© | Self-Regard wv a wo “No one can make you feel inferior without your 6 consent.” a — ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, THIS iS MY STORY, 1937 il i it ii i fl ! DEFINITION: The ability to respect and accept yourself as basically good. Hi Respecting yourself is essentially liking the way you are. Self- regard is the ability to appreciate your perceived positive aspects and possibilities as well as to ‘accept your negative aspects and limitations and still feel good about yourself. It's knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and liking yourself, “warts and all.” This conceptual component of emotional intelligence is associated with general feelings of security, inner strength, seif-assuredness, self-confidence and feelings t of self-adequacy. Because individuals with healthy self-regard i know their strengths and weaknesses and feel good about themselves, they have no trouble Openly and appropriately acknowledging when they have made mistakes, are wrong, or don’t know all the answers. Feeling sure of oneself is 1 dependent upon self-respect and self-esteem, which are based on a fairly well-developed sense of identity. People with good self-regard feel fulfilled and satisfied with them- selves. At the opposite end of the continuum are feelings of Personal inadequacy and inferiority."104 | Part 2: The Intrapersonal Realm Marcie was frequently concemed that she didn’t make a good enough impression on others: “I don’t think I was dressed up enough” or “Maybe I talked too much and hogged the conversation.” An objective observer would disagree with both, but Marcie set the bar for her everyday social interactions so high that it was impossible for her to live up to her expectations of herself. She was unable to recognize her strengths: that she was quite presentable in attire and engaging in interactions. Ishmail, on the other hand, could not forgive himself for any per- ceived failures: “I got an 85 on the exam. It should have been a 95. What is the matter with me? I lost 10 marks on stupid mistakes. Geez, I’m dumb.” Ishmail’s self-talk reflects the severe criticism he rains upon himself for not being perfect and his lack of tolerance for mak- ing any mistakes. He cannot accept his “warts.” Self-Regard Is Not Self-Esteem ‘You want to like and think highly of yourself, but what’s really impor- tant is to know the pluses and minuses involved. Self-esteem, as we know, has become a buzz-phrase in both the classroom and the work- place, not to mention a multi-billion-dollar industry. There are a mul- titude of books, audio and video tapes, software and Internet sites devoted solely to increasing it. Some of them, alas, are way off target. We certainly aren’t minimizing the idea of feeling good about your- self. The problem is that an undue emphasis on self-esteem leads to blindly pumping yourself up. Telling yourself how great you are may or may not be a valid part of an approach to repairing a damaged ego, but it’s not an end in itself. This is why educators and psychologists have recently begun to reexamine the two-decades-old inculcation of self- esteem in young children that was supposed to serve as a sort of inocu- lation against aggressive tendencies and other emotional difficulties. Low’self-esteem may indeed be dysfunctional, but artificially high self-esteem may be almost as problematic. The child who learns the “I am special” mantra without simultaneously building necessary lifeChapter 6: Self-Regard | 105 1 .skills is done a tremendous disservice. Ladling out lavish and indis- P criminate praise without making sure that you’re helping the child actually achieve something that merits approval can lead to devasta- ion when the world fails to continue to pat him or her on the back for success that wasn’t earned. Real self-esteem is built up gradually, ; layer by layer, through taking justifiable pride in real accomplishment, not through a third party’s weaving a cocoon of unrealistic positivity. eS As for the idea that self-esteem necessarily puts a damper on f’-aggression and other disorders, we’d point out that Dr. Robert Hare, > the world’s foremost expert on psychopaths, has assessed a large num- | ber of serial killers and other violent repeat offenders who languish in prisons around the globe.’ Many claim to enjoy extremely high self- esteem (an example of what Hare terms their “grandiose” behavior) j,-and picture themselves as absolutely wonderful human beings. Their ; mothers love them, their girlfriends worship them. Plainly, you can E have far too much of a good thing. Like Yourself, Warts and All f course, you don’t want to fixate on weaknesses, either, which is severy bit as unbalanced as denying shortcomings (out of fear that they “somehow cancel out your strengths, no matter how demonstrable ose may be). Nor do you want to either blow your strengths out of proportion or fall into the trap of fearing that they’II never be strong ough. The-idea is to like yourself as a total-—and sometimes contra- ictory—package. Besides, self-esteem is all too often built on shaky ground. Let’s ‘think back to the airport scene described in Chapter 2, and Sam’s verbal ssauilt on the ticket agent. His opening gambit was to tell her how portant he was. What were the odds that this would advance his cause—-that is, to get aboard a plane? Did he really believe that she’d be ‘essed or intimidated by his boasting? The only result of his self- fipuffery was to not make her inclined to help him. Among his other prob- leas, Sam has an inflated sense of his own worth. Informing people406 | Part 2: The Intrapersonal Realm how rich and famous and powerful you are, especially in the middle oj a crisis during which you need to enlist their support, is bound to worl against you. Sam’s behavior also gave a very strong message that he cared not bit about the ticket agent’s predicament—a message that certaink alienated the agent and undercut any chance of his making that n flight. It made him appear a fool, and weak into the bargain. In fact, this behavior is often a sign of deep insecurities, Sam quite probably has inflated his own worth in numerous other circumstances. If, on the other hand, he had high self-regard, he’d also have the wit to behave: politely and further his ends, as did John, the next passenger in line. In sum, then, self-regard means that you feel comfortable enough about yourself that you don’t have to go around attempting (and usually fail- ing) to bow! people over with fancy titles or the other trappings of over- sized egos. If you’ve really got it, you don’t need to flaunt it.