Bring up the topic of self-esteem among a group of parents, and you’re sure to hear a wide range of opinions, ranging from “Every kid gets a trophy these days!” to “We must tell kids they can absolutely achieve their wildest dreams!”
As it often is, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle—and it’s definitely more nuanced. Setting aside matters of parenting and child development, however, what might self-esteem—and its cousins pride and humility—mean for us as adults? What might those attributes mean for how we imagine and work toward our future selves?
One interesting angle on these questions comes from the research on role models. In particular, I recently came across a research paper by Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about 25 years ago. The paper reports a handful of separate studies that they conducted to explore how our views about ourselves influence how we react to role models. Namely, when we encounter someone who is a role model of some sort of behavior or some sort of achievement, we can either be inspired or we can walk away deflated and discouraged.
Those different reactions, Lockwood and Kunda hypothesized, might have something to do with how we think about our own “best selves.” And they found, through a series of experiments, evidence that people’s views of themselves did indeed influence their reactions to inspiring role models. They found that:
When people were primed to think about themselves as successful, they were less inspired by role models.
When people were primed to imagine their best future selves, they were less inspired by role models.
When people thought a lot about their hoped-for achievements before being exposed to an inspiring role model, they had lower higher hopes for themselves than people who thought about their hoped-for achievements after being exposed to an inspiring role model.
Exposure to a role model inspired people with low chronic self-esteem but deflated people with high chronic self-esteem.
There are many ways in which we might interpret these findings, but one of the biggest take-away points is that it seems to be the case that when it comes to imagining our futures, we can easily get in our own way. When we spend a great deal of time and effort imagining an amazing future for ourselves—or when we chronically think that we’re already amazing—we limit ourselves.
That’s not to say that self-esteem is bad; we certainly do need to value ourselves in a sense and realize that we are indeed worthy of dignity, respect, and love. But what I take away from these findings is that pride, among its many negative outcomes, can constrain our ability to think about what’s possible.
In that sense, pride can become an iron cage of our own making.
The Rich Young Man
This leads me to think in a new way about the rich young man who approached Jesus to ask for advice. As recounted in Matthew 19:16-22:
Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?
He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”
He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?”
Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
One way we might think about this is that the young man already had it all. He already had many possessions; what else might there be for him? He had already thought about and built up in his physical and psychological world a vision of what “success” looked like, so when he was exposed to the ultimate role model, he experienced self-deflation instead of inspiration. He went away sad, because his pride had limited his ability to think beyond that which he already possessed and had imagined.
How often might we all “walk away sad” when challenged with a new possibility because we can’t imagine something bigger, something more meaningful than what we have already so carefully constructed in our minds?
Created for Greatness
One of the many tough things about adversity in life is that it can cause us to have tunnel vision, metaphorically speaking most of the time. High levels of stress can sometimes momentarily cause peripheral narrowing in a literal, visual sense too. That extreme focus on the next thing to be done can help us ruthlessly prioritize. Yet it can also make us forget about the bigger picture, the wider and more beautiful story in which we’re all characters, playing a role in a big ensemble.
We need humility as an antidote to our tunnel vision, a key to unlock the door to our iron cages of pride. Armed with a sense of humility, we can look with wonder and awe at that which might be, even in the midst of our challenges. Whereas pride can constrict our imaginations, humility can open the possibility for others to show us or in some way illuminate a different future, one that we couldn’t have imagined on our own within the iron cage.
As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Spe Salve, his encyclical letter on Christian hope:
“Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.”
References and for further reading
Lockwood, Penelope, and Ziva Kunda. “Increasing the Salience of One’s Best Selves Can Undermine Inspiration by Outstanding Role Models.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76, no. 2 (1999): 214–28. Click here
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter Spe Salvi
This was a great essay on one of the 7 deadly sins - Pride, and our need for it's antidote, Humility. I think is was Pope Francis who once said, "There can be no humility, without humiliation." We've all heard tragic stories of pride, and many of us have lived through a "Pride cometh before the fall" moment or period of our own lives. I recite a great prayer called "The Litany of Humility," to try to keep me grounded, but my ego (EGO is also an acronym: Edging God Out) will still get the best of me at times. Here is a link to it: https://ascensionpress.com/pages/litany-of-humility