The science of self-esteem is not what you expect. We’re going to get into it in this video and teach you about building self-esteem. Everybody, welcome back. I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. I’m a board-certified psychiatrist, and this is a series we’ve been building on resiliency. How do you build more resiliency? We’ve already talked about a growth mindset, what that means. We’ve talked about self-efficacy, your ability to do one thing. And today we’re going to zoom out a little bit and we’re going to think about self-esteem, what that means, what the science tells us about getting more of it, having more confidence, having more of what in my clinic I talk about your stance, you know, that you feel confident, you feel calm, you feel clear, and you feel a real sense of knowledge about yourself, who you are, your strengths, your weaknesses, and your challenges. That’s self-esteem, everybody, let’s get into it.
It’s the background hum of am I worthy? Do I matter? Am I good enough? Sociologist Maurice Rosenberg developed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale in 1965. It’s still the gold standard that’s used in research. And Rosenberg asks us to think about our self-esteem simply thinking about the self in favorable or unfavorable terms. This isn’t really trying to say that, hey, you’re the best. It’s simply trying to understand favorable and unfavorable aspects of the self. What’s useful about this framing is it’s not about being the best. It’s about having a a stable, reliable assessment of yourself. It’s about having basic self-respect. It’s not about grandiosity. It’s about groundedness.
What’s surprising about the science? Well, think about it. When you want to build self-esteem, we tell kids they’re great, they’re smart, you’re special, you can do anything. No, this is not how we build self-esteem, according to the research. Researcher Roy Baumeister and colleagues did a massive review of the evidence around building self-esteem and found that unless you earn it, self-esteem, this praise, it doesn’t matter. We can’t just tell kids, hey, you’re great, you’re amazing. They’ve got to earn that praise for it to count. And just boosting self-esteem without actually having substance to it doesn’t improve academic performance, relationships, or mental health outcomes. In fact, it can backfire, producing more entitlement and fragility.
So what works? Researcher Jennifer Crocker developed a term called non-contingent self-esteem. This is self-esteem that doesn’t rise or fall based on our successes or failures, whether you got the promotion or whether someone texted you back. This type of self esteem is genuinely protective against depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns.
Let’s talk about three science-backed ways that you can actually build self-esteem. Number one is living and acting in line with your values. A psychological researcher, William Damon, Matt Damon’s dad maybe, who knows. He looked at how you people build self-esteem and found that it wasn’t around like approval or achieving a certain goal. It was about acting with integrity, acting within your values. This is where that goal of mental fitness, of self-awareness, is so important because part of self-awareness is really thinking through what are your values. The more you know about your values, the more clear it is to you. How do you act with integrity? How do you then live a life that regardless of whether you’re winning or losing, you know that you’re living a life that is true to what you believe?
What this means in practice is every time you you keep a commitment, every time you choose kindness instead of, I don’t know, something else, every time you act within your values, you’re putting a little self-esteem in the self-esteem bank, is how I think about it on my couch in my clinical practice. That each time we’re putting points on the board, each time we’re trying to act within our values, we’re building self-esteem very intentionally.
Number two, practice self-compassion over self-criticism. That inner critic does not build self-esteem, everyone, and it really destroys self-esteem in my clinical experience. Research from the University of Texas, Austin, has shown that self-compassion is such a powerful tool for you in your arsenal of building self-esteem. The practice of this and what the research shows is treating yourself with kindness, especially after a setback or a failure, is incredibly protective for your mental health.
People high in self-compassion are less defensive, they’re less prone to rumination, and they’re more likely to seek improvement after a setback. That’s how we all want to be. This is why it’s so important. Recognize that inner critic and understand that it is not going to get you the self-esteem that you want, it’s going to destroy it. You’ve got to identify it, address it, be aware of it, and replace that with self-compassion. Use the voice of one of your best friends. What would they say? You call them up. They’re going to say something really compassionate and caring. You need to invoke that, pull it inside, and use that as a tool to build your self-esteem.
The third way to build great lasting self-esteem is to contributing something beyond yourself. Studies on volunteering, mentoring, get involved in the community all are shown to be really protective for your mental health. And I just found a study that blows my mind. Let me tell you about this. If you’re getting involved with things that give you a sense of purpose, you are protecting your brain like nothing else. Researchers recently did what’s called diffusion-weighted MRIs. There’s a very complex imaging study that’s really talking about the very intricate structure of your brain cells and how they connect. As we age, something called radio kurtosis goes down. This is a measure of kind of complexity of how healthy our brain cells are. Except, if you have a sense of purpose, the integrity, the actual architecture of your brain, and your brain cells improve. That’s why this third way contributing outside of yourself, thinking about who you can serve, thinking about how you can be of assistance to your community, to individuals who maybe don’t have as much as you do, this is a wonderful way for you to have a better sense of self-esteem, to have more integrity, to have a better sense of purpose.
When your sense of value is rooted in what you give, not just in what you achieve, it’s so much harder to knock over this self-esteem. You matter because you contribute, and that’s a stable foundation. So let’s bring this full circle as we think about your building more resiliency. Growth mindset says I can change. Self-efficacy says I can do this. And self-esteem says it’s worthy that I try. These in reinforce each other. This is how we can build a more stable sense of worth, how we can contribute to one another, and how day in, day out, regardless of the rise and fall of the events in our lives, we can have a stable sense of ourselves, we can have a sense of resilience, and we can know that we’re living a life according to our values and our purpose.
It’s such a treat to get to help you think through these things and to build more resiliency and more self-esteem. If you missed the first two videos on growth mindset and self-efficacy, make sure to check them out. Please leave some comments below, share these, save these, make sure that you’re giving them to the people in your life who need more resiliency, more self-efficacy, more self-esteem. And now everybody, please go out there, get after it. It’s such a delight to get to help you think about building more mental fitness. I’ll see you in the next video.
