You know how sometimes you read an article and the subject really speaks to you? Well, after reading an interview with David K. Reynolds, Ph.D. about self-esteem, I felt he was speaking directly to me. What did he say? “Babybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybabybaby!”
The article in question is “The Radical Road to Self-Esteem.” Reynolds teaches a theory called Constructive Living, which is based on some Japanese therapies, where even if you’re scared to death, you “do what you have to do” to get through the present, and you’ll be able to change your life.
This sort of philosophy is radically different from what America preaches–or maybe what the pharmaceutical companies preach–because we believe you have to feel good about yourself first, then you can live. Take meds, try to heal from a troubled past, visualize a good future.
Reynolds is talking about tough love, which shouldn’t be new to me. I mean, I’ve heard, “Get over it!” from both the Boy and my mother, so why I’m intent on wallowing in my past, I don’t know. Reynolds claims you don’t have good self-esteem because you haven’t taken enough risks and seen enough successes–you feel good by succeeding, but the only way to succeed is to take a risk (and admittedly, sometimes you have to take a lot of risks before you find success). He says you don’t need to feel good to have success either–you can be deathly afraid of something (the example here is flying, but substitute any big fear), but if you just do it, you’ll see that you can, and that will give you more confidence. You don’t need to placate yourself first, or, even worse, not do said fear just because you’re afraid.
Reynolds isn’t a big fan of the wallowing in your past memories either. He claims it’s convenient to go to therapy and hash out your problems over and over instead of making an actual effort to do something. It’s easy to push the responsibility for your own life onto someone else. At a certain point you need to get over it and move on. [perhaps this man doesn't know what it's like to have or need a good cry every once in a while] Nobody knows how to fix feelings, so it’s best if you can just recognize the bad feelings and try not to let them prevent you from doing what you want to do. It’s nice that he says it’s OK to feel not great–you can feel lazy or scared or depressed, but the key is to not let those bad feelings take over and dictate how you live.
The interviewer does talk a little about chemical imbalances, which is good because they do exist, and this guy seems to say, well, they don’t matter; just control yourself. Reynolds does acknowledge them, but he believes you can train yourself to slowly take control and not let your disease take control.
Another nice thing he mentions is that you won’t feel great about yourself all the time, and that’s normal. You’re not “on” all the time, not smart, not kind, not wonderful all the time, so there are naturally times when you’re not going to feel great about yourself. However, you’ll have different supports in your life that you can rely on to get you through.
Overall, it was a really interesting article that provided me with some basic thoughts to keep moving forward. OK, I’m not feeling great about myself, my writing, or this project at the moment, but I have to keep moving ahead. Now, I also think therapy is helpful for some people. I’m in therapy for Fat Camp, and I think that’s been enormously helpful for me. I think there are some points/aspects of life where you know you need to get out, but you can’t figure out how to do it and need some outside opinions. If you’re at a stage like me where you simply just need a reminder to take a few risks and get stuff done, and that will give you the self-esteem fix you need, then maybe reading more on Constructive Living would help.
So what will I do to boost my self-esteem the Constructive Living way? Well, it’s helped that I’ve written a fair amount in the last couple of days. I always find the project a little less daunting when I’m actually working on it. I swear, if I’m not working on this project, the stack of Oprahs grows exponentially, and the whole project seems undoable. Half a magazine later, I feel much better about it. But I really want some more exposure–not only for me, but really, for people who need help or for people who rely on self-help books to get them through. I think it’s important to examine the self-help industry and see if it’s actually as valuable as we think it is.
