Traits of Success: Self-Esteem
Although a large segment of the worlds population has self-esteem issues, only a fraction of them have enough money to make changes to their physical image in order to try to improve them. Luckily, we also have positive role models in the area of self-esteem.
What is Self-Esteem?
Well, self-esteem is how you view yourself, your accomplishments and overall quality of yourself. Self-esteem peaks when you feel on top of the world without a care in the world and dives when you are worried everybody will see something that hardly anybody will notice about you. Self-esteem is essentially how you perceive the outside world feels about you.
Negative Self-Esteem
Money, fame and even good looks have little to do with how a person feels about themselves, and here are a few examples of the effects of negative self-esteem.
Micheal Jackson
Regardless of his media stunts, he has achieved INCREDIBLE success that I feel is what is leading towards his downfall. He achieved so much at such a young age and, being a perfectionist, has struggled to reach again with little traction compared to his incredibly high stratus at a younger age. He was once worth north of 200 million dollars, with fans all around the world and basically the King of Pop while today, he is relegated to the back pages of the Inquire or People Magazines. For all his accomplishments, he hasn’t been able to master the most important of all, himself. No amount of children, fame, fortune nor media attention has changed the fact that he has a chip on his shoulder that will probably haunt him until his final days. He was once a great role model for millions of aspiring fans around the world but I feel, in his present state, he is unable to fill those shoes even with his own shadow.
Jocelyne Wildenstein
A once very beautiful Swedish woman, Jocelyne was born in a middle class family but upped her way in the social elite by marrying Alec Wildenstein, whose family is worth about 10 billion dollars. She had two great kids, incredibly luxurious houses on just about every continent, a loving husband and more money then she could spend. When the marriage fell apart, it seems, so did she. Her escape was, like Micheal Jacksons, plastic surgery. Sadly, she put so much of her self-esteem deposits in her husbands bank account that she forever changed her look simply to try to win his heart back. It failed… and she has been living with the consequences ever since.
Anna Nicole Smith
She had more beauty then brains but all throughout her short live, she suffered from drug abuse of every kind. She had no personality, self-esteem of her own. She invested all her time and energy into getting the most out of life at the detriment of her own life. From cosmetic surgery to failed relationships, businesses and you name it, she, like the two celebrities above, suffered greatly psychologically. I am sure, before the fame and fortune came, she had some self-esteem within her but it seems as if it evaporated rather quickly.
Positive Self-Esteem
For some, their success seems almost based on the ability to either turn around personal self-esteem issues or simply continually building upon an already strong foundation.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
I have to admit, he is one of my many role models in life, he has the almost inhuman ability to write his own script for life, turning his predictions into reality with uncanny accuracy. If you look at Arnold’s life, one thing becomes very clear, his nick name “the Oak” is an impossibly strong foundation for where his self-esteem stands. He wants something, he makes it happen, no matter how impossible, how treacherous the path nor how many people doubt him. He is one of the ultimate go-getters who easily has earned every bit of luck and success he has fought so hard to achieve.
Sylvester Stallone
He isn’t the most handsome, isn’t the tallest (compared to the above two) nor did his speech impediment help him on the road to extreme success… but he did it! Talk about a strong foundation, he was broke in Hollywood but even when a studio exec offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his first Rocky movie script, he said no! He so much believed in himself that no matter how much somebody thought he was worth, he knew his value and dreams were worth so much more. Since then, he has achieved one fantastic success after another in various fields such as art, entertainment and even in his entrepreneurial activities.
Anthony Robbins
He began his career broke, obese and feeling like a truck ran him over and over a few years, turned himself around into the foundation that people around the world pay big bucks to try to emulate. He has his own island in Fiji, no lack of money and even though he went through a tough divorce at the peak of his success, was able to overcome those obstacles and re-invent himself. How did he do it? He did it by himself for himself, and that is why he has achieved the incredible success he so well deserves.
Self-Esteem: YOU
So, how do you feel about yourself? Do you feel like shit? Well, if you do, no matter what else is going on in your life, you need to get these issues resolved first and foremost. As you can see from the above examples, fame and fortune only seem to make things WORSE, not better. Self-esteem is the inner relationship with yourself, if you cannot make peace with it, it will quickly spiral into absolute dysfunctionality. Before you seek fame, fortune and the life you feel you deserve, you need to focus on making sure the foundation upon which YOU are built is sturdy enough to weather any earthquake that will come as you pursuit a path of success.
The Bottom Line
Wealth has huge responsibilities attached with it, are your self-esteem able to handle such weight?
