Monday, October 27, 2014: Thoughts on Self-Esteem

This is a blog post I've been meaning to write for a long time. When Sister White and I were serving together, we had a lot of ponder sessions. We would just spend days digging as deep as we could on one subject together until we had gone as deep as we could go. One of these ponder sessions was one that has stuck out to me in particular. We were considering self-esteem--what it is exactly, if it's the same or different from confidence, and how one develops it. This is what I've found so far. 

When I was younger, I would not say that I had very good self-esteem. That's probably true for a lot of people. I've always been tall. Because of that, when I was little I always felt like a big awkward giant who towered over everybody. I wanted to be one of those little, petite girls, but instead I was big--and that's just something you can't change. I was pretty convinced when I was little that I was ugly. I don't really know where that came from, but for whatever reason that was what I thought. And so because of that I felt vulnerable, so I was very shy, so I didn't talk to very many people, so I didn't have very many friends, so then I felt like I wasn't popular because I was unlikeable, so then I liked myself less. I stuck to my best friend, Britt, because I knew she liked me for who I was and that we would always be best friends. (Little kids have great ideals like that.) That's where I felt safe. If she wasn't at school, I would usually sit by myself and pick at the grass for recess. 

That's not to say I had a bad childhood. I had an awesome childhood! My parents gave me everything I ever needed. And I had an awesome thing called an imagination where I WAS pretty and popular and exactly what I wanted to be, so I had a blast. I was just less comfortable around other people than I would have liked to be. 

Then I moved. Those who knew me at that time might remember I was NOT a happy camper. I was leaving my best friend behind in Idaho and moving to Utah to be around a bunch of strangers, and I just knew I was going to hate it and I knew my parents hated me for making me do it. But it actually turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. Heavenly Father knew I had a lot of growing to do, and I couldn't do it if I was clinging to my very limited friend group for the rest of my adolescent life. At first it was really hard, but I had to learn to branch out, and because of that I made a lot of friends. I discovered my love for theatre. Crazy, right? A super shy girl getting onstage in front of an audience and actually enjoying herself? I know that doesn't make any sense. But I loved it and it was the best thing for me. My directors and my friends and the art itself gave me the courage to step outside my shell and be the outgoing person that is secretly in there--it just takes a minute or two for her to come out around new and unfamiliar people. By the end of high school, I had gained a lot more confidence. I could walk down the halls feeling a lot less out of place because I knew I would pass by familiar faces who would be happy to see me. I felt like I had finally "made it"--I felt like my battle with low self-esteem was over. 

But confidence is not the same as self-esteem. I did not know this before my mission. Turns out, it's possible for someone to be confident in something--or even many things--but still not like themselves. Or maybe someone might act like they think they're the best thing since sliced bread, but that's really all it is--an act. So I guess you could say I was putting my acting abilities to use in my regular life. I could pretend I was okay with myself, but that didn't mean I believed it. 

Every transfer, our mission president asks us to make a new goal, and pick a Christlike attribute to work on. Last transfer, I picked charity. When I talked about it to President in my interview, he wrote "self" underneath the word "charity" and told me to work on having charity toward myself. I didn't understand that for the longest time. Up to this point I had learned how to have patience with myself, and how to forgive myself, but I didn't understand how it was possible to have charity toward myself. After all, isn't charity all about being selfless? 

This is what I discovered, after quite a bit of studying on the subject. In short, charity is the pure love of Christ. So if you have charity toward yourself, you love yourself--not as the world would but as Christ would. You see yourself the way He would see you. That means you don't look in the mirror and go, "Ugh, I hate my crooked teeth/big nose/freckles/acne/frizzy hair/whatever it is that  you think you don't like about yourself on your face." You look in the mirror and see yourself as a child of God. 

So at first, this was the conclusion I came up with. You gain self-esteem by knowing who you are--a son or daughter of Heavenly Father. But then I considered many of the incredible people I've served with or around on my mission. I can think of a few just off the top of my head who know they are children of God--it's something they tell people every day--but still, they can't seem to see how amazing they are! Knowing is not enough. You have to understand what being a child of God really means, too. 

Do you remember the book, "You are Special?" I won't try to explain it too much since this is already way long and my emailing time is short, but it's about a group of small wooden people called Wemmicks who stick either gold stars or gray dots on one another every day. The pretty or talented ones always get stars. The "ugly" ones get gray dots. Eventually, the main character, Punchinello learns that if he doesn't care what people think, the dots and stars people stick on him will slide right off. But my whole life, I never understood why he couldn't just let the gold stars stick. But now it makes more sense to me. If he let the gold stars stick, he would still be letting what the world thought of him determine who he believed he was. That's exactly what I have done during my life; I've been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who have told me I am good. But I was relying on their opinion of me to keep my confidence up. In reality, it shouldn't matter what people say about you either way. That's not to say you can't accept a compliment gracefully, but whether it comes to you or not, to gain real self-esteem, you have to learn to be able to like yourself regardless of what others think of you. 

How? The answer is simple. In the book, Punchinello goes to see Eli, the man who carved him in the first place. He tells Eli he doesn't think he's any good, and neither does anyone else. And then Eli asks, "Do you think I made a mistake?" I think that's exactly what Heavenly Father would say to us if we were to tell him we didn't think were were any good. He made us exactly as we are, and none of us were mistakes. 

In D&C 18:10 it says, "The worth of souls is great in the sight of God." It doesn't say, "The worth of a soul is great in the sight of God if she is beautiful and a size 2 and has perfect hair and no zits and a clean house and is rich and has a great job and is athletic and artistic and good at everything." It simply says, "the worth of souls". Any soul. Your soul, my soul, any soul--no matter what. When we can see ourselves with that perspective, we can learn to have charity toward ourselves--pure Christ-like love. And guess what? When you learn to love yourself that way, it's a lot easier to love everybody else that way, too. 

So there's my thoughts on self-esteem. It doesn't mean I've gotten to that point of loving myself yet, but I'm working at it. Thanks to all you psycho people who took the time to read this thing. I hope it makes sense and I hope it will help you to look in the mirror and be a little bit kinder to the person looking back at you.