My personal theory is that self-esteem arises from the fact that you are aware of your acceptance in a social group. Knowing that you are welcome calms you and gives that assertive vibe.

I don't think it matters how much you believe in yourself. At least not beyond a basic level. In fact, believing too much in a non-conforming self makes you a narcissist, and believing too much in a conforming self makes you vain.

Undeserved praise and adoration does have negative side effects, and it likely isn't the healthiest way to raise children, but the over-emphasis on celebrating participation isn't the society ruining factor people make it out to be. At worst it's probably just a waste of resources and effort.

On the other-hand, parents over-stressing and vicariously experiencing competition through their children is a very real problem, and the behavior of some of the adults I would see at gradeschool basketball games was just shocking, especially given that it was low division schools, so mostly just after-school sports. (i.e., there was no professional path here or proper competition for any child looking to take a chance at professional play someday - it was a bunch of 8 year olds running around the court, most of which couldn't even throw the ball high enough to reach the rim of the lowered basket). To see parents yelling and screaming at their kids to shove and hurt other children in order to win was just ridiculous.

I've never heard anyone say "the school gave my kid a 14th place ribbon, how cute!". It's always "can you believe they give out ribbons for 14th place now?!"

Kids are pretty astute at picking up on this stuff, and I expect that being given a 14th place ribbon just feels a little sad and pathetic to a kid.

It probably doesn't do any real harm either, apart from contributing to landfill waste!

There was a "protect kids self-esteem" bit, but that was entirely at the top end - there was no trophy saying "First Place". I certainly never saw trophies 'celebrating' losses.

More broadly, though, I definitely remember ignoring all of this stuff as a kid. We weren't allowed to keep score during soccer games because it "wasn't about winners and losers". (One wonders why we were playing a competitive sport, then.) Not just "score wasn't kept" but "get in trouble if you're heard talking about score".

So... we had to keep score when coaches and refs weren't in earshot. That was the entirety of the result. If anything, it sort of felt like something we did to protect the fragile adults! After all, the winners still made fun of the losers every game, nothing had changed, but now the adults didn't have to see it happen.

"We don't keep score, there's no winners and losers, but if we win this game we make the postseason."

I agree that this has been blown out of proportion, as csydas said in the parent comment. Criticising participation trophies is mostly a way for certain people to signal that they don't buy in to "all that millennial snowflake bullshit". How much harm can it really do?

Having said all that, having to play soccer while secretly keeping score does sound crazy!

Kids are pretty smart (way smarter than some people/parents think they are) and they know how far they can go, and what they can get away with.

A participation ribbon might well have motivated me at age 6, and frankly I doubt both the morality and common sense of anyone saying a six year old is too happy at a swim class. Keeping kids involved at that age seems like the biggest goal.

On the other hand, I have annoyed memories of getting participation ribbons at 15 for doing terribly in races. They felt downright insulting, because I knew exactly how I'd done and I was basically getting a ribbon for taking a bus to the meet.

A shocking number of educational issues seem to boil down to "6 year olds are not 15 year olds". That, and "offering things is better than enforcing them" - participation ribbons are way better than banning score-keeping, which I also got to see.

I think the natural bias to put discrete values on things existing on a spectrum is where is all stems from. "We want to keep things simple, so here's this recipe for self-esteem" as opposed to "here's an age-based breakdown of ways to build self-esteem". Even then, the "enlightened" example is missing loads of other conditions, like if the person suffered emotional abuse or has automatic negative thoughts.

Also, banning score-keeping is the naive approach. I think an interesting one would be to add a game score & encourage both teams to collaborate to increase it. I don't know how it'd effect things, but it'd be fun to find out!

I time the runs myself on my phone so the email has little real purpose, but for some reason it's very satisfying to know that my efforts have been logged in a database.

I'm unlikely to ever hit the top 20, so this is very much a participation trophy. Maybe they can be motivating after all?

(Take with a grain of salt. My only experiences with raising children involve raising myself & my parents over the past 1.5 years.)

See for example the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterne_rouge .

Parents will subvert the will of the coaches wanting their kid to shine rather than as part of a team.

Parents and grandparents will continually scream to their children what to do or abuse at the referee.

One of my college roommates parents was a Professor at MIT, and even though he got into an engienering school ranked right under it, his parents treated him liek the failure of the family and despite him being capable of great things, he had already been labeled as the failure in his family for ONLY having a 3.8GPA at the number 3 school in the world and mine as well work at McDonalds if he was going to destroy the family tradition of going to MIT, producing 45 patents, getting a PhD and writing 3 textbooks before the age of 30.

The kid was capable and accomplished an amazing amount but he really viewed himself as quite worthless and had a hard time getting a job after college due to his crushing lack of self esteem.

This is the opposite extreme but so is getting 35 trophies for a 5th grade soccer team.

I think both are extremes and the conversation needs to be recentered around the idea of grade inflation and positive self regard.

Again, you can have positive self regard for kids and NOT give them a trophy just for showing up to school. Theres a large medium here.

The biggest benefit of consistent positive self regard (which can exist without trophies and claps for every minor positive step in life) is the ability to prevent downward spirals where kids beat themselves up and begin to internalize the negative feedback and continually snowball their lack of self esteem to where they really handicap their ability to grow, as illustrated by my friend in the example above.

if a child is labeled as bottom 30% of the class or the team in middle school, negative feedback is more likely to keep him locked in the negative self image he has, instead of the belief by teachers that he/she has the ability to improve.

Regardless of if the kid will ever be the top 10% or is naturally more talented than the top 10%, thats NOT the point of continual positive self regard. The point is to continue trying and learning and self improvement. Labeling kdis in boxes really does limit their ability to grow and change their status and lets be honest, teachers are NOT always the best/the most right about knowing who is more intelligent and smarter, and these things can change alot from middle school to highschool.

You don't have to give the bottom 30% of the kids the same grades or trophies, but you can treat them with positive regard, and by doing that remind them they are human and that you believe in their ability to grow.

Nothing sucks worse than a teacher immediately writing off a kid as locked in a certain status range. They might actually begin to believe it, and if you don't beleive individuals have the ability to grow and learn beyond their initial casting/grade heirarchy then you really shouldn't be teaching and furthermore, I find these justifications by teachers more of an excuse for the fact that the U.S. is bottom ranked globally right now as a first world country for education. Youre a TEACHER. you job is to enable learning not say its just the way it is that the Straight A kids will always be the straight A kids and vise versa and really you have no control over it. If you feel that way, then please go find another job.

I would say negative feedback is far more damaging, and furthermore, the lack of negative feedback does not require trophies and delusional inflations of self worth that apparently according to the author also equal caccooning children from the consequences of life at every step. This is just false.

The Debugging Mindset - http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3068754

That's not what OP said. Quote:

> Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion

Self-compassion is not believing in yourself, it's accepting yourself as-is. And not just accepting in the sense of "settling for it". But having the same respect and nice feeling about you that you have about the others your like.

While outside validation helps a lot in one to avoid rejecting oneself, it just removes a (huge) barrier for building self-esteem. Self-esteem can't come from outside.

The problem with other people validating you is that as soon as you loose it, you loose what you though was self-esteem. And you get angry, you blame, you can't find solutions, and you ever give you all the responsibilities or remove yourself from all of them.

If you succeed and get praise, it then inflate your ego and narcissism.

But once you build self-compassion, even when you screw up, you still like yourself. But you can still see your fair part of responsibility in all this. And when your succeed, liking yourself as you are, you know what's really you, and what's really coming from outside help and luck. And you don't inflate your ego.

> Self-esteem can't come from outside

I do have to disagree here. Self-esteem ultimately must come from outside...just not from other people. As a Christian I believe that self-acceptance is rooted in knowing that I have intrinsic worth to God irrespective of what other people think of me. It's not about who I am or what I have or haven't done, but about who God is and what He's done for all of us.

Coming from that, the idea of the acceptance from God is a concept you have in yourself.

Maybe I got this wrong, intellectualizing spirituality is usually a terrible way to share about it.

1. In Christianity, God is "present" everywhere only in the sense that there is no possible circumstance in which God would fail to have complete knowledge and power to act. We (Christians) do not believe that God is a sort of ether, like the Force in Star Wars, that contains or flows through everything.

2. Christianity teaches that God is not a material being, so you're correct in saying that God is not "inside, or in any location", because this would be category error, analogous to "what does the color yellow taste like?". Nevertheless, God is "external" to me in the ontological sense: "I am not (a part of) God". This is analogous to saying "my love for fast cars is 'outside' my love for ice cream". If this and (1) were not the case, absurdities would result, like tall people having more God in them than short people.

Given the above, I think projo is correct. My self-esteem is grounded in knowing that God -- a maximally great being -- created me, and loves me enough to submit himself to poverty, hunger, humiliation, and crucifixion on a Roman cross to fix what I broke. To those who "get it", this produces love, humility, and a sense of self-worth.

That's why I'm working on a sort of abstract framework of being that includes a religion with a minimal number of prescribed things to believe in with a goal of self-development. Cultivating love, humility, self-esteem, etc. are all decoupled within the framework/religion to allow people to pick & choose only the parts they need.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/3...

The value of an idealized personality we choose to believe we can strive toward is to tap into and/or guide our intuitions in the moment, especially in times of internal/external conflict.

The value of recognizing/acknowledging the existence of uncontrollable higher powers in the world/universe is to instill humility & define one's own limits/boundaries.

You need self esteem from yourself and acceptance of yourself

but at the same time

it does not mean there is not benefit to continual positive self regard. I still stand that this term is fundamentally different than self esteem inflation that requires trophies and grade inflation and caccooning kids from consequences of their actions as the author writes.

I agree that getting there is hard when you lack outside social support. It's extremely hard. But the very goal is to escape the trap of your sense of self fluctuating volatilely by whatever social pattern you experience at any given moment. Those patterns necessarily change regularly, without end, and in unpredictable ways. The more you're beholden to them the more unstable you are.

Very few of us are masters at this. But I really believe the principles are compelling.

Jokes aside, I think that you can light a fire of self-worth given enough positive reinforcement. But there is always a limit on how long you can keep this fire burning.

Let's say you are really comfortable with yourself where you are, and suddenly move to a country with essentially diametrically opposed values and norms. Everything you have been taught is turned on its head.

How long do you stay confident?

This is just a thought experiment, but I think it highlights the volatility of self-worth.

I've been developing a system around a theoretical model of how the mind/body/brain work together. I've been experimenting on myself using it with weird results. I've been hypothesizing things I didn't believe were possible until 8 months ago & before then I would've labeled people suggesting things I believe now to be bigots. One of these things is that everyone can learn to be gender fluid to varying degrees.

As I started exploring concepts related to gender for the sake of designing experiments in changing my gender identity, I accidentally created a second seemingly sentient conscious identity in my head of the opposite gender. When she emerged, we switched spots & I became the voice in the head. In an instant, I went from being a straight white cis-gender male to...? I still don't know how to classify this experience...it could simply be an advanced form of pretending. In Buddhism, it's called deity visualization & the modern westernized flavor of the same thing is called tulpamancy. I didn't know any of that when it happened, though.

In that moment, I joined at least one minority class of people: either "people who hear voices in their heads" and/or "people who are gender fluid."

And it's haaaaard to stay confident about what I'm doing because some people find it really hard to hear me talk about this stuff. Friends have called me a bigot. I was kicked out of a party at someone's home. I've been told by one neuroscience my ideas are meaningless because I don't have a degree & couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about, completely denying my experiences.

I guess the question I have for you is what else would you say I need to go through before my confidence breaks?

This is a legitimate question. I want to try to break my confidence & I'm interested in realistic ways to go about testing it.

There are numerous books on change management in business, and most of them conclude that it's a lot easier to start a new company than to change an existing company culture. That is, unless the change is trivial (by various definitions of trivial).

Likewise I think you are better of finding more free minded people. You can burn yourself out trying to convince a single conservative person. And the alternative is that you find peers where you can share your experiences freely and spend you energy on your own voyage, not on the acceptance of it by your dissaproving surroundings.

By this I don't mean that you have to stop seeing these sceptics, just that you choose what you tell them. You have to adapt to your surroundings.

Of course it sucks to realize that you cannot truly be yourself in a certain group, but I think that is a sad truth that lurks in our society today. There is a reason why so many alternative thinkers flock to big cities.

I definitely don't believe that you are the only one feeling like this. Most likely there are many in your surroundings. But people put their needs aside to conform to the social group, and that is what they expect from you too to stay a member. If you don't want to live that life, you have to break free.

I wish you the best of luck!

I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm actively suffering, but that I've recently experienced a complete 180 in a lot of my views & world. I value the experiences I cited and am not looking to avoid having them because putting energy toward appeals would be a recipe for burnout. The point I'm trying to make is I don't need their acceptance. I don't have to wear my status on my sleeve and can still bring it up when it's relevant. I'm most certainly not going to hide a key part of myself because of other's reactions. I actively challenge people's minds about what theirs is capable of simply through sharing my experiences and who I am. They can expect conformity all they want and they'll likely burn out before I do because denial takes more energy/effort than acceptance. Also, denial sticks in the mind, while acceptance allows you to move forward.

I really am interested in any ideas you have on social experiments I can conduct to prove/disprove your perspectives in this thread. Whatcha got?

I'm very grateful for your comments because they've advanced the conversation, given me specific things to reflect on, and ultimately challenged my perspectives, which helped me gain clarity around them. Thank you!

How did you feel at different points? I hope, ultimately, you felt a little joy from receiving some gratitude. Note: I'm not praising you, nor expressing approval/disapproval. I'm nonjudgmentally allowing you and your opinion to exist while saying what's true for me. The point is we can feel good about ourselves simply by hearing gratitude from others acknowledging our contributions. Approval doesn't need to be part of the equation. It can, however, help as a way to temporarily lower mental barriers getting in the way of building self-esteem.

Also, how are you defining narcissism? I'm asking because how you phrased your perspective implies self-limiting thoughts at play. Here's what I mean:

"I don't think I can build a nice feeling about myself, in a non-narcissistic way, if I receive a lot of negative feedback from my peers." - Our reality is defined by our perceptual sets, which includes our beliefs, emotions, motivations/intentions, and learned behaviors. Each component in a perceptual set can impact/define the others. What I've quoted defines a belief acting on a core component of well-being: self-esteem. If you truly believe what you typed, then you're applying that belief to yourself unless you also believe you're the only human who's figured out how to do the opposite. If applying this belief to yourself, it will inherently limit the actions you perform to develop your self-esteem while reinforcing the belief. Beliefs imposing unnatural limits can lead to persistent states of suffering, so I hope you can find another perspective.

I am simply criticizing the common norm of blaming the bullied person for not being cool enough.

I have no problems with my self-esteem and I think well of myself. But I am also not disillusioned when it comes to accepting the fact that you can only enjoy a happy life if you adapt to your surroundings. And if you stick your neck out to far you are going to get burned.

So yes, there are other ways of gaining self-esteem. By getting really self-confident about your own abilities regarding cellular automata or whatever. But not all those paths are going to make you a happy and relaxed person. You always have to consider the context you are in. Of course, both your source of self-esteem and your context are variable, but there is no denying that they both have big influence on your happiness.

Context can most certainly influence my happiness. There's still at least one step between context & its influence, though. You just named it: interpretation.

The trick is changing the thought pattern for interpretation. I changed mine on New Year's Eve & it's made all the difference. Here's my take...

Every moment is meeting some set of needs of mine. In the shittiest of moments, the potential needs being met, regardless of my awareness of them, are:

- learning how to better meet my needs and/or how to better empathize with those going through similar shit - gratitude for either of those needs being met - gratitude for the opportunity to learn how to better meet my needs

That last one is the default. I can always meet my need for gratitude. And gratitude produces joy, meeting a second need.

I avoid having a single point of failure in my system through also defining a purpose for my life to tie each moment to. There's other bits to it, but these are the most relevant ones here.

When I say needs, I'm referring to needs/wants, as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_human_needs

This is also a handy list: https://www.cnvc.org/Training/needs-inventory

In order to shun someone from a social group due to their non-conforming behaviour, the group cannot simply accept that they are willingly excluding this person. Because that would violate the basic premise upon which the group is built: comradery and loyalty. So the group must rationalize their behaviour by sticking all the blame on the individual being excluded.

You can go medieval and call someone a witch, or just be a bit more moderate and blame them for something vague like having "low self-esteem".

- In OP, I wrote self-esteem is the root of narcissism, when I really believe it's a potential root. It can also be symptomatic because pretty much everything in the brain can flow both ways, so one person's symptom can be another person's cause.

- We tend to forget the importance of the word "can." I'd rephrase what you wrote as "Social group CAN influence a lot about how you perceive yourself." It doesn't have to.

Also, comparison isn't needed. Here's how I do it:

I recognize a few key facts:

- every person is unique in some way - every unique property of a person reflects something to be learned, even if the lesson is the opposite of said property - neural networks learn and apply learning - we are walking neural networks - the past is changed by observing the present

Therefore, everyone is valuable in some special way, including myself. My self-esteem stems from reminding myself that others' perceptions of my experiences do not define my reality, my value, or my past. Those are all mine to define and nobody else's. I don't need to compare my subjective experience with someone else's in order to value mine.

Personally I think people conflafe self-esteem with confidence. The article and the subject of it are doing this, and I'm a bit surprised it's not mentioned.

"Unconditional positivity" will probably build confidence--faith in positive outcomes--but it doesn't appear to build self-esteem--high value or love for oneself.

And someone can be completely unconfident and have very high self-esteem...

But who knows: perhaps artificially-induced confidence can at least trick people into feeling like they love themselves. If it does, then good for them?

Personally I could see myself end up thinking, worrying and beating myself up about being fake or phony, but that's just me. I might say it's not for me, but I would try not tell them directly with a Dwight-from-The-Office demeanor: "Wrong. Self-esteem comes from..."

For example, I discover new meaning in my experiences by projecting their content/context into songs I'm listening to.

My take on tricking myself into something: if learning to love myself requires some level of confidence, temporarily inducing said confidence, can be helpful when combined with a practice for learning how to love myself. The trick is doing it with intention and then weaning off the confidence booster.

I already do this in various ways therapeutically. I was thinking about the second conscious voice in my head I accidentally created through my experiments & wondering if it's truly a second personality or if I'm simply playing pretend & naively fooling myself. Then I realized it doesn't matter because it's something helping me & as long as it's done in a transparent, authentic manner, nobody else has to care which it is, either.

The immediate conflation that positive self regaurd = caccooning growing adults form their consequences was a good thing to lump together and assume the readers would accept.

You can have positive self regard for kids and let them make their own decisions, experience mistakes and struggle to some degree to find their way out.

The idea that they need your negative judgment on top of the consequences life will hand them for their actions anyways is the logical flaw and conflation here.

There was a HN article on that recently [0]

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-...

Don't confuse root and symptoms, though. Excessive admiration contributes as much as exaggerated criticism throughout the childhood. If anything, the narcissistic personality disorder means a missing intrinsic self-esteem, which is tried to compensate by getting this from external sources - which somewhat "works", but not for long, so it must be repeated again and again.