In my job, I see a lot of people who are dealing with the consequences of a chain of bad decisions. I see sixty pack-year smokers struggling to breathe, drunk drivers who bend their cars around telephone poles, diabetics who refuse to control their disease, welfare women on their fifth pregnancy, and all manner of retarded, drunken power tool accidents. This has had a perverse affect on me - rather than becoming depressed or despairing at the idiocy of our species, I feel fucking great. Every time I make a mistake in my life, I think back to the guy who showed up with his severed thumb in a cup of ice cubes post hedge trimmer accident, and I think "At least I'm not that guy." Lately I've been wondering if that's healthy. Focus: From what things/events do you draw your self esteem? What rules do you abide by to maintain your self esteem? Do you work out to look good? Do you get a secret thrill when a colleague fucks something up and you are called on to fix it? Would you work harder for a boss that gave you bonuses in private, or praised you in public without the financial reward? Do you like when other guys hit on your smokin' hot girlfriend? Ladies, do you seek men out that your friends would envy?
Nothing better than listening to our customers who can't do basic shit. I am lacking in the common sense department, but I am capable of taking a second and analyzing how something works and fixing it for myself. These people don't bother with that step can call us, and are still mystified when I tell them something like, take off the fucking lens cap.
Being able to walk onto a customer's floor and envision a solution to their problem in a matter of a minute or two. Being able to look at a complex engineering layout and understand it immediately (without having any type of formal engineering degree or training) and be able to point out mistakes to our smug engineers. Being strong. The night before Halloween I carried my friend's very hot (and quite light) girl friend over my shoulder up two flights of stairs because she was too hammered to climb them and he was too weak to carry her himself. My biggest esteem booster is being able to break many of the rules associated with being a "sales professional" and still making out like a bandit.
My GF and I will sometimes go to gay pride events to compare our weight/fashion sense with the other lesbians. Since many (sadly, way too many) of the lesbians there are overweight, have some sort of leg/hip issue (why do they all have canes?!?) and are wearing pleated mom jeans with giant cell phones/beepers clipped to their waist bands, we get a huge self esteem bump. It's a great reminder to continue eating right/exercising so we do not end up like that in the future. Is that so wrong? I also love to hear about the terrible debt that one of my high school friends has. She keep a blog about it & it makes me feel so much better about my student loans. I thought I was terrible with money until I read about how much money she owes people & I heave a sigh of relief anytime she updates.
I think it's important to find a balance between self esteem that stems from things you do to feel good about yourself and self esteem gained from validation. For example, someone works out because they have a history of heart disease in their family and they feel good about themselves because they're doing their best to prevent their ill-fated genetic propensities from catching up to them. Conversely, someone else works out because killer biceps get girls at the bar. One is governed by self esteem and the other is governed by validation. Now, those situations obviously overlap. The guy who works out to maintain a healthy lifestyle will also gain validation from anyone who wishes to give it. That validation will always boost how someone feels about themselves. It's just important to keep both in perspective. That's my rule concerning self esteem. As far as the I'm-glad-I'm-not-that-guy scenario goes, there still needs to be a balance. However, instead of any outside validation, there's ego to deal with. You should feel good that you're not in that position and that you're probably smart enough to not repeat their mistake, while simultaneously knowing that regardless of all the consequences you've witnessed, stupid shit can easily happen to you. I think in order to have a healthy self esteem, it should be gently steeped in humility.
I was unemployed for a couple months last summer and had a lot of time on my hands. A couple friends encouraged me to try stand-up comedy, an idea I'd toyed with for a while but never really had the motivation to actually try. I called a local club, asked to be put on the list for an open-mic night, prepared a routine, and two-and-a-half weeks later I went on stage for the first time. Apparently, what I'd signed up for was some sort of contest thing, and I was performing with guys who had been doing this for years. No one remotely famous, mind you, but people who had been grinding it out on the local circuit for a while. I told them it was my first time, and they all kind of chuckled and shook their heads knowingly. "Don't worry if you suck. Everyone sucks." Well, I did suck. At least, I thought I sucked. I was sweating the whole time, going too fast, not articulating well enough. But, out of maybe 15 or 16 people, I took third place. People laughed, told me after the show that I did well, etc. The M.C. told me to call him if I wanted to do shows in the city, which was actually the coolest part of the whole ordeal. At the foreground of my mind, I knew that this was a really small pond, that these guys weren't very good, and that it was a relatively minor accomplishment. At the back of my mind, I felt great knowing I'd made a room full of people laugh harder than individuals who actually called themselves comedians. It made me wonder if I had some modicum of comedic talent beyond talking about my poop on the Internet. The jury is most decidedly still out on that. Today I crapped lettuce.
There is a new teacher across the hall from me. She is in her first year, fresh out of college. She's young, pretty, and idealistic in the ways in which she's going to change the youth of tomorrow for the greater benefit of the world. It's awesome, actually, except that she has no idea how to discipline 15-18 year old kids when the need arises. Of course, her students have picked up on this, and take full advantage of her whenever possible. She was doing a lab in class last week where you mix Mountain Dew, hydrogen peroxide, and baking soda and it all combines to make a glow-stick of sorts out of the bottle. "Fun" lab + no discipline = clusterfuck of stupidity from students. It's simple math, actually. Twenty minutes into class, she comes over to my room and frantically asks if I can come by her room real quick. I walk in with her, and it's a tragic mess. The little turd students are spraying soda all over the place, lining up the baking soda on the desks like it's lines of coke, shooting each other with water guns ... basically, the inmates are now running the asylum. I walk in, and in my best coach-voice, simply yell, "HEY!" and everyone turns and scurries back to their desks. The water guns are quickly tossed aside to make their neighbor look guilty, and the kids try to act like they're hard at work. I simply stood by the door for the next couple minutes, with my arms folded across my chest without saying a word, while the teacher started to regain control of her classroom. After a couple minutes, she looked over at me and sheepishly smiled, and I took that as my cue that my work was done, and I went back to my classroom. It may not be much, but I took pride in being able to quickly and effectively take control of a raucus classroom with one simple word and look. Took those little fuckers down a notch, and it felt good.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was working with high-risk teens for a living, and I remember being totally intimidated by the idea of bringing new life into the world. And then I thought: "How hard can it be? These teenagers do it all the time." What I didn't say to myself, at that point in my life, was that sure...teenagers have babies all the time. And, a high number of them manage to fuck those children up on a massive level. I keep a picture on my facebook. It's a shot of me and two friends from work at our office Christmas party a couple of years ago. I'm 43, and my co-workers are 33 and 25, respectively. In that picture, at least, I look as good or better than either of them (and my tits look fan-fucking-tastic). If you were asked to guess our ages, from oldest to youngest, you'd have a damn hard time doing it. I feel great every single time I look at that picture. Mind you, these girls are not spectacular representations of the 20-30-something genre of woman. Nonetheless, I'm taking it where I can find it.
Well stated. If you actively look for a way to "one up" someone, in order to feel better about yourself, you have issues. Which most of us do. Focus: When at the store or in a resturaunt I am keenly aware of misbehaving children and how their parents are handling it. I do find validation in seeing my children aren't whiny, spoiled little demons like so many others. And I secretly enjoy that I'm not as frazzled and unkept as some moms. It's chased by a bit of guilt though. I don't know what that woman has going on...
MTV reality shows. Even I, at my most awkward and lame teenager phase, was not nearly as pathetic as those morons competing for Tila Tequila's love.
I am a huge believer in substance over style and people should be judged on their actions more than their appearance. After all, appearance fades and you had better have something else to offer. However, every time I get hit on by some drunken idiot at a bar or walk by and feel somebody checking out my ass, I secretly get the same sense of pleasure from it that probably comes close to or equals the sense of satisfaction that I get from getting an "A" on an assignment. And I am in the same line of work as Savage Henry and feel a huge sense of superiority every time I have an order to apply something to a patient's skinfolds. My nursing friends are under strict orders to just put me out of my misery if I ever need nystatin powder to keep the yeast under my pannus in check.
This is huge. I spent a great deal of my life with low self-esteem and it has caused me many problems, including a few truly heart-breaking ones. I have to laugh when people tell me I'm humble - it's really that I don't think that much of myself and so I'm quicker to find fault with myself than I am to prop myself up. I'm slowly learning that in order to have self-esteem, I need to own who I am and work at being the best that I can be, and that it is okay to fail as long as I pick myself up and keep trying. I also have to keep telling myself that everyone is focused on themselves and not really paying attention to me. If they are paying too much attention to me and judging me, then fuck em.
I draw self esteem from doing anything physically challenging. I'd say that I'm definitely in my element when I'm engaging specific muscles to create different lines, shapes and energies. Since I'm gifted with body awareness and spent the greater part of my life developing it even further, movement/lines/patterns come very easily to me. You'd think those activities wouldn't really be fulfilling since I advance quickly, but nope. Wrong. I love mastering an intense Yoga pose. I feel really great after a long run or race. This is silly and really shallow, but whenever I go to a Yoga class or take from a fellow Pilates instructor I always receive a lot of attention during class and compliments afterwards. I know it's ridiculous and it likens me to a 3 year old getting a cookie for going potty, but it makes me feel really good. Love me! Tell me I'm beautiful! The best part is that there's always more. There's always a new modification to master or a new PR to run. Plus, an added bonus to feeling good from working out is that I wear the same size as I did dancing. On the not as shallow side, I get a major boost in self esteem when I do well on a difficult test. I jumped into Pre-Calculus last fall after an 8 year break from math. At the beginning I didn't even remember basic rules of algebra. I had no business going into that class cold turkey, but I was damned if I was going to drop it. I studied my ass off and ended the semester with an A. I even got a 100 on the last exam. That made me feel fabulous because I worked really hard for it, and it was even more significant as it was my first semester back in school. It made me feel like I made a good decision.
When I was younger I used to define myself through work. I worked 30hrs/week when I was a full-time student. When I graduated and got a "real" job I also kept the part-time job, and continued with the 70+ hour work weeks. During this time I mostly lived on my own, so there was no one around to cut the grass, help with the laundry, alternate with grocery shopping, etc. For seven years. I used to validate myself through the sheer amount of shit I'd manage to do in a week. People would hear about my schedule and exclaim, "How do you do it?! I couldn't!" And I took pride in that. What I realize now is that this was an excuse for actually having a life. Ask me to name a single person in my undergraduate class. Well, I can name one, but only because she hired me and trained me for the part-time job mentioned above. In retrospect, it was a period where I was completely isolated and at my lowest, both self-esteem and overall fitness wise. I quit both jobs at the same time to travel around the world - and, of course, worked right up until midnight my last day. What followed was over two years of "unemployment," meaning that I did a bunch of stuff and didn't get paid in the technical sense. Between travelling the world on my own and then returning to Canada and doing stuff like rescuing dogs, building a house and for the first time in my adult life spending time with my family I've done a complete 180. I don't want this to sound like some glowing self-help rant, but going through all that I went through for those two years taught me what my limits and values really were, and consequently where it was I would draw my confidence and self esteem from. I took great joy in telling people, "Actually, I'm homeless and unemployed," when they asked what I did just to see their reaction. "What do you do for a living?" has to be the most boring, sensless question ever invented because truly interesting people don't define themselves by their work and people who define themselves through their work aren't really very interesting, in my opinion. To stay on focus: I get my self esteem from knowing exactly what I can endure, being able to function wholly independantly but also knowing that I have an absolute bedrock of a family that's always there. Any other opinion or situation doesn't hold a candle to that. Oh, and the A&E shows "Intervention" and "Hoarders." No matter what poor decision I make, I do not currently have every paper cup, magazine and piece of clothing that I've ever bought stacked floor to ceiling in my house right now.
Every Monday night for a few weeks, I hate to admit, I'm glued to "The Bachelor" series. I just have to watch it. Not just for its unintentional comedy, not to remind myself that there are lots of accomplished single girls out there, not because the dude has a sexy Brittish accent. . .but because those girls are fucking trainwrecks. I cringe at watching these chicks not only in embarrassment for them but for me as well. I know I used to do the same shit they do. . .only they did it on national TV. I like to compare my particular brand of crazy to theirs and am happy to say mine doesn't come nearly as close. Yay! The really self-indulgent thing I did was to keep a thank you card from one of my first students. It was sweet and heartfelt and reminds me that yeah, me, Chirpy, silly, stupid, crazy me actually inspired a kid to love to write. So when I question whether this is the profession for me or what direction I want to go in next, I can honestly say that I made a difference. How can you not like yourself a little when you have THAT? Awesome!
For a long time my self esteem came from the fact that I'm simply smarter and intrinsically more capable than just about everyone I come across. Over time it has become clear to me that not only is this a very unhealthy way to view the world, but that as you age capability begins to pale next to accomplishment. To that end I'm working on reinvesting myself into achieving more with the abilities I have, but without the ego tagging along. In that same time I have evolved my sense of self worth to reflect how well I treat others. Obviously because I'm young and stupid I still fuck up and have a ways yet to go, but I'm proud to say that people know me as someone highly trustworthy, that I am empathetic and conscientious, and that I am laid back and accepting. Also it doesn't hurt that my dick belongs in the Louvre.
Really boosting my self esteem right now is that I've started working out a few times a week, and I can see the results of my hard work.
sadly, I have to look no further then some of the folks in my circle of friends to remind me how much I have cleaned up my act over the last 10 years and to feel better about myself. I used to be a hard core party person (raver) who started out in the "scene" when I was 16, suffice to say I had done my fair share of drugs and have been in some pretty sketchy situations. I had gotten pretty deep into hard core drugs (meth) about 6 years ago which almost completely ruined my life. I hadnt realized I had lost control of my own life because I was high 24/7 and those around me were just as fucked up or worse, leaving me with nothing to measure how bad it had gotten. I was always seen as the one who "had it together" because I worked a shitty job at a porn store, dated a drug dealer and didn't act like a mental patient when I would venture into public (classy eh?) and because of that people never thought to worry about my habit. I woke up one day, figuratively not literally since I probably hadnt slept in a week, and decided I was done with being a loser and was probably going to die if I continued living the life I was leading. I went home the next day (I was living out of province with a boyfriend) and other then a couple slip ups with coke a few years back I have been 100% clean since. Over the years I have to completely cut some people who refused to get their shit together but have stayed close to some semi recreational drug users.These weekend people will get ridiculous on a Saturday night once every couple months doing drugs and then stay up for days rolling around in their bedrooms listening to terrible dub step trying to bring the rave back. (for the record, there hasnt been a rave in our city in 5 years and if the rave did come back these people would the "sketchy old people" we used to make fun of in our youth). They then will complain for a solid week about how sketchy they feel and how broke they are after their binge. It makes me sad to see 30+ year olds still acting like children (drugged up crazy children) but it makes me happy to know I am not one of them.