What is self-esteem, and why is it important? How does the way you view yourself impact your daily life, relationships, and overall happiness?
Self-esteem goes far beyond just feeling good about yourself; it’s about recognizing your inherent worth and believing in your abilities to handle life’s challenges. Leading experts and researchers have explored how this fundamental attitude shapes our emotions, behaviors, and connections with others.
Read more to learn what the research reveals about self-esteem and discover why it matters so much for living a fulfilling life.
The Meaning & Importance of Self-Esteem
What is self-esteem, and why is it important? We’ll look at a few definitions of self-esteem and three reasons why it matters.
In The Confidence Code, journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman provide a basic definition of self-esteem: Self-esteem is an attitude about yourself—specifically, the belief that you have value. In The Gifts of Imperfection, researcher Brené Brown calls healthy self-esteem worthiness: the conviction that you’re good enough as you are, flaws and all, and that you deserve to be loved.
In Transcend, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman expands the definition of self-esteem to include not only the belief that you have value but also your confidence in your abilities. In The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden comes to the same conclusion, referring to these two aspects of self-esteem as self-respect and self-efficacy.
According to Branden, self-respect is the belief that you deserve happiness because you’re inherently valuable. It drives you to treat yourself well and expect similar respect from others. Self-efficacy is when you trust your own mind and judgment—so you feel like you’re generally capable of learning the skills you need to earn a living, have healthy relationships, and recover when you face difficulties. Branden contends that both beliefs are essential to self-esteem.
Why Raise Your Self-Esteem?
We’ve explored the question of what self-esteem is, but why does any of this matter? Self-esteem is important because it significantly shapes the course of your life: It determines how you feel, the actions you take, and the way you relate to others.
Self-Esteem Determines How You Feel
First off, Nathaniel Branden argues that healthy self-esteem makes you generally happier. It protects you from the worst life has to offer, as people with healthy self-esteem quickly recover from life’s inevitable challenges. For example, someone who loses their job won’t suffer the loss as badly if they believe that they’re capable and worthy of finding a new one. Of course, self-esteem doesn’t guarantee a fulfilled life—but without it, you won’t live the most fulfilling life possible.
The benefits of healthy self-esteem don’t stop there. In Everything Is F*cked, self-help author Mark Manson argues that healthy self-esteem is necessary for any feelings of peace and happiness because it gives you hope. He defines hope as the belief that you can progress toward something valuable and create a more pleasant future. Hope empowers you to cope with the inherent pain of existence: If you believe that you’re successfully creating a more pleasant future for yourself and those around you, you’ll feel fulfilled, even if life at the moment is unpleasant.
Manson states that, unfortunately, low self-esteem makes it difficult to find hope. People with low self-esteem see themselves as uniquely dysfunctional and thus inherently unable to progress toward something valuable. They may say things like “I’m not smart enough to become a teacher,” or “I’m not creative enough to make art.” This belief in their powerlessness prevents them from finding hope and living lives that they feel are meaningful.
People with low self-esteem don’t just suffer from feelings of incompetence; they also acutely feel the pain of worthlessness. More specifically, Brené Brown argues that a life of low self-esteem is characterized by shame. She defines shame as feeling that you don’t deserve to be loved because you’ll never be “good enough.” It’s built on foundations of fear, self-hatred, and inadequacy. Nathaniel Branden agrees that poor self-esteem encourages fear, adding that it makes you afraid of facing reality. If you believe you’re not worthy of love or capable of solving life’s problems, you’ll be frightened of any opportunities to improve your life because they threaten to further prove just how inadequate you are.
Self-Esteem Determines Your Actions
Experts generally agree that how you feel about yourself largely determines how often you choose to behave in a healthy and beneficial way. Why is this?
According to Mark Manson, most people fail to realize that ultimately, emotions control all of our behavior. We assume that we use logic to decide what to do, unless our emotions steer us off course—but biologically, the truth is the other way around. Manson explains that emotions are the mechanism by which our brains push our bodies into action. If we feel an emotional drive to do something, we do it, and if we don’t feel that drive, we don’t. For this reason, when it makes you feel good to lead a disciplined life and progress toward a better future (as it does for people with healthy self-esteem), you’ll do it automatically and effortlessly.
In How to Change, behavioral scientist Katy Milkman agrees that your level of self-esteem can make or break any effort to change your behavior. She explains that this is because our expectations (or beliefs) about what will happen influence the outcome in at least four ways:
- Emotionally, your expectations can either drum up your energy or suppress it. When you feel good about your chances of making a change, that emotional energy will help you to succeed.
- Attentionally, positive expectations can help you to interpret a difficult activity—such as grinding out hours of deep work—as something energizing and enjoyable.
- Motivationally, the way you interpret things can improve your ability to follow through—for instance, focusing on the cognitive benefits of deep work can improve your energy levels.
- Physiologically, positive expectations can change how your body responds to an activity and thereby yield better results.
Low Self-Esteem Causes Compulsive Self-Destructive Behavior
Likewise, low self-esteem often leads to self-destructive behavior. In Radical Acceptance, psychologist and meditation instructor Tara Brach asserts that people with low self-esteem are always on the lookout for imperfections in themselves. When they inevitably find some, it drives them deeper into their sense of inadequacy.
These feelings drive people to all kinds of self-destructive behavior, most notably addiction. Whether the addiction is to drugs, sex, work—an addiction, she says, that’s unfortunately celebrated by Western culture—or something else, it often stems from an attempt to escape the feelings of worthlessness.
Addiction isn’t the only defense mechanism triggered by low self-esteem. Mark Manson argues that hopeless people with low self-esteem may try to numb the pain of existence by suppressing all their emotions. This kind of hopelessness manifests as apathy and depression—instead of relentlessly trying to feed a craving, people lack the motivation to do anything at all, languishing at a baseline of dull pain.
Self-Esteem Determines How You Relate to Others
Finally, self-esteem determines your ability to build and maintain healthy relationships. Tara Brach explains that people with low self-esteem often end up isolating themselves from others. People who don’t think they’re good enough assume that others think the same. Thus, they find it hard to trust people who offer them love, friendship, or even simple encouragement. Brené Brown agrees, adding that shame encourages you to reject and hide parts of yourself that you think others will judge or dislike—for example, your flaws and your failures. This inauthenticity leads to further feelings of isolation.
People with low self-esteem also tend to crave the validation and approval of others, and this craving can lead to unhappiness. Why? In The Courage to Be Disliked, psychologists Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga argue that people who crave approval see life as a competition and other people as adversaries—if others win, it means they lose. However, this approval is often conditional—it depends on what you do. Some people will like you for making them laugh, others will like you for being generous and kind, and others may like you for achieving career success. These are difficult things to do, and no one would be able to do it all perfectly.
This means that inevitably, someone else will be better at earning approval than you. When others succeed, they’re raising the bar, making it more difficult for you to earn the same amount of approval. For this reason, Kishimi and Koga assert that people who crave approval fear the success of others. They celebrate the failures of those around them instead of offering support, which prevents them from forming healthy relationships.
