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<body><div id="filepos851987" style="height:0pt"></div><h1 class="calibre30" id="calibre_pb_62"><blockquote class="calibre19"><span class="calibre26"><a class="calibre20" href="CR%21103EG31QYH2BV8VT2G4M9E0T9KCH_split_004.html#filepos4481">18</a></span></blockquote></h1>
<h1 class="calibre31"><blockquote class="calibre19"><span class="calibre26"><a class="calibre20" href="CR%21103EG31QYH2BV8VT2G4M9E0T9KCH_split_004.html#filepos4481">Conclusion: The Seventh Pillar of Self-Esteem</a></span></blockquote></h1><div class="calibre32"> </div>
<p class="calibre22">Early in this book I said the need for self-esteem is a summons to the hero within us. Although what this means is threaded through our entire discussion, let us make it fully explicit.</p>
<p class="calibre2">It means a willingness—and a will—to live the six practices when to do so may not be easy. We may need to overcome inertia, face down fears, confront pain, or stand alone in loyalty to our own judgment, even against those we love.</p>
<p class="calibre2">No matter how nurturing our environment, rationality, self-responsibility, and integrity are never automatic; they always represent an achievement. We are free to think or to avoid thinking, free to expand consciousness or to contract it, free to move toward reality or to withdraw from it. The six pillars all entail choice.</p>
<p class="calibre2">Living consciously requires an <em class="calibre23">effort</em>. Generating and sustaining awareness is <em class="calibre23">work</em>. Every time we choose to raise the level of our consciousness, we act against inertia. We pit ourselves against entropy, the tendency of everything in the universe to run down toward chaos. In electing to think, we strive to create an island of order and clarity within ourselves.</p>
<p class="calibre2">The first enemy of self-esteem we may need to overcome is <em class="calibre23">laziness</em> (which may be the name we give to the forces of inertia and entropy as <a></a>they manifest psychologically). “Laziness” is not a term we ordinarily encounter in books on psychology. And yet, is anyone unaware that sometimes we fail ourselves for no reason other than the disinclination to generate the effort of an appropriate response? (In <em class="calibre23">The Psychology of Self-Esteem</em>, I called this phenomenon “antieffort.”) Sometimes, of course, laziness is abetted by fatigue; but not necessarily. Sometimes we are just lazy; meaning we do not challenge inertia, we do not choose to awaken.</p>
<p class="calibre2">The other dragon we may need to slay is the impulse to <em class="calibre23">avoid discomfort</em>. Living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears; it may bring us into contact with unresolved pain. Self-acceptance may require that we make real to ourselves thoughts, feelings, or actions that disturb our equilibrium; it may shake up our “official” self-concept. Self-responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness; it demands that we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer. Self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic, with no guarantee of how others will respond; it means that we risk being ourselves. Living purposefully pulls us out of passivity into the demanding life of high focus; it requires that we be self-generators. Living with integrity demands that we choose our values and stand by them, whether this is pleasant and whether others share our convictions; there are times when it demands hard choices.</p>
<p class="calibre2">Taking the long view, it is easy to see that high-self-esteem people are happier than low-self-esteem people. Self-esteem is the best predictor of happiness we have. But in the short term, self-esteem requires the willingness to endure discomfort when that is what one’s spiritual growth entails.</p>
<p class="calibre2">If one of our top priorities is to avoid discomfort, if we make this a higher value than our self-regard, then under pressure we will abandon the six practices precisely when we need them most.</p>
<p class="calibre2">The desire to avoid discomfort is not, per se, a vice. But when surrendering to it blinds us to important realities and leads us away from necessary actions, it results in tragedy.</p>
<p class="calibre2">Here is the basic pattern: First, we avoid what we need to look at because we do not want to feel pain. Then our avoidance produces further problems for us, which we also do not want to look at because they evoke pain. Then the new avoidance produces additional problems we do not care to examine—and so on. Layer of avoidance is piled on layer of avoidance, disowned pain on disowned pain. This is the condition of most adults.</p>
<p class="calibre2">Here is the reversal of the basic pattern: First, we decide that our self-esteem and our happiness matter more than short-term discomfort or <a></a>pain. We take baby steps at being more conscious, self-accepting, responsible, and so on. We notice that when we do this we like ourselves more. This inspires us to push on and attempt to go farther. We become more truthful with ourselves and others. Self-esteem rises. We take on harder assignments. We feel a little tougher, a little more resourceful. It becomes easier to confront discomfiting emotions and threatening situations; we feel we have more assets with which to cope. We become more self-assertive. We feel stronger. We are building the spiritual equivalent of a muscle. Experiencing ourselves as more powerful, we see difficulties in more realistic perspective. We may never be entirely free of fear or pain, but they have lessened immeasurably, and we are not intimidated by them. Integrity feels less threatening and more natural.</p>
<p class="calibre2">If the process were entirely easy, if there was nothing hard about it at any point, if perseverance and courage were never needed—<em class="calibre23">everyone</em> would have good self-esteem. But a life without effort, struggle, or suffering is an infant’s dream.</p>
<p class="calibre2">Neither struggle nor pain has intrinsic value. When they can be avoided with no harmful consequences, they should be. A good psychotherapist works to make the process of growth no more difficult than it needs to be. When I examine my own development as a therapist over the past three decades, I see that one of my goals has been to make self-examination, self-confrontation, and the building of self-esteem as unstressful as possible. The evolution of my approach and technique has had this intention from the beginning.</p>
<p class="calibre2">One of the ways this is accomplished is by helping people see that doing what is difficult but necessary need not be “a big thing.” We do not have to catastrophize fear or discomfort. We can accept them as part of life, face them and deal with them as best we can, and keep moving in the direction of our best possibilities.</p>
<p class="calibre2">But always, will is needed. Perseverance is needed. Courage is needed.</p>
<p class="calibre2">The energy for this commitment can only come from the love we have for our own life.</p>
<p class="calibre2">This love is the beginning of virtue. It is the launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations. It is the motive power that drives the six pillars. It is the seventh pillar of self-esteem.</p>
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