I enjoy adventurer and freedomist Dr. Jack Wheeler's To The Point News, and Dr. Joel Wade's exclusive columns on "Learned Happiness" are especially good. Aristotle maintained that happiness is not, as most believe, a passive state of consciousness, but an activity (in Greek, anenergeia) we can learn. "The purpose of my column...[is] to give people practical tools they can use to develop the skill of learning to be happy." Thanks to a Winds arrangement with TTPN, some of those columns are becoming free access so you can see what his weekly stuff is like.
Earn a Good Reputation With Yourself
From Dr. Joel Wade's TTPN series "The Virtue of Happiness"
Dr. Nathaniel Branden has written extensively on self-esteem (I recommend The Six Pillars of Self Esteem to start). But the way he talks about self-esteem is different from how most researchers, clinicians and educators talk about self-esteem. For most of these folks, self-esteem means simply “feeling good about yourself”. For Branden, self-esteem is a much more profound state of relationship with yourself.
Branden’s formulation of self-esteem has more to do with honor, integrity, consciousness, self-respect, self-responsibility, and self-efficacy. It has to do with how you live your life, not simply saying nice things or repeating affirmations to yourself. This is a very important distinction.
For Branden, "self-esteem is the reputation that you build with yourself." Today I want to revisit an idea that may help you to improve your reputation with yourself.
For more information on Nathaniel Branden, and what happens when self-esteem runs amok, see The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden.
I believe that people who read Dr. Joel Wade and use some of the techniques therein can have better lives. I'd say that Branden's fundamental understanding of self-esteem echoes back to classical Greek models, and is a healthier counterpoint to the therapy model in use today.
I also believe that anything can become toxic if pushed too far, and this is always a dangers for pioneers in a field who tend by their very nature to test limits. Even self-esteem in the sense Branden discusses isn't the be-all and end-all of life, or a substitute for religion. Trying to make it so (instead of enhancing a richer life with it) will have predictable consequences.
Worthwhile here to note a connection to Covey ((*)). He suggests that "self-help" took a turn for the worse when character (built, he suggests, by the first three of the seven habits) got left out, leaving nothing but technique.
I think he's onto something there.
Probably true, not gear but gumption... But "just" gumption? Isn't one of Covey's points that if "gumption", or, indeed, character were that easy to come by, then he wouldn't have needed to write this book (or, for that matter, develop so much helpful gear...)? Check out my own Blog by clicking on my handle (if you're interested, that is, of course...)