Anticynical #18: Foundations of Self-Esteem
Anticynical #18: Foundations of Self-Esteem
How intrinsic beliefs and external achievements shape our self-worth
I couldn’t believe it...
My night-shifted monitor, with its orange glow, displayed the email I had been waiting for. I finally had a job. My first ever job. Not just any job, but a job at the most valuable company in the world: Apple.1
However, fast forward six months into my job, and my internal monologue had shifted to a counterpoint:
“Job at Apple? So what? Isn’t it better to build your own successful company instead of being employed at one?”
I had acclimated to my elevated status—from that of a grad student to Apple software engineer—but I wanted more. I wanted to feel like I was somehow above a mere garden-variety, big-tech software engineer.2
When I was a student, I was in awe of Apple (or big-tech) software engineers. Now, being one myself, I did not feel very awe-worthy. I felt like I wasn’t enough—I needed to be more, much more.
This wasn’t the first time I felt like this. Before getting into grad school, I was very impressed by people who scored in the 95th percentile or higher on the GRE. Using some unconventional methods for test prep, I scored beyond the 99th percentile. Instead of feeling great, my internal monologue had transformed again.
“Oh, I crushed the GRE. So what? What are test scores even good for?”
I can drudge up many more examples like this: from my experience with dating apps to workout PRs. I looked up to something; then I got it; then I looked up to it no more.
But this is more than just “moving the goalpost” or even hedonic adaptation. I’m also capable of feeling great about past achievements.
Sometimes I reflect on all the hard work it took to snag my job, and I remember how a past version of me would have killed to be in my shoes. These moments give me a slight ego boost. Or when I notice a subtle change in posture—how others measure me up—when I mention where I work or share my test scores, I feel a surge of self-assurance.
It’s not that I always adjust to my accomplishments and end up with low self-esteem. Rather, it's an erratic fluctuation—between feeling very self-assured and feeling inadequate—that’s truly unsettling. I keep flip-flopping between assigning too much or too little value to the things I’ve achieved. This variability and instability is the crux of my struggle.
I’m tired of assigning my self-worth to transient metrics. Last week, I felt super confident about myself because I got lots of matches on Hinge. This week, I feel insecure because most of them stopped replying (aside: is this normal?). Or last week, I absolutely nailed some problems at work and felt great about myself. But the weeks before that, I was stuck and felt a little bit like I was a loser.
This essay, then, is a way for me to discover a more stable source self-esteem. I don’t expect to have all the answers by the end of it, but I hope to be just a little bit wiser. As usual, I hope this process of discovery also helps someone out there. Let’s begin.
Exploring Self-Esteem
In an ideal world, all self-worth and self-esteem would be intrinsic. I would have the same level of self-esteem even if, three months later I became fat, homeless, and unemployed. But that is not reality. For most humans, self-esteem is never entirely intrinsic.
But what even is self-esteem? There are many perspectives from which we can come at it.
From a psychological perspective, self-esteem is a subjective sense of our overall value and capabilities. Philosophically, it is a balance between intrinsic self-worth—our inherent value as individuals—and extrinsic validation, reflecting how we see our place in the world and our significance in the grand scheme of things. Sociologically, self-esteem is partly a social construct shaped by cultural, societal, and familial influences, often molded by norms, expectations, and comparisons with others. Culturally, different societies place varying levels of importance on individualism (emphasizing personal achievements) versus collectivism (valuing social harmony and group success), creating diverse notions of self-esteem.
I will borrow from each of the above perspectives to build a more robust concept and subjective narrative around self-esteem.
By being mindful of cultural and sociological effects on self-esteem, one can begin creating a stable philosophical foundation for self-worth, which then shapes the psychological perspective. This mindfulness allows us to understand how external factors influence us, and from this place of awareness, to consciously create a more stable and positive self-esteem.
I will use myself as a case study.
Sociological and Cultural Perspective
During my early years, up until high school, the culture around me valued intelligence and academic achievement above all else. I was naturally good at those things and generally felt good about myself.
However, this natural talent led to complacency, which ultimately hindered my academic performance during college and beyond. As my academic performance declined, so did my self-confidence.
Moving to the US for grad school presented a new challenge. I found myself in an environment where intelligence and academic achievement were no longer the most important measures of success. Coupled with my academic abilities falling short of my expectations, my self-esteem nosedived to an all-time low.
After college, I worked hard on my fitness and becoming an excellent software engineer. I also focused on becoming more well-rounded by improving my social skills, learning improv, and taking up the violin. Over time, I saw my self-esteem rise.
From this perspective, competence in areas highly regarded by yourself and your culture significantly impacts your self-esteem. Conversely, feeling insecure or incompetent in these areas can severely undermine your self-esteem.
This understanding highlights two crucial points:
Awareness and Choice of Values: It is essential to be aware of the values upheld by your culture and to consciously decide what you personally want to value. In other words, it’s important to value the “right” things for yourself.
Continuous Improvement: It is vital to keep working on those valued areas, either by excelling in them or by being on the path to improvement. Mastery or progress in these areas can greatly enhance your self-esteem.
Philosophical Perspective
Do all humans have intrinsic value?
From one perspective, no. We are just bags of flesh living on a speck of dust we named Earth in a disinterested universe. There is no cosmic assigner of value saying that each human is worth 500 brownie-verse points.
But from another perspective, humans must have value a priori. It is a sort of belief or premise that you begin with. If human life has no value, then nothing we do can have any value because almost everything we do is for humans, self or other.
Another way to say this is that if humans are not valuable then virtually nothing is. Because if something is valuable, the natural question arises: “To whom?“ If it is valuable to a human, then that human must necessarily also have value.
Psychological Perspective: Tying it All Together
Self-esteem is fundamentally a psychological phenomenon, shaped by your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
My psychology is the interface between my self-esteem and the philosophical, sociological, and cultural realms. Sociology and philosophy are irrelevant independent of underlying psychology. In other words, for the purpose of self-esteem, the cultural, sociological, philosophical perspectives are only useful insofar as they help me tell a better story about self-esteem.
Having a mathematical bend, I will use an equation to illustrate this story:
Here, a is a “life area”. Let’s break the equation down into its three parts:
Intrinsic Worth. The first part of the self-esteem equation is your intrinsic worth. As I mentioned before, intrinsic value is an a priori belief. If you strongly believe that humans, including you, have substantial intrinsic value, then your baseline self-esteem will be high. A benchmark for this is the Dalai Lama. He truly believes that all human beings have immense value. Whatever you may say about him, you can't say he lacks self-esteem.
Extrinsic Worth. The second part is your extrinsic worth: the sum total esteem derived from all the external things you value. It is a product of how much you believe in something and your level of success or proficiency at that thing. For example, if I believe that being good at origami is super important and my papercraft game is killer, then my origami skills will boost my self-esteem. Conversely, if I highly value math proficiency but am not great at math, that will pull my self-esteem down. If I don't value, say, making fart noises using my armpit, then being either really good or bad at it won't have much effect on my self-esteem.
Random Influences. The third part doesn’t need much explanation. Random events in life can also affect self-esteem. The death of a loved one, getting a new job, being intoxicated, etc., can temporarily boost or inhibit how you feel about yourself.
Putting it in Practice
The self-esteem equation gives us four levers that we can pull to bolster our self-esteem.
Cultivating a belief in your intrinsic worth. If you don’t already somewhat believe that humans—including you—are valuable, then this might not be a worthwhile pursuit. But if you do, then practices like metta meditation, reflecting on your qualities and worth, will help to build this up.
Valuing the “right” extrinsic things. Before even building competence to gain confidence, it is important to value the right things. Valuing things like status or fame for their own sake is a recipe for disaster. Getting validation from the number of likes on dating or social media apps is a common trap that can leave you feeling unsatisfied.
Working towards getting better at the “right” things. Once you know what external things are important to you, you can set realistic expectations and work on getting better at those things.
Being more robust against random influences. Investing in self-awareness by practicing meditation, practicing gratitude, and cultivating a support network of friends and family can help you guard against the transient feedback from external events.
This essay isn’t the be-all and end-all of building a stable foundation for self-esteem. It is only a flag in the ground; it is a start. I will continue to refine my story of self-esteem, but this essay has been an important checkpoint along the path.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts, so please feel free to hit reply or add a comment.
most valuable when I got the job offer
I realize how pompous that sounds