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submitted: Aug 17th 2008 | by: PeterJulian | Total views: 2 | Word Count: 510 | |

Have you ever wondered what someone means when they refer to 'healthy self-esteem?' Does that mean that someone is fearless or confident? To begin our discussion on self-esteem, we must first agree on a definition.

At this point, let's agree that self-esteem is 'the way in which a person judges their own value.' What that means, basically, is that if a person judges himself to be without value, he has poor self-esteem. On the other hand, if he feels he's very valuable, he exhibits good, or healthy, self-esteem.

Keeping that in mind, let's move on to the way that poor or healthy self-esteem predicts whether a person will be successful in life. It may surprise you to know that recent research has raised questions about the beliefs that formed the 'self-esteem-based education movement' of the past twenty five years.

Starting in the 1980s in California, anti-drug programs, programs to reduce teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates, and an abundance of classroom curricula have been based on the notion that children with good self-image are less likely to give in to peer pressure.

The leaders in this school of thought believed that children's self esteem was impacted most by the things that happened to them early in life. Millions of dollars have been spent nationwide teaching children they are valuable members of society, in the hope they will grow up to be responsible and successful.

Surprisingly, current studies have found little evidence that high self-esteem is a reliable predictor of future success in general. Actually, these studies revealed that just the opposite may be more accurate.

But a seismic shift has occurred in the evidence on which that belief was based. Recent studies, most notably by Brown University, seem to indicate that there's very little difference in drug use, teen pregnancy or failure in school between those with poor or healthy self-esteem. A further blow to that movement is that the new study shows a person must succeed before they are able to exhibit healthy self-esteem.

You should also know that the new research that challenges the belief that children's self-esteem is largely formed within the family, or perhaps in the classroom, may be wrong-headed. What they found when surveying their respondents was that those people, whether they exhibited good or poor self-esteem, measured themselves against their social values.

Said another way, one's social values, or what one's society determines to be valuable, create the basis for whether or not they feel that they, themselves, have an internal sense of value. For instance, if the society in which one lives places a high value on knowledge, and they have the capability to study and learn easily, then self-esteem increases as 'measure-up' to that social value.

And so, we circle back around to our original question: 'what is self-esteem?' I hope you'll agree to a slight refinement in our original definition. And here it is, "self-esteem is the way a person looks at himself against the backdrop of what his society defines as valuable." Keep that in mind if you decide to look further into what influences a person's self-esteem.

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Want to learn more about how to create a healthy Self-Esteem? Find out how you can create bullet-proof Self-Esteem in less than 30 minutes a day!

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