Often I have had clients come to me for coaching as they feel that they have low self-esteem.  So I decided to research this topic as to understand what self esteem really is. Is it that the person has a lack of competence that allows their self esteem to drop, or are they really competent and have a sense of being unworthy.

My research is based on the resources from  Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D., a well known psychotherapist, who  defined self-esteem several years ago as “The disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of  being worthy of happiness.” The National Association for Self-Esteem modified this to define self-esteem as "The experience of being capable of meeting life's challenges and being worthy of happiness. Below is an extract from this research.

This concept of self-esteem is founded on the premise that it is strongly connected to a sense of competence and worthiness and the relationship between the two as one lives life. The worthiness component of self-esteem is often misunderstood as simply feeling good about oneself, when it actually is tied to whether or not a person lives up to certain fundamental human values, such as finding meanings that foster human growth and making commitments to them in a way that leads to a sense of integrity and satisfaction. A sense of competence is having the conviction that one is generally capable of producing desired results, having confidence in the efficacy of our mind and our ability to think, as well as to make appropriate choices and decisions.  Worthiness might be considered the psychological aspect of self-esteem, while competence might be considered the behavioral or sociological aspect of self-esteem. Self-esteem stems from the experience of living consciously and might be viewed as a person’s overall judgment of himself or herself pertaining to self-competence and self-worth based on reality.

The value of this definition is that it is useful in making the distinction between authentic or healthy self-esteem and pseudo or unhealthy self-esteem.  A sense of personal worth without competence is just as limiting as competence without worthiness.  A strong sense of worthiness prevents competence from becoming arrogance by keeping the individual focused on basic values, and competence prevents worthiness from becoming narcissism by requiring good feelings to be earned, not given.  Thus, behaviors that might be described as egotistic, egocentric, conceited, boasting or bragging, bullying, taking advantage of, or harming others are defensive behaviors indicative of a lack of self-esteem.  Such behaviors, therefore, should not be confused with authentic, healthy self-esteem.