”The Self That I Long to Believe In - The Challenge of Building Self-Esteem” - Part Three

Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Success has been accorded an endless array of definitions. Some of them are crafted to make failure seem more like success so that we can limp through life and fail without remorse or guilt. Other definitions are quite lofty, written to give us opportunity achieve in a manner that has little to do with the achievement and everything to do with restoring blunted self-esteems. At times success is defined by whatever will accord us the accolades of others or advance us socially or professionally. At yet other times, the definition of success is more about giving ourselves a sorely needed boost when our spirits have been lagging.

Sometimes definitions are crafted as we go along, granting us permission to fluidly and rather nonchalantly alter the definition of success in order to form-fit whatever the outcome of our choices have been. In doing that, we have granted ourselves full license to define the outcome in whatever way suits our choices. We can craft a definition of success to embolden a faltering cause or create support when our base is splintering and our people are wavering.

Then there are other times when the definition of success is modified to diminish the works of those we’ve come to abhor and elevate those upon whom our favor has fallen. Some definitions of success are those shaped by the shifting pen of political correctness, or the placating tenets of the culture, or by the gnawing need for acceptance, or formed from the dictates of a particular social grouping that demands adherence to a prescribed set of standards. Sometimes success is defined by the proclamations of some revered leader, or the family system that we grew up in, or the job description that shapes our nine-to-five lives.

Lost in the Array of Definitions

Whatever and wherever their source, a dizzying array of definitions abound. Many seem to be a target created after the trigger was pulled, making every decision a bulls-eye even if the aim was horrid. Some are thrown out because they’re easy, or we’re not certain what success is so we just come up with something that might pass for success if people don’t pay too much attention. And in the squalor of definitions gone awry and rogue, we seem to have lost a genuine definition of success.

Subsequently, it is this mad array of definitions that sends us scurrying in a million different directions in order to be successful in whatever way success is defined at the moment. We might not know what success is, but if we do well enough in enough areas, or if we adhere to enough of the things defined as trendy and vogue, or if we chase whatever everyone else is chasing we just might happen to land on something successful. Maybe it’s the proverbial ‘shot in the dark’ that might altogether miss, yet the fact that we took the shot itself was defined as success regardless of what it hit. In the end, success becomes more defined by figuring out exactly what success is rather than actually fulfilling the definition.

Why Success?

It's interesting that success, in whatever manner it is defined, has come to define our worth and value. That’s why a lack of perceived success will tank our self-esteem quicker than just about anything else. Success appears to have become the litmus test as to the credibility of our existence and the unforgiving gauge of our worth. Success has evolved into the exclusive commodity by which we ascribe value to ourselves and others. It’s the thing that gives us status, grants us credibility, authenticates what we say, lends weight to our opinions, and awards us with the sense of a life well lived. It is the crown jewel of our existence; something to be vigorously pursued and rigorously obtained at all costs, for not doing so is a life squandered, opportunity lost, and self-esteem decimated. We are led to believe that to ‘not’ be successful is to live out the story of this sorry existence of ours without having validated the legitimacy of the existence that we wasted.

Fear of Questioning the Definition

Success becomes so acutely defined and so irrevocably defining that we seldom entertain any other possible definition. We find ourselves entangled in the culturally mandated definition of success, or the definitions imposed by our families or friends or occupation. We become so absorbed in the sorting out and the achieving of those definitions that the endeavor to achieve them becomes inordinately consuming. We have little tolerance to question the definition of success because we were told that we shouldn’t...so we don’t. Or, the pursuit of it is so intense that we never stop long enough to question it. And if we did, we fear that the cultural definition might be incorrect or our families would get sufficiently perturbed that our lives will have forever run amuck because we missed the cherished mark in the questioning of it. So we don’t question it.

Therefore, given that the defining scale of success has assumed such a dominant role in our culture, and given that we presume there to be some golden definition out there, we must find a definition for it or at least write one that would be approved of. Otherwise we have no precise framework by which to determine our success or lack thereof. Once we feel we’ve landed on the singular definition of success, we throw ourselves into the chase for fear that our lives might devolve into obscurity, our legacy might be pathetic, and we ourselves remain contemptible. But what does this mean in terms of how we’ve come to identify who we are and in that, how we’ve attempted to determine the value of who we are?

What We Do or Who We Are?

As we have noted in a previous chapter, too often the yardstick that we use to measure our worth is defined by ‘what we do.’ What we do is measured by a series of accomplishments, the manner in which we have embellished life through those accomplishments, and the achievement of goals lofty behind the imagination of the common man and far beyond the reach of the hoards. It’s understanding what’s fundamentally achievable and then embracing the belief that our worth is defined as raising oneself significantly above that which is fundamentally achievable. It’s being intentional about ascending to some lofty escarpment that we ourselves had deemed impossible to surmount. Therefore, the definition of success is the measurement of accomplishment.

In applying this standard, we evidence our worth as held up against the enormity of the task itself and the manner in which the everyday person accomplishes the task. If we can eclipse both, we feel that we have established our worth by virtue of these comparisons. But eclipsing both requires determining what success is so that we know we achieved it. ‘What we do’ is granted credibility by whatever our definition of success is. Without the definition, we have nothing by which to measure ‘what we do.’ We won’t know if we hit it or not. And in our minds, if that definition hasn’t been met or if the bullseye hasn’t been hit, everything that we do becomes the everything that achieves nothing.

The Flaw of Success

Yet, the nature of such a mentality of success demands that we constantly achieve. It is an effort of insanely perpetual works that requires that we continually prove our worth as the previous success eventually fades sufficiently to demand a new one. Sure, we can define it. But success as used to determine our worth and value is always temporal. It’s always moving. Therefore, we become enslaved to successes that demand nothing more than other successes. It becomes apparent that success is a temporary aphrodisiac that will always demand more of itself without helping us develop any sense of worth regarding ourselves. Understanding this, success then might be best defined as breaking the need to be successful as a means of proving our value.

We need to break this need to be successful due to the fact that success becomes a morbid cycle where we become successfully defeated. As noted, success in and of itself is not a problem nor is it bad unless it becomes the standard by which we measure our worth and value. Success that evidences our worth must be repeated without an end to the repeating because there is no success great enough to grant us a sustained sense of worth and value. We are worth far more than any success might impute. Because that’s the case, success must be revisited again and again because it can speak little into something as vast as we are.

We Are Too Big to Be Defined By Any Success

As we noted in a previous chapter, our value is not based on ‘what we do.’ Rather, it is based on ‘who we are.’ If we remain stuck with the feeling that our worth is based on ‘what we do,’ the definition of success is what lends credence to those efforts. The definition of success gives ‘what we do’ a mark to shoot for and a distinct line to cross. It lends clarity to where we’re going and when we get there. Yet, we can hit the mark and cross the line and raise our arms in ardent celebration with our self-esteem none the better for the experience.

Success is irrelevant in respect to our self-esteem as any definition of success regardless of how lofty does not possess the power to sustain our sense of worth or feed our sense of value. When it comes to our sense of worth and value, success is the thing that’s not the thing. It’s been marketed as the snake oil for our self-esteem by the carpetbaggers of our culture, but it’s snake oil only. The quietly alluring aspect of success is that it promises a perpetual sustenance and feeding of our self-esteem. It whispers the message in a rather seductive and convincing manner. Given that the culture has fallen for its smooth talk and has subsequently run pell-mell after its message, its legitimacy is reinforced.

However, it is always in need of resuscitation. Success cannot do what it promises to do. It can’t deliver on time in any time. It comes with wild promises but empty hands. It spouts great platitudes that thrill the listener, but it crashes with such force that it shatters the eardrums. With such an apparently irreconcilable flaw in its makeup, it would be worthwhile to postulate that our worth must be based on something significantly more consistent and profoundly more fundamental than success.

We Want to Define What Defines Us

The great rub that keeps us from getting out of this rut is that we want to define what defines us. We can acknowledge that the definition of success does not grant us worth and value. We can understand that, believe that, and come to accept that. We’ve chased these imposed definitions long enough to know that the chasing never resulted in the catching. But instead of understanding that our value is not based on any definition of success, we determine that the definition is wrong and that we can right that.

When the promise of those definitions begin to falter, we secretly being spending our time covertly crafting alternative definitions. Since this other route has failed us, we can craft life, impose the values, shift the circumstances, and modify a host of other variables that eventually shape a fresh definition of success in order to give us a maximum chance of success.

The failure lays of all this in the fact that we did not learn from the failure that we just experienced failing at. We’re repeating the very thing that we said we’re no longer doing. We didn’t learn that it can’t be done. We just thought that it couldn’t be done the way that society did it or our families did it, so we will do it differently. We missed the fundamental lesson our value is not based on what we do as defined by the definition of success, regardless of who creates the definition or how appealing it might be. We lived the lesson, but we missed the very thing that we were living. We missed the lesson that maybe success is believing that we already are a success by virtue of our existence and that our calling is not to prove it, but to act upon it.

It’s the pursuit of success and the failure of what it promises that leads us to errantly believe that we are not successful. That we have failed being successful, or that we were not successful enough. That maybe we were deluded into thinking that we were successful when we weren’t and we just didn’t know it. That in some capacity and in some manner that we’ve yet to identify, we failed even though we honestly thought that we didn’t. In fact, we didn’t fail. Rather, success failed us because it cannot deliver what it promises. So, there must be another avenue.

Value Based on Who We Are

As we noted previously, maybe we should dare to consider that our worth does not need to be established either by effort or definition. Maybe we should consider the possibility that it has never ‘not’ been established. That success was achieved by the fact that God decided to designed us and then deliver us into a far larger design to make an impact in and upon that design. We’re here, and that itself is a success.

Everything that we do from here forward is not about success, for success has already been achieved by the fact of our existence. It’s about calling. It’s about fulfillment of the purpose that we’ve been given the privilege to fulfill. It’s about honing in on our purpose and purposefully carrying it out. It’s about obedience to the call, not the adherence to some definition that measures our obedience to the call. It’s doing all of that knowing that our worth and value exists by virtue of the fact that we exist. From there on out, it’s about the doing and not about the proving.

If this is the case, then the attempt to establish something that is already established is about attempting to prove something that is already true and has always been so. And if that is true, it doesn’t need us to establish its value. The need is for us to believe it. To work it out in our attitudes and live it out in our lives. To rest in it and on it even at those moments when we don’t feel it. To speak it into our existence when the world would speak something entirely different into our existence. And that rests squarely upon us.

Thinking a Bit More Deeply

It would therefore be wise to consider the possibility that our worth is based on something so profound and unerringly rich that its worth singularly speaks for itself. Something that does not need to be proven simply because it is established in a manner that the need of proof is the weakness of our vision and not the fact of reality. It would make sense that our worth should be, and in reality is based on something that cannot be proven for any other reason than its value lies forever beyond the most magnificent achievements that would serve to even remotely evidence it.

Could It Be That We Are More?

Could it be that we are more than we are? That we have a limit that has no limits? That in fact, we are not destined for limits, and that any that we have are those that we have taken upon ourselves? Are we set apart from the rest of our existence because we are not bound to that existence? We are forever pressing against the boundaries because we assume that something exists beyond them and that something exists within us to take us beyond them. We have this sense that our limits are nothing more than opportunities to expose these limits as the next step to the next place. We are always pressing ourselves outside of ourselves. The life truly lived is the life that is always calling itself outside of itself. Therefore, at what point do we reach this impenetrable wall that defines the end of whatever it is that we are? The answer is, we don’t. And we might ask why we don’t.

I would propose that next to God Himself, the thing of single greatest value is ourselves. The priceless nature of a single human life, despite the manner in which we’ve blithely degraded that worth, is wholly immense. And this immensity is utterly inestimable on so many indescribable levels that proof stands as entirely irrelevant.

Human beings stand as the most definitive accomplishment of creation, positioned as the pinnacle of a creation that is indescribably marvelous in and of itself. We are the final touch of the cosmos themselves. We are the defining brush stroke of a creation that encompassed the galaxies, raised up mountains, gouged out canyons, threw birds into flight, painted fiery sunsets, and spun the mesmerizing diversity of the seasons. We are the thing for which these were created and we are the things that have been vested with the most improbable but most privileged job of caring for them.

We are God’s defining work. There can be no shade of arrogance or darkening of pride in such a reality as that would only serve to sadly mar us and leave us with a diminished countenance. Indeed, we should be inordinately humbled that we are God’s crowning achievement and that alone grants us inestimable worth. It is not about proving our worth through the sweaty efforts of success or achieving some definition thereof. It is about realizing successes of even the loftiest sort and boldest character could not in and of themselves prove our worth, for our worth is entirely inherent, undeniably priceless, and established in the fabric of creation itself.

Achieving for Sheer Pleasure, Not Proof of Value

We would be wise to embrace the liberating reality that we can achieve in life for the sheer pleasure of achievement, rather than as a despairing effort to establish our worth. We can walk through life with vigor and tenacity out of a sense of worth, not out of some desperate effort to prove our worth. We change things and we change the course of things because we have been privileged to possess both the ability and the permission to do so. Life is engaged, energized and inspired by our worth, rather than depleted in the pursuit of it. Our days are lived embracing the reality that our value is based on who we are, and to embrace that liberating reality is to embrace a life liberated.

The Viciousness of Low Self-Esteem Explained

In light of this, low self-esteem is the antithesis of who we are. It is ourselves fully removed from ourselves. It is the ultimate scorched-earth mentality that leaves the massiveness of who we are engulfed in smoke and razed in ashes. Of course low self-esteem is brutal. It must be if it is to have any impact upon the immensity of who we are. We are a vigorous lot, despite our frequent ignorance regarding that fact. Therefore, a low self-esteem must be relentless lest we shake it and reclaim our authentic selves in the shaking. Our enemy is formidable. But our resources are more formidable yet. Self-esteem would tell us that this is not true out of the fear that we might discover that it is and therefore bring the full weight of ourselves against it. You are what you don’t see. You will always be what you don’t see even if you choose to never see it. This is who you are and this is what you are.

If we cannot embrace this indispensable reality, we will be irreversibly stunted by the limitations of the achievements we pursue. We will chain our potential to the baseness of achievements. When we do, the infinite worth that defines us will be forever overshadowed by the shallowness of achievements, for the greatest achievements will never come close to reflecting our true value. Your value is based on who you are, despite what you do. And that is a critical but glorious shift that we each must make.