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Gotcha. There's
no such thing as "too much self-esteem."
Can you have too much health? Can something be too
fair? Too balanced? Self-esteem is a concept like these, where you can get closer and closer to the ideal, but never
logically go beyond it.
For example, if you're trying to balance two weights on a set of scales, you
can add more and more weight to one side of the scales until they're perfectly balanced, but if you keep adding weight,
you're out of balance again. This is not known as "too much" balance; it is recognized as simply "being
out of balance." Which is right where you started.
The reason people get confused and think that there can
be such a thing as "too much" self-esteem is that they see certain people who seem to think very highly
of themselves, acting and speaking as if they're better than everyone else. They think perhaps these people have
too much of a good thing going.
The reality is, what looks like too much self-esteem is actually too little
self-esteem, masquerading as its opposite. Think about it. Only those who feel small need to puff themselves up to make
themselves look bigger. People who suffer from low self-esteem do indeed suffer, which is why they may compensate by
pretending to think more highly of themselves than of others.
People with genuinely high self-esteem do not
need to be conceited or think they're perfect in order to make themselves feel bigger, or others smaller. In fact, real
self-esteem always entails other-esteem. For example, if I feel big and good, I can afford to be generous with you.
If I feel small and bad, you are a threat to me because you seem better, and therefore I need to take you down a peg to feel
more comfortable.
High self-esteem also allows me to accept when I make mistakes, rather than trying to blame others,
or circumstances, for them. Real self-esteem fuels a desire to know the truth about how I messed up, so that I can learn
from my mistakes. Low self-esteem makes mistakes painful, because making mistakes seems to prove I'm unworthy, and so
low self-esteem encourages me to blame others instead, and pretend that I'm perfect.
Rather than being
symptoms of too much self-esteem, conceit, egotism, grandiosity, self-centeredness are all unrelated to - and incompatible
with - real self-esteem.
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