I'm a guy with a lot of self-confidence. I can stand up in front of a crowd and chat away. I’ve had successive years of growth in my real estate business that come from knowing what I’m doing. I lead by example in coaching, relationships, and personal conduct.
But there's a difference between self-confidence and self-esteem. I have often wondered if I have enough self-esteem. Yes, it ebbs and flows, but that little voice occasionally comes back to taunt me: “I'm not worthy of abundance. “I’m not worthy of love.” “I lack wisdom.”
These negative thoughts can beat anyone down like a cast iron skillet under a dripping faucet. Cast iron is a very durable material, but after a long period of drip, drip, drips of water from the faucet, the skillet will get a dent in it.
That chipping away of one’s self-perception needs to be nipped in the bud. It means going on offense, like the type of football once described by Ohio State Coach Woody Hayes. In order to be successful in your endeavors, you need consistent small gains. A good running game starts out as moving the ball three yards at a time. When you can keep up the consistency, you will drive the ball all the way to the endzone. When you master possession of the ball, it’s no longer three yards at a time. It’s three yards and a cloud of dust!
Easier said than done, I know, but it is entirely possible to build self-confidence and feel self-esteem! And I’m going to describe some ways to work on it.
The Difference Between Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem
It took me a while to realize that self-confidence and self-esteem are not the same thing. In fact, I had to work it out in front of a live audience. Granted, it was a very sympathetic audience — my family. But it was a heady task. One day, I said to them, “We're going to have a seminar.” I put my wife and kids on the couch in the basement, pulled out my white board, and started talking it out with them.
Thankfully, my family is very patient with me. The added benefit of doing this exercise with them is that we have real-life experiences to draw from. So we began talking about times when my confidence and esteem were out of sync.
For instance, back when my kids were young I was a coach for their athletic teams. I would always tell them, you have to work on your confidence, you have to work on your confidence. But just saying so didn’t teach them to be confident. And push, push, push doesn’t always work.
I realized that sometimes as a leader, you have to pull from the front. You have to show how. How did I gain my confidence? How did I become sure of my stuff?
As usual, it comes to mastery. My confidence comes from my mastery of my materials. You can fake it until you make it but it’s very important to practice and be present when trying to develop a skill.
But here’s the thing: Instead of telling my kids to be confident, I should have told them that failure is not bad. It’s merely an indirect step toward success. A loss may shake their confidence but it should not shake their self-esteem. It should reinforce it. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Consider the imagination Edison must have that he came up with 10,000 ways to not do something.
What is Self-Esteem?
Now, this may get confusing but the dictionary definition of self-esteem is “confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect.”
This is not my favorite definition because there is a small but vital distinction. Confidence in abilities is different than confidence in worth. Yes, they go hand-in-hand, but self-esteem comes from more than just mastery of materials.
In the process of building my self-esteem, I had to look at where I was getting my sense of worth.
Some of my sense of self-worth comes from reading the good stuff (affirmations) or watching the good stuff (inspirational speeches). Some of it comes from meditating. My favorite exercise has always been journaling.
Into my journal I went to try to work out this notion about where I get my self-esteem and whether I was leading my children by example. I considered, how can I feel the best I can feel about myself? Before I could decide that, however, an even more fundamental question popped up: What do I want?
I was able to articulate that pretty quickly: I want a healthy, happy family. I want to not have to worry about money. I want to inspire others to work on the parts of themselves that matter most to them. Then I had to ask myself, do I have the skills? (Check). And then I had to ask myself, am I worthy of it, and if not, what do I have to do to become worthy of it?
Now worthiness is a tricky issue. To say I “deserve” something can become a royal battle in one’s own mind. A fight across the opposing sides of a spectrum. Because the flip side of worthiness is ego. And to take it further, I would say the flip side of confidence is humility.
Ego is No Substitute for Self-Esteem
Admittedly, there had been many times when I substituted an inflated ego for my self-esteem.
How did that work out, you ask? I’m sure you can imagine. Not well.
Ego is defined as “the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity.” OK, that’s sort of helpful.
Ego most definitely requires a reality check. Does my existence match my personal identity? Or more simply, am I a phony?
People imagine ego to be arrogance or cockiness. They think of it as a metaphysical place. If you are egotistical, you think you’re above everyone else. That is an ego, albeit an unhealthy one. It makes you cocky and when you’re cocky, you are not having authentic, transparent, or gratitude-filled relationships.
There's a low place for the ego too. It’s the one that tells you you’re never good enough. It goes something like this:
“Rob you look good today.” “No, my shoes and belt don’t match.”
“Rob, nice job on the presentation.” “No, I forgot to show a set of slides I prepared.”
A friend of mine recently told me that the addiction recovery community says “ego” stands for “Easing God Out.” That’s one way to look at it. To keep his ego in check, my friend said he thinks of something greater than himself. And he has to do it daily. It’s like a task on his daily checklist of routines.
Certainly, I think of God frequently when I think about my personal worth. But I don’t think of Him in terms of him judging me for my faults. I think more in terms of whether my actions would be pleasing to Him. Whether or not you think of God as real, we all have a true north when it comes to becoming our aspirational selves.
So that brought some clarity. It’s a good reminder at least: You have to check yourself.
The Humble Brag and Self-Confidence
When you have low self-esteem, you think less of yourself. One way to build that self-esteem is to become humble. Don’t think less of yourself. Think about yourself less. People talk a lot about living a humble life or a life of humility. There’s even an expression called “the humble brag” where you boast about some act you took in the performance of trying to be humble.
I’ll call the humble brag an act of ego, but it is OK. In fact, I would argue that a humble brag is a good self-reinforcing confidence-building tool. “Hey, I helped the elderly lady with her groceries.” Super! “I stopped oncoming traffic so that the turtle could cross the road.” Good job.
Even if it does not build your confidence, the actions you take in service of humility help create purpose. And purpose is one step toward feeling worthy or deserving of success in your life.
Now caveat: there’s a fine line to be drawn between acting too humbly and thinking less of yourself. Remember picking teams in school. The captain of one team picks first, then the captain of the other picks second. Some kids would stand up in front so they could be picked first. That was a show that they thought highly of their kickball skills (and quite possibly was a show of friendship between captain and player). Others would hide in the back because they knew they weren’t very good players or they lacked confidence. And then there was one kid who would forfeit his early draft pick and humbly offer to be picked last. Was that kid being humble or didn’t he think much of himself?
I’d like to think he was being humble, but the motive may tell you a little bit about where they ended up later in life.
If you have self-confidence but don’t feel good about yourself, you will be self-limiting every time. You will stop yourself from taking chances that could be wildly successful for you.
If you’re not confident about your performance, but your sense of self-worth is through the roof, you may feel entitled. Later you wonder why you aren’t getting all that you deserve. Very frustrating, I’m sure.
If you have high self-confidence and high self-esteem, congratulations, the world is your oyster — maybe (I’ll get to this in a second).
To borrow from the business annals, Jim Rohn says, “You will double your income as fast as you double your self-esteem.” Is that true? Is it possible?
It’s one thing to go from $100,000 to $200,000 in business. But what about going from $200,000 to $400,000 or the next step $400,000 to $800,000 or doubling $800,000 to $1.6 million?
Suddenly, you may feel less confident. And that begins to nag at your self-esteem. But what's the challenge here? Why would $100,000 to $200,000 seem doable but $800,000 to $1.6 million seem out of bounds. Is it the notion of going from the “10 percent” to the “1 percent”? You’re special, but you’re not that special.
What if I suggested to you that you hadn’t yet imagined what a $1.6 million life looked like? If you want to be worthy of something, you have to have the skills to get there, but you also have to be able to visualize what it looks like. And you have to be comfortable seeing yourself in that vision.
Did my kids want to be athletic superstars, courted to attend the best colleges and living a life of recognition and adulation? Or did they stop at good enough because they were happy enough? It really is a question of where you want to "settle" or whether you want to keep going, going, going as far as you can go. If that place is far into the distance, you need to visualize how to bring it closer.
Sure you need the skills to get there, but really it is an esteem and ego-building exercise. You have to want it and you have to believe that you can have it.
Prior to COVID, I did a lot of in-person speaking. Even though I knew the subject matter inside and out and I had given the same speech a dozen times to different audiences, I would still get butterflies. Did I provide enough value? Were people in the moment with me? Was I doing it for my audience or myself?
And here’s what it comes down to: My self confidence was never a problem. My humility came from being called up in the draft to deliver the goods to the audience. What an opportunity!
My self-esteem triggered the butterflies. Imposter syndrome is real, but it is a form of self-sabotage. When you’re standing in front of the crowd and you know you are offering value to the people in front of you that’s when you really feel that sense of worth growth. The butterflies disappeared when joy set in that I had thrived and did the right thing.
And finally ego. A healthy ego doesn’t kick you when you forgot something or screwed up a point. It’s from knowing that you did your best and you deserved to be there. How do I keep that ego in check? I look back at all those journal entries reminding myself that I didn’t get there by luck, chance, or faith. I envisioned, practiced, and felt gratitude for the opportunity. And that kept my reality real.