ized ways of achieving new insights. A few people were considered  “creative,” but the rest had to plod along within  established  mental  grooves. He promoted  the concept  of lateral  thinking  as the first “insight  tool”  that  anyone could use for problem  solving.
The lateral  thinking  concept  emerged from de Bono’s study of how the mind works.  He found  that  the brain  is not best understood as a computer; rather, it is “a special environment which allows information to organize  itself into patterns.” The mind continually looks for patterns, thinks  in terms of pat- terns, and is self-organizing, incorporating new information in terms of what  it already  knows. Given these facts, de Bono noticed  that  a new idea normally
has to do battle  with old ones to get itself established.  He looked  for ways in which new ideas could come into being via spontaneous insight rather  than conflict.
Lateral  thinking  is a process that  enables us to restructure our patterns, to open up our mind and avoid thinking  in clichéd, set ways. It is essentially cre- ativity, but without any mystique.  It is simply a way of dealing with informa- tion that  results in more creative outcomes.  What  is humor,  de Bono asks, but the sudden  restructuring of existing patterns? If we can introduce the unex- pected element, we need not be enslaved to these patterns.
Lateral  thinking  is contrasted with “vertical  thinking.” Our  culture  in general, but in particular our educational system, emphasizes the use of logic, by which one correct  statement proceeds  to the next one, and finally to the “right” solution.  This type of vertical thinking  is good most of the time, but when we have a particularly difficult situation it may not give us the leap forward we need—sometimes  we have to “think outside  the box.” Or as de Bono puts it, “Vertical  thinking  is used to dig the same hole deeper. Lateral thinking  is used to dig a hole in a different  place.”
Lateral  thinking  does not cancel out vertical thinking,  but is complemen- tary to it, to be used when we have exhausted the possibilities of normal thought patterns.

Techniques of creative  thinkers
It is not enough  to have some awareness  of lateral  thinking,  de Bono asserts, we have to practice  it. Most  of his book  consists of techniques  to try to get us into lateral  thinking  mode. They include:
❖  Generating alternatives—to have better  solutions  you must have more choices to begin with.
❖  Challenging  assumptions—though we need to assume many things to function normally,  never questioning our assumptions leaves us in thinking  ruts.
❖  Quotas—come up with a certain  predetermined number  of ideas on an issue. Often  it is the last or final idea that  is the most useful.
❖  Analogies—trying  to see how a situation is similar to an apparently different one is a time-tested  route  to better  thinking.
❖  Reversal thinking—reverse how you are seeing something, that  is, see its opposite, and you may be surprised  at the ideas it may liberate.
❖  Finding the dominant idea—not  an easy skill to master,  but extremely  valuable in seeing what  really matters  in a book,  presentation, conversation, and so on.
❖  Brainstorming—not lateral  thinking  itself, but provides a setting for that  kind of thinking  to emerge.
❖  Suspended  judgment—deciding to entertain an idea just long enough  to see if it might work,  even if it is not attractive on the surface.

One of de Bono’s key points  is that  lateral  thinkers  do not feel they have to be “right” all the time, only effective. They know  that  the need to be right pre- vents new ideas forming,  because it is quite possible to be wrong  at some stages in an idea cycle but still finish with great outcomes.  What  matters  most is generating  enough  ideas so that  some may be wrong,  but others  turn  out right.

The glorious  obvious
De Bono remarks, “It is characteristic of insight solutions  and new ideas that they should  be obvious  after they have been found.”
Brilliant yet obvious  ideas lie hidden  in our minds, just waiting  to be fished out. What  stops us from retrieving them is the clichéd way we think, always sticking to familiar labels, classifications,  and pigeonholes—what de Bono describes as the “arrogance of established  patterns.”
To get different  results, we need to put information together  differently. What  makes an idea original  is not necessarily the concept  itself, but the fact that  most other  people, thinking  along conventional lines, were not led to it themselves.
We have the cult of genius, glorifying famous  figures like Einstein, only because most people are not taught  to think  in better  ways. For those who practice  lateral  thinking  all the time, the flow of original  ideas never stops.

Final comments
Though  de Bono’s books  are the progenitors of many of the sensationally written  “mind  power” titles available  today, Lateral Thinking itself has a dry style. Unlike many of the seminar  gurus who followed  him, de Bono has degrees in psychology and medicine,  so there is more rigor in his approach.
If you have never got much out of de Bono before,  the chances are you are already  a lateral  thinker. But everyone can become a better  thinker, and his books  are a good place to begin.
People take jibes at de Bono’s invention  of words  like “po” to simplify his teachings,  but he has probably done more than  anyone  to get us thinking about  thinking  itself. This is an important mission, because among  the many things that  make the world  progress,  new and better  ideas are always at the heart  of them.

Edward de  Bono
Born in 1933  in Malta, the son of a professor of medicine  and a magazine journalist,  de Bono  was educated  at St. Edward’s  College and gained a medical degree at the Royal  University  of Malta at the age of 21. He won  a Rhodes Scholarship  to Christ Church,  Oxford, graduating  with  an MA  in psychology and physiology and a DPhil in medicine. He completed his doctorate  at Cambridge  and has had appointments at the universities  of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard.  He became a full-time  author  in 1976.
De Bono  has worked with  many  major corporations, government organizations, teachers, and schoolchildren, and is a well-known public speaker. He has written  over 60 books,  including  The Mechanism of Mind (1969),  Po: Beyond Yes and No (1973),  The Greatest  Thinkers  (1976),  Six Thinking  Hats  (1986),  I Am Right, You Are Wrong  (1990),  How  to Be More Interesting  (1997),  and How  to Have a Beautiful Mind  (2004).

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People Skills

“Although interpersonal  communication is humanity’s  greatest accomplish- ment,  the average person does not communicate well. Low-level  communica- tion leads to loneliness  and distance  from friends, lovers, spouses,  and children as well as ineffectiveness at work.”
“Communication skills, no matter how finely structured, cannot be a substitute for authenticity, caring, and understanding. But they can help us express these qualities
more effectively than many of us have been able to do in the past.”

Robert Bolton

ften the best books  are those that  authors needed to write for their own use. In the preface to People Skills: How  to Assert Yourself, Listen  to Others,  and Resolve  Conflicts would  never have got into the communications field were it not for the fact that  his own people skills were so bad.
The book  was written  over a six-year period  while he was running  a consulting  firm, and the material  was tested on thousands of people doing the company’s  communication skills workshops. Participants involved everyone from top executives to hospital  workers  to small business owners  to priests and nuns.
There are virtually  no jobs where communicating well does not make a big difference to our success. As many people have found,  particularly those in a more technical  field, the actual  “work” is only part  of the job; the rest is managing or dealing with people. Therefore,  if we can communicate well, this can account  for at least half our achievements.

Removing  the roadblocks
People yearn for a closer connection with one another, Bolton notes. They may be lonely not because they don’t have others  around them, but because they cannot  communicate well. Yet if we can put a man on the moon and cure viru- lent diseases, why aren’t we all great communicators? It is partly  because we learn a good deal of our communication skills from our family; chances are our parents  were not perfect communicators, and neither  were their parents.
Nearly  everyone wants  better  communication skills, yet often without knowing  it our communication is full of roadblocks that  prevent  real commu- nication  with others.  Two of the main ones are judging and sending solutions.
When talking  with someone,  it is difficult to listen to what  they are saying without putting  in our “two  bits’ worth.” This is the nicer side of judging. The other  is criticism and labeling. With people close to us we feel we should  be critical, otherwise  we don’t see how they will ever change. With others,  we feel the need to give them a label such as “intellectual,” “brat,” “jerk,” or “nag,” but by doing so we cease to see the person  before us, only a type. Our  “good advice”  is in fact rarely constructive, because it usually represents  an affront  to the other  person’s intelligence.
We may be so used to having roadblocks that  we wonder  what  will be left if we remove them from our style of conversation. What  remains  is the ability to understand and empathize  with other  people, and to make our con- cerns clearly known.

Listening skills
Are your conversations a competition in which “the  first person  to draw breath is declared  the listener”?  Not  many people are good listeners. Research has found  that  “75  percent  of oral communication is ignored,  misunderstood, or quickly forgotten.”
There is a huge difference between  merely hearing  and listening, Bolton notes. The word  “listening” is derived from two Anglo Saxon words,  hlystan (“hearing”) and hlosnian  (“waiting in suspense”).  The act of listening there- fore means more than  just something  physical, it is a psychological  engage- ment with another person.
Listening is not a single skill, but if genuinely practiced  involves a number of skill areas, which are described below.

Attending
The common  estimate  given in research  papers  is that  85 percent  of our com- munication is nonverbal. Therefore  attending skills, which are about  the extent to which we are “there” for someone  when they are speaking,  are vital to good communication. You are not looking  somewhere  else in the room,  but through your posture,  eye contact,  and movement  show the other  person  that they are your focus; you are “listening  with your body.”
Bolton describes when painter  Norman Rockwell was creating  a portrait of President  Eisenhower.  Even though  the President  was amid the worries  of office and about  to enter an election campaign,  for the hour  and a half he sat for Rockwell,  Eisenhower  gave the painter  his full attention. Think  of anyone you know  who is a great communicator and they will be the same: They fully attend  to you with their whole mind and body.

Following
Following  skills relate to how we follow up what  someone  says to us. Though commonly  we advise or reassure,  a better way is to provide  a “door opener” phrase.  This may involve:
❖  Noting  the other  person’s body language:  “Your  face is beaming  today.”
❖  Inviting the other  person  to speak: “Tell me more.” “Care  to talk about  this?” “What’s  on your mind?”
❖  Silence: giving the other  person  space to say something  if they want  to.
❖  Our  body language:  offering the message that  we are ready to listen.

Doing any of those things shows respect; the other  person  can talk or not talk as they wish. There is no pressure.  Bolton comments  that  a lot of people are initially uncomfortable with silence, but with a little practice  it is not hard  for us to extend  our comfort  zone.
In developing  our skill at following,  we become adept  at discovering exactly how the speaker  sees their situation, unlocking  or bringing  out what- ever is waiting  to be said. This is valuable  to both  parties.

Paraphrasing
Bolton defines paraphrasing as “a concise response to the speaker  which states the essence of the other’s content  in the listener’s own words.” For example, when someone  is telling us their problems,  we report  back to them in our own words,  and in one sentence, what  they are saying. This lets them know  we are really listening, and indicates  understanding and acceptance.  We may feel strange  doing this at first and think  the other  person  will wonder  what the hell we are doing, but in fact most of the time they will be glad that  their feelings are being recognized.

Reflective responses
This type of listening provides  a mirror  to the speaker  so that  the state or emotion  they are in is recognized.  Bolton gets us to picture  a young mother  on a morning  when everything  is going wrong.  The baby cries, the phone  rings, the toast  gets burnt. If her husband notices this and says something  like “God, can’t you learn to cook toast?” the woman’s  reaction  is likely to be explosive.
But picture  an alternative. The same events happen  and the husband says, “Honey, it’s a rough  morning  for you—first the baby, then the phone,  now the toast.” This is a reflective response,  acknowledging what  his wife is experienc- ing without any judgment  or criticism. Imagine how much better  she will feel!
Reflective responses work  because people don’t always wish to spell out what  they are really feeling. They beat around the bush. Only by being reflec- tive, not reactive, are we able to discern their real message. Psychologists  talk of the “presenting problem” and the “basic  problem.” What  presents is what  a person  says is the matter, and behind  it is the real problem.  This is why we have to listen for the feeling in a conversation. That  points  us in the right direc- tion, whereas  a common  mistake  is to try to make sense of the words  only.
People complain  that  reflective listening takes more time and effort. It does in the short  term, but it is likely to avoid major  troubles  that  blow up later on as the result of poor  communication.

Assertiveness skills
Bolton likes to think  of listening as the yin (the receiving aspect) of communi- cation,  while assertiveness  is the yang (the active aspect).
Because of the poor  communication skills most of us have been taught, when we want  something  we choose between  either nagging or aggression,  or we avoid the issue altogether. These responses stem from the basic “fight or flight” modes we operate  with as animals.  But as humans  we also have a third option:  verbal assertion. We can stand  our ground  yet not be aggressive. This is easily the most effective means of communication for most situations, yet most of us either forget assertion  or don’t know  how to use it.
The whole point  of assertion  statements is to produce  change without invading  the other  person’s space. There is no power  or coercion  involved, as the focus is on a result. We can remain  very angry, and the other  person knows it from what  we are saying, yet at the same time it allows us not to be hostile or aggressive. They are left to decide for themselves how to respond  to
the message, which allows them to retain  their dignity—while we have taken  a big step in getting what  we want.

Conflict prevention and control
What  we really want  in life is situations where everybody  wins. Bolton pre- sents the counterintuitive idea that  if we define a problem  in terms of solu- tions, one person  wins and the other  loses. To get win–win  outcomes,  we have to focus not on the solution  but on each party’s needs.
For instance,  he worked  with a group  of nuns who only had one car between  them. Several of them needed the car to make visits and go to meet- ings, so there were inevitable  clashes. When one person  had the car, the others lost out. But Bolton asked them what  each of them needed. The need they identified was transportation, and use of the group’s car was only one solution to that.  Seeing the situation in terms of needs meant  that  many other  possible solutions  appeared.
As the old saying goes, “A problem  well defined is a problem half solved.” Bolton provides  a step-by-step  process for identifying  needs, which then lead to a solution. Using this method surprisingly  elegant answers  can be found to questions we may have thought were intractable. But it first requires us to really listen to what other people require to make them happy.

Final comments
People Skills has been around for a quarter of a century  and still sells well. What  is the secret of its longevity? First, the book  rests on a strong  intellectual foundation, referencing  ideas from the likes of Carl Rogers, Sigmund Freud, and Karen Horney.  Secondly, it sticks to the fundamentals, not trying to cover every aspect of interpersonal relations  but focusing on three vital, learnable skills: listening, asserting,  and resolving conflict. Although  the book  seems long and there is a fair amount of repetition, it contains  some highly useful tips and techniques  that  can be applied  immediately.
Nowhere does People Skills ask us to change our personality to become a warm  and fuzzy “people  person.” What  it does do is show us well-researched techniques  that  can make a dramatic difference to our effectiveness. We sud- denly understand what  people are really saying, and we begin to be able to communicate what  we truly want  in a direct fashion.
Conversely,  if we still have a tendency  to think  that  having good people skills means the ability to manipulate others  into doing or saying something that  suits us, not them, Bolton’s book  reminds us of the three pillars of respect that  really produce  good relationships: empathy, nonpossessive  love, and genuineness.

Robert Bolton
Bolton  is the head of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting  firm founded in 1972  that focuses on workplace communication and interpersonal  skills. He previously  created training programs for the New  York  State Department of Mental  Hygiene  and also founded a psychiatric  clinic.
His other book, written  with  his wife Dorothy Grover  Bolton,  is People Styles at Work:  Making  Bad Relationships Good  and Good Relationships Better (1996).

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