A person’s sense of self-worth hinges on so many things that are outside of him, that sometimes it is scary to think : if the world stops for a minute, what would happen. Everything comes crashing down suddenly and you feel so empty, and life devoid of meaning. It is then that you start thinking how important it is to live for yourself: just yourself. Being appreciated is a very basic need of every human being, after of course food, water and shelter. Man thrives on being praised for his efforts, even though the accomplishment would have given him his own sense of satisfaction. Right from a toddler, who starts recognising the words ‘very good’, whatever language it is spoken in, to adults who may preen before a mirror, and know that he or she is looking good, but would expectantly look at people around for vouching this fact: We as a race thrive on our self being appreciated. Being done so contributes to a large extent to what our self concept would be like.
On our self concept hinges our self worth, and the resultant self esteem is responsible for our level of self confidence. At the core self concept is our view of what we think our selves, what we think others think of us, and what others actually think of us. And if our core self concept is at an all-time low, naturally this will reflect on our conclusions of what we think others think of us. Convoluted? . Not really. Let us see how this works. At the core of our very being is our self-concept. It is what we think about ourselves; aspects of ourselves that we would sometimes have trouble even admitting to our own selves! This would be the realistic self concept. Now we also have what is called the ideal self concept, where we would be looking at what we would be as the perfect model. Now, if both these self concepts match to a large degree, there would be no problem. Trouble starts brewing when our ideal self concept is far removed from our realistic self concept. That is when the whole pretend game starts, and we alternate between our two selves, creating a whole range of conflicting emotions and anxiety in the process. For instance, if you have someone who is not really a successful person, but rather than analysing and accepting her own shortcomings, she would portray an external locus of control, blaming everyone and everybody around for the misfortunes, laments her ill-luck and refuses to take responsibility for her own contribution to the problem, she would be suffering from a very low self concept. Here, while her ideal self concept is, so to say ‘idealistic’ where given the right scenario, she would have been successful, she is refusing to accept the realistic self concept: of her being unable to face challenges that came her way, her not having adequate coping skills to handle problems, and within herself, fighing this dual battle of the selves, and at the same time, adopting denial as a defense mechanism.
It does take a lot of self work and introspection on bridging the gap; and it also takes a lot of honesty, to stand up to see yourself as you are, and more important, to accept yourself as you are, unconditionally, and evolve if you feel you are ready to do so!!!

Mohana Narayanan
December 26,2010