I remember my mother would say this to me, but I could never hear it. I would desperately want others to approve me, to love me, to respect me, but I couldn’t join the dots between that and my own low self-esteem. In fact, I didn’t know what it meant! It seemed so true that I wasn’t worthy, that I wasn’t good enough.
This is the irony of ego, according to the Buddhist way of understanding the human mind. One of the functions of this attachment that he goes on so much about is dissatisfaction, and mainly dissatisfaction with ourselves. No matter what we do, what we get, what happens, we seem to assume it’s never enough: which is another way of saying that we’re always focusing on our bad qualities.
Even though we desperately want the approval of others, when we get it, we just can’t accept it. Ten people can say good things about us, but it falls on deaf ears. One person says one bad word, and we run like a magnet to it! We believe it totally. What does that prove? That we don’t, in fact, like ourselves.
It’s so sad! In reality, every one of us has incredible potential for goodness, for clarity and kindness and wisdom – and contentment. Trouble is, we have to practice thinking like this, to counteract the ancient habits that Buddha says we come into life programmed with: the low self-esteem, the attachment, the anger, the depression, the jealousy.
For sure, we do get angry, bad-mouth others, make a mess of our relationships, get jealous, and the rest, and we need to be accountable for these parts of ourselves. But we end up with guilt instead, and guilt is useless: it’s not taking responsibility at all. It just reinforces our low self-esteem, and we believe it’s permanent: this is who I really am.
But we also do good things: work hard, forgive others, are patient, have compassion and love – so many good things! We have to remember every day, literally speak to ourselves every day, that these qualities are who I really am. As long as we keep buying into the misery, we’ll stay stuck.
Our attachment to what others think is huge in our lives, and the source of so much of our unhappiness. But it’s so, so hard to see: it’s our default mode.
What helps us become strong, become our own true self – which is another way of saying developing self-respect – is to really know what we think and feel and to have the courage to follow it, in spite of what others think. In other words, putting more emphasis on what’s going on in our own head rather than constantly worrying about what “they” think.
I was very moved when I read in The Guardian about the Australian nurse Bronnie Ware, who worked for years with the dying, and who gathered her findings into her book, The Five Top Regrets of the Dying. She said the top regret was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
That’s the one! It’s huge, actually, but we have no choice.
There’s a nice saying in Buddhism, that a bird needs two wings: wisdom and compassion. You could say that compassion is the point: being useful, lightening the load of others in the world. But as the Dalai Lama says, “Compassion is not enough, you need wisdom.” And the wisdom wing, most simply, is developing ourselves, growing our innate potential for clarity, having the courage to make the brave choices. And how can that bring anything but huge self-respect, self-worth – and huge satisfaction and contentment.