What's Changing? - Self-Esteem

Please see below recent self-esteem-related change.

See also:

November 2024

The School of Life encourages us to discover our latent reserves of selfishness. The word may be frightening, as we aren’t taught to distinguish between bad and good versions of this trait; between the kind of selfishness that exploits and reduces others and the kind of selfishness that we require to get anything substantial done, that lends us the courage to prioritise our own concerns over the flotsam and jetsam of daily life, that lends us the spirit to be more forthright about our interests with people who claim to love us - and that at moments leads us to sidestep nagging demands so that we can husband our resources and in time, be able to serve the world in the best way we can.

October 2024

Low self-esteem can develop for a whole variety of reasons but often originates from when we were young and the relationship we had with your parents or caregivers. It is the messages received from them which created self-perceptions of what kind of person we are and how we relate to others. Excessive criticism, lack of acknowledgement, unrealistically high standards, emotional and/or physical neglect or abuse produce foundations of not being able to find value in oneself, in our achievements and our sense of worth. Our outlook, both internally and externally has a strong negative slant, making it hard to like oneself, make decisions and cope with challenges. It can affect, or limit our confidence, friendships, relationships and ability to find joy in activities and life as a whole.

September 2024

According to The School of Life, a way to think about the many of us who suffer from difficult psychological symptoms - low self-esteem, panic attacks, depression - is that we are, in certain ways, the victims of an arrested emotional education. There were particular lessons - about sanity, hope or self-love - that we were denied and cruelly missed out on along the way, and whose absence explains our present difficulties. We are not unwell as a result of some obscure biological quirk; we’re ailing because we didn’t learn certain things when we might have done. Not subjects like Maths or French, but subjects like faith and steadiness, self-love and self-reliance.

August 2024

One of the most fundamental laws of psychological functioning states that the way we feel about ourselves is an internalisation of how others felt about us during our formative years. Our self-esteem is a mirror of the esteem in which we were held by those around us. What we expect of ourselves is a reflection of what others expected from us in childhood. What we think the future will bring is shaped by what the past brought us
Good psychological functioning depends on understanding that the way we feel about ourselves is an internalisation of how others felt about us during our formative years. Our self-esteem is a mirror of the esteem in which we were held by those around us. What we expect of ourselves is a reflection of what others expected from us in childhood. What we think the future will bring is shaped by what the past brought us.
For The School of Life, letting our lives be guided by the verdicts of those around us isn’t a mistake worthy of a "minority of numbskulls", it’s the primordial instinct of every human - which we have to take immense care to outgrow intelligently and nuance rationally in order to stand any chance of claiming our rightful share of freedom. it adds that we spend a little too much time worrying about how we must appear in the minds of others. However, the poignant, useful truth is that almost everyone doesn't care at all about who we are, what we're doing and how we've messed up.

June 2024

Psychologist Maytal Eyal observed what she called an “epidemic of self-hatred.” Both within her work as a therapist and in her wider community, Eyal noticed how the weight of self-criticism and self-loathing wears on people’s souls. “It’s become sort of normalised,” she said. “And when people feel that way, they want to buy products to self-improve.” However, a consequence of this cultural obsession with self-improvement is the hyperfixation on the self.

April 2024

“Koinophobia", or the fear of being ordinary is often rooted in the belief that we need to be ‘extraordinary’ to be loved and accepted by others,” according to psychotherapist Rachel Vora. Low self-esteem and beliefs about not being good enough can often be at the root of fearing an 'ordinary’ life, as people often feel they need to prove themselves by achieving the ‘extraordinary’.

March 2024

Chelsea Harvey Garner, therapist and author of the book A Pity Party Is Still a Party, claimed that everyone has a story, and everyone’s story deserves to be heard. This isn’t true only about our past, but also about the story of what’s happening now, the parts that are still being written. Telling our story isn’t about coming up with the most brilliant moral or the perfect words. The power is in the simple act of speaking what’s true. We don’t have to be a writer or motivational speaker to do this. We can tell our story face-to-face, or online, or in a journal. Describing what we’ve survived can energise and even help us recognise what we’re capable of.
Guilt is never pleasant, but we can, in most cases, at least we know what we feel guilty about. Yet there are occasions, more unusual yet far more unpleasant in nature, when we find ourselves unable to think of anything we might be responsible for – even as guilt clings tenaciously to us. We simply feel guilty per se, with a sense of awfulness, but without the possibility of confession or resolution, any chance to name our sin or direct our repentance.
Appreciating pleasure means trusting our own responses a little more. We can’t wait for everything to be approved by others before we allow ourselves to be enchanted. We need to follow the signals of our own brains and allow that we are onto something important, even though others may not yet be in agreement. We are dominated by striving: for better relationships, work and personal lives. Restless, we think, is synonymous with success. Nothing should be good enough for long. But, in so concerning ourselves with unattainable levels of excellence, we overlook more modest pleasures, closer to home.

February 2024

The School of Life noted that, with one exception - humans - no animal is capable of hating itself. It’s one of the strangest, and most regrettable, flaws in our condition. This tendency to self-hatred is not only destructive of our spirit; it constantly undermines our efforts to establish workable relationships. It is logically impossible to allow anyone else to love us insofar as we remain obsessed by the thought of our own loathsome natures. Why let another think better of us than we think of ourselves? If anyone did step forward and tried to be kind to us, we would have to despise them with the intensity owed to all false flatterers.

January 2024

The Economist warned that, in its most debilitating form, fear of missing out (FOMO) is the expression of deep discontent with oneself, a conviction that if my life was really that good, it wouldn’t be mine. It is the compulsion to locate value beyond one’s own experience. Seen through this filter, other lives are engines of perpetual momentum. Ours are stuck crawling in traffic.
It’s common to want to become a better version of oneself. Much like the desires to eat, drink and avoid harm, human beings also experience a fundamental need to learn, grow and improve - what psychologists call self-expansion. Interestingly, romantic relationships can also be a key source of growth for people: a relationship scientist studied the effects romantic relationships can have on the self and found that modern couples hold high expectations for a partner’s role in one’s own self-development.

December 2023

With one exception, no animal is capable of hating itself. That exception, of course, is human beings. It’s one of the strangest, and most regrettable, flaws in our condition. This tendency to self-hatred is not only destructive of our spirit; it constantly undermines our efforts to establish workable relationships. It is logically impossible to allow anyone else to love us insofar as we remain obsessed by the thought of our own loathsome natures, warned The School of Life.
We should keep in mind that, in making comparisons with others, that we are operating at a distinct disadvantage. By necessity, we have only a partial view of others. We see only their outward projection: the edited version of themselves they wish the world to see – the one they show off at dinner parties, or plaster over social media. Yet in appraising ourselves, we have access to a whole other side: our private, unspoken innermost selves. We alone know the scale of our own doubts, our fears, our inadequacies.
The Ego Trick looked at the 'bundle theory' of the self, and argued that we don't have a permanent essential self, but instead are a bundle of thoughts, sensations and impulses.

November 2023

Termed imposter phenomenon by US psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes - and then relabelled "imposter syndrome" by others - many people recognise the experience of a feeling of phoniness or inadequacy that exists despite evidence to the contrary. Anyone who's had this experience will likely have an inner critic or ‘imposter voice’ – i.e. a negative way of thinking about oneself that repeatedly pops up in our consciousness – which questions our legitimacy and perhaps whether we truly belong, and believing that others have overestimated your competence, which causes a fear of being ‘found out’. However, the imposter phenomenon is not a disorder or a disease, and research suggests it's a common experience.
Meanwhile, research led by the University of Edinburgh Business School focused onto the intersection between professional social networks usage - such as LinkedIn - and imposter syndrome. The research is the first to show using LinkedIn induces imposter syndrome. It found that when users both browse the platform and post about their personal achievements, they relay feeling a sense of imposter syndrome that includes thoughts of anxiety/depression. The paper also found that imposter thoughts drive intentions to enact direct resolution behaviour, such as signing up for paid courses designed to increase competency skills across the platform.

October 2023

The School of Life argued that, to survive in the pressured conditions of modernity, we have to get good at self-criticism. We have to make sure that there is nothing our worst enemies could tell us that we have not already fully taken on board: we must become masters of self-hatred. We must behold our own mediocrity without sentimentality or favour; we must allow paranoia to triumph over ease and complacency. Yet so skilled may we become at these manoeuvres, our victory is at risk of miscarrying. In response to certain personal or professional setbacks, we may grow to despise ourselves to such an extent, we eventually develop difficulties getting out of bed. In time, we may even conclude it might be best just to do away with ourselves.

July 2023

A common strategy many parents use is to provide inflated praise to their children, such as ‘You’re amazing! You did incredibly well!’ When Dutch academics conducted in-home observations of parent-child interactions, they found that parents were especially inclined to dole out inflated praise to children with low self-esteem. While well-intentioned, this research showed that inflated praise can backfire, causing children with low self-esteem to worry that they won’t be able to live up to the standards implied by the praise.

June 2023

The School of Life noted that impostor syndrome has its roots in a basic feature of the human condition. We know ourselves from the inside, but others only from the outside. We’re aware of all our anxieties, doubts and idiocies from within, yet all we know of others is what they show and tell us: a narrower, and more edited, source of information. The solution to impostor syndrome lies in making a crucial leap of faith: that everyone must (despite a lack of evidence) be as anxious, uncertain and wayward as we are. The leap means that whenever we encounter a stranger we’re not really encountering a stranger; we’re in fact encountering someone who is - in spite of the surface evidence to the contrary - in basic ways very much like us.

April 2023

Dove released a short film as part of its ongoing #SelfEsteemProject which documents the damaging effects of social media on adolescent girls’ mental health. The girls featured were just a few of the millions affected by unrealistic beauty images and hashtags promoting beauty fads across social media. Eight in 10 youth mental health specialists claimed social media is fuelling the mental health crisis, and 90% of girls surveyed stated that they follow at least one social media account that makes them feel less beautiful,

March 2023

On average, strangers like us more than we realise. Research by Erica J Boothby at Cornell University and colleagues involved having pairs of strangers chat together for five minutes, to rate how much they liked their interaction partner, and to estimate how much their partner liked them. Across a variety of settings and study durations, the same pattern emerged. People underestimated how much they were liked, a phenomenon that Boothby and her colleagues labelled ‘the liking gap’.

January 2023

One of the worst symptoms of childhood trauma is a feeling of shame, by which is meant: a pervasive impression that one is a terrible person, a primitive, basic abhorrence at oneself, a sense of all-encompassing embarrassment about who one is, what one wants, and what one has done. Shame is one of the most heinous forms of psychological torment, warned The School of Life,
The effects of being bullied can sometimes be felt for a considerable time after the bullying has taken place, as long as decades later. A study of hundreds of people with a childhood history of bullying identified agoraphobia, panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and depression as elevated risks in adulthood. Other research found that survivors tend to report a heightened sense of rejection, lower self-esteem, and a higher frequency of past suicidal thoughts than others.
Stacee Reicherzer wrote the book The Healing Otherness Handbook (2021) to guide people who’ve felt ‘othered’ or bullied for their differences and 1) to identify the ways in which that otherness has impacted them across the lifespan; and 2) to provide clear and workable steps for healing that are rooted in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
For the School of Life, we may not realise the extent to which we have mortgaged our inner lives to the received ideas that are, actually, alien to our true selves. We start to be free when we can dare to become wilfully ignorant - when we no longer have to know the names of certain musicians that everyone esteems, when we don’t feel compelled to read particular books that have won prizes, when we are left cold by holiday destinations, clothes, foods, exercise regimes, political scandals and ideas that are dominant, when we can stay home rather than attend parties with people we dislike and when we can hear of a celebrity and genuinely wonder who they might be.

December 2022

One of the most basic emotional needs is the need to belong. When people are asked about important parts of their identity, they often note the groups they belong to: their company, their church, the fanbase of their favourite sports team, and so on. Belonging is characterised by feeling that we're welcomed, seen and appreciated as part of a social group. This feeling may be based on values, customs or activities that we share with members of a group, and it can provide a sense of meaning and purpose. A lack of belonging is not the same thing as loneliness: someone who is not lonely might still feel as if they don’t belong in their workplace, their neighbourhood, or another social context.
Further reading:

October 2022

The Self-Worth Academy was set up as a global network of people who are interested in promoting self-worth as a foundation for life and work. The purpose of the Self-Worth Academy is to encourage a fresh understanding of self-worth in professional and personal life; in education and in leadership.

September 2022

Psyche warned that shame is strongly associated with a host of psychological disorders, including depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, personality disorders and trauma- and stressor-related disorders. Even if a person does not meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychological disorder, pronounced and pervasive shame can contribute to distress, low self-esteem and a sense of isolation that can strongly impact important domains of life, including close relationships, work or school. Although shame is a common human experience, it can lead to serious negative consequences when left unquestioned and unchecked.

June 2022

Further reading:
- Overcoming Low Self-Esteem - Dr Melanie Fennell on Audible

May 2022

Psyche highlighted two biased forms of thinking that involve taking things too personally. The first is personalisation, which is believing that you’re the cause of a negative event, despite having little or no evidence to support the belief. In my case, I thought I had missed out on an opportunity because I upset my friend, even though I had no idea what I had done. The second is mind reading, which is believing that someone is making a critical judgment about you, especially in an ambiguous situation where you’ve received no direct feedback.

April 2022

The School of Life noted that a lack of confidence is often put down to something we call shyness, but beneath shyness, there may lie something more surprising, pernicious and poignant. We suffer from a suspicion of ourselves that gives us a sense that other people will always have good reasons to dislike us, to think ill of us, to question our motives and to mock us. We then become scared of the world, speak in a small voice, don’t dare to show our face at gatherings and are frightened of social occasions because we fear that we are ideal targets for ridicule and disdain. Our shy manner is the pre-emptive stance we adopt in the face of the blows we feel that other people want to land on us. Our shyness is rooted in a sense of unworthiness.
The way we relate to other people emotionally - our attachment style - matters greatly in life. Studies that have followed the same individuals for decades have found that the ability to initiate and sustain good relationships is crucial for long-term happiness. Attachment science is based on the work of the British child psychologist John Bowlby and his colleagues in the 1950s. Bowlby believed that human beings - like other mammals - have a deep-seated need for love and nurturance from their parents or other carers, and that if this care is absent or unreliable, it can lead to long-term problems, including relating to other people.

March 2022

The temptation is to make a direct comparison between the lives of others and our own: simply to wish that we could be in exactly their place. To weaken that sentiment, it helps to remind ourselves of the many ways in which we are, and always were, different from those we are presently choosing to compare ourselves to. To look across the aisle and want to swap our lives for theirs is to underestimate the many powerful – and sometimes painful – reasons why we are as we are. Our particular travails - especially from childhood - shaped us in very distinctive ways; we had to contend with challenges that others escaped and vice versa. We haven’t merely coped differently with life from others; we have very different minds, cautioned The School of Life.

January 2022

Psychologists such as Roy Baumeister have pointed out that the self-esteem movement had things backwards - it’s not that artificially induced high self-esteem is a panacea, but rather, as Singal wrote, that people who are more talented or smart or successful have higher self-esteem because of their positive attributes and accomplishments. In short, authentic self-esteem is based on real qualities and a fair assessment of one’s strengths, weaknesses and achievements. Unfortunately, in bypassing reality, the self-esteem movement lost its credibility and, ultimately, its influence, noted Psyche.

November 2021

Perfectionism is typically represented by the "make your weakness a strength" sort of answer in interviews. However, in cultures that place high value on discipline, there can often be a darker side to the trait. Psychologist Margaret Rutherford looked at the thin veil between perfectionism that can be positive and that which becomes destructive.

September 2021

For The School of Life, it is a measure of our collective delusion that we are so ready to be proud of high-achievers and so slow to detect the wound that powers them on. It would be a less gilded world, but also a far happier one, in which we were readier to reassure the self-hating titans of success that they were worthy of love all along.

July 2021

In a survey, 55 per cent of women and 42 per cent of men reported some measure of dissatisfaction with at least one element of their appearance. The degree to which people are concerned about their bodies ranges widely, from not liking one particular feature to a serious mental health condition called body dysmorphic disorder, in which people focus obsessively on their appearance. People with the disorder often limit their social interactions and frequently experience other mental health problems such as eating disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder. Body image concerns are not merely superficial, but can affect many aspects of people’s lives. This means that developing a positive body image can have positive consequences for both mental and physical health and wellbeing.

June 2021

HBR shared research showing that self-criticism is a poor strategy. When used excessively, it is consistently associated with less motivation, worse self-control, and greater procrastination. In fact, self-criticism shifts the brain into a state of inhibition, which prevents people from taking action to reach their goals. Naming one's inner critic leverages cognitive defusion - a process by which we separate ourselve from our thoughts. Defusion is shown to reduce discomfort, believability, and the stress of negative thoughts. It also promotes psychological flexibility, or the capacity to steady your mind, manage your emotions, and be aware, open, and adaptive to changing demands.

April 2021

For The School of Life, self-love is the quality that determines how much we can be friends with ourselves and, day to day, remain on our own side. When we meet a stranger who has things we don’t, how quickly do we feel ourselves pitiful – and how long can we remain assured by the decency of what we have and are? When another person frustrates or humiliates us, can we let the insult go, able to perceive the senseless malice beneath the attack – or are we left brooding and devastated, implicitly identifying with the verdict of our enemies? How much can the disapproval or neglect of public opinion be offset by the memory of the steady attention of few significant people in the past?
Psyche argues that, from a young age, we learn how to be a good friend to others. In kindergarten or nursery school, we’re taught how to share, cooperate and play. Any child who calls other kids dumb, losers or ‘fart face’ is swiftly scolded or given a time out. All in all, we grow up learning to follow the golden rule: ‘Treat others how you want to be treated.’ Yet many of us receive no guidance on how to be a friend to ourselves. In fact, we might even get counterproductive messaging about what it means to treat ourselves with kindness. We might come to believe that being kind towards ourselves is self-indulgent, lazy or weak.

December 2020

Kristin Neff, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that high self-esteem can result in a kind of fragile narcissism that crumbles under potential failure. “Self-esteem is contingent on success and people liking you, so it is not very stable – you could have it on a good day but lose it on a bad day,” claimed Neff. Many people with high self-esteem even resort to aggression and bullying when their confidence is under threat.

September 2020

In his TED Talk “The Psychology of Your Future Self,” Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert explained that a bias that almost all of us have: we tend to think that the person we are today is the person we will always be. Most people, when asked if they are the same person they were 10 years ago, will say no — but we have a much harder time seeing potential for change in the future. Gilbert and others refer to this as the “end of history illusion.” Despite awareness that our past self is clearly different than our present self, we tend to mistakenly think that who we are right now is the “real” and “finished” version of ourselves, and our future self will be basically the same as who we are today.

August 2020

New World, Same Humans warns that in 2020, and in the global ‘west’ as traditionally defined, the individual is elevated to a near-kingly status. Brands compete to serve our every desire. Politicians promise to give us what we want. And our culture endlessly tells us the same story: that of the individual protagonist, guided by an inextinguishable light, which is their essential, rational, human self. The central western story is that of the heroic individual. However, as our societies become more advanced and interconnected, they become better at serving any given individual’s preferences. But they also increasingly efface us as individuals, by dwarfing us within a massive and dizzyingly complex social space in which it becomes impossible to feel that we really matter. In 1929 Sigmund Freud published Civilisation and Its Discontents. In that book, he argued that a deep tension was present in the very nature of civilisation itself. We humans, said Freud, have a deep need of civilised forms of life: to keep us safe, and serve our needs. At the same time, though, these forms of life demand that we crush certain crucial and deep-running aspects of ourselves, such as our boundless desire for power over others. Civilisation, then, is paradoxical. It serves us while it enslaves us. We both want it, and don’t want it
While researchers, notably Myers-Briggs, indicate that around half the global population are introverted, a new study suggests introverts in the workplace may become victims of unconscious bias. The Silent Worker report, by experience management software provider Qualtrics, reveals that just under two thirds of the 1,000 UK workers it questioned, who identified as introverts, believed they were not given the chance to be heard. Just over half also felt their opinions were neither valued nor listened to.

July 2020

We almost all have a character inside our minds whom we might call the "inner critic". It tends to pay its visits late at night, it waits until we’re very tired or physically depleted – and it then it starts to whisper vicious and appalling things to us in order to destroy all possibility of peace, self-confidence and self-compassion. It is at base convinced that we shouldn’t really exist – and it’s extremely subtle and inventive about telling us why. It is, in extremis, the inner critic that tells people to go and kill themselves, warns the School of Life, before examining a range of ways we might try to fight off the inner critic.

June 2020

IAI News explained how the pursuit of transcendental values defines not just who we are but who we hope we'll become.
IAI News also considered how the self endures even amid the onset of dementia and memory loss.

May 2020

Big Think wrote about how ecotherapy (also referred to as nature therapy) has been proven to be effective and is used in various practices and cultures around the world. While we stroll around the forest, breathing in the fresh air, airborne chemicals like phytoncides (a chemical many plants give off to fight disease) are also entering our system. When this happens, the human body responds by increasing the number of natural killer blood cells (a type of white blood cell) which attack virus-infected cells. In one 2009 study, participants spent 3 days/2 nights in a forested area. Their blood and urine were sampled before, during, and after the trip. Natural killer cell activity measured significantly higher during the days spent in the forest and the effect lasted up to 30 days after the trip. The results of a 10-study analysis proved that both men and women have similar self-esteem improvements after experiencing time spent in nature, and the boost in mood particularly impacted men.

December 2019

Human beings are often desirous of many things - both material and emotional. We like to live comfortably and we need emotional relationships with others to fulfil our desires for intimacy and emotional support. Human beings have aspirations, not only for ourselves but for others too, yet it has been demonstrated that a discrepancy between aspiration and achievement leads to a sense of frustration and affects self-image, resulting in low self-esteem.

November 2019

Many of us spend our lives believing we need permission. We don’t quite know whom we are asking, and we can’t say precisely what approval would look like, but in an archaic part of our minds, we’re still waiting to be given endorsement for many of our most cherished plans. We want to know from some potent but undefined source that if we act we’ll still be good people, that we won’t be punished, that this is allowed.
Studies have shown that, at work, women are significantly less self-assured than men and less likely to self-promote or self-advocate, through fear of negative repercussions. Research continues to find there is no gap between performance or ability in men and women; the difference is a matter of self-perception. For women to continue to smash glass ceilings, confidence is just as important as competence.

August 2019

One of the questions we ask ourselves in relation to new friends and acquaintances is whether or not they like us. The question feels so significant because, depending on how we answer it in our minds, we will either take steps to deepen the friendship or, as is often the case, immediately make moves to withdraw from it so as to spare ourselves humiliation and embarrassment. We assume that there is a more or less binary answer, that it is wholly in the remit of the other person to settle it – and that there is nothing much we could do to shift the verdict one way or the other. Either someone wants to be our friend – or they don’t. We are hereby failing to apply to other people a basic lesson we can appreciate well enough when we study the functioning of our own judgements: we often don’t know what we think of other people. Our moods hover and sway. There are days when we can see the point of someone and others when their positive sides elude us entirely.

May 2019

One of the reasons why our lives are harder than they might be is that most of us have not got a firm handle on the art of mature self-assertion; that is, the ability to put forward our interests in the face of contention in a way that comes across as credible, dignified, serene and effective. For The School of Life, at the root of our failures tends lies one woefully familiar psychological problem above all: self-hatred. It is because we haven’t learnt to love and respect ourselves (indeed, the very concept sounds instinctively alien and somewhat disgusting) that we say nothing, trusting that we have no right to take our own positions seriously.
Anyone with ambition has ego. People who marshal their skills to meet their goals have ego. Artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs achieve their objectives by harnessing the focus and desire to create and discover. But, too often, argues Ego is the Enemy, by Ryan Holiday, while ego is necessary for getting ahead, an unhealthy belief in how important you are has the opposite impact and blocks your progress.

April 2019

In Awkward, the Science of Why We're Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome, Professor and TED speaker Ty Tashiro demonstrated a special faith in awkward people. He urged them to see accepting their oddities and special talents as the doorway to achieving amazing things and explained that high achievers - whom some other people might see as awkward - have the ability to focus intently on a limited area. They search with zeal for answers to questions outside the mainstream.
A key cause of high anxiety can be self-hatred. People who have grown up not to like themselves very much at all have an above average risk of suffering from extremes of anxiety, for if one doesn’t think one is worthy, it must – by a dastardly logic – follow that the world is permanently and imminently at high risk of punishing one in the way one suspects one deserves. It seems to fit that people may be laughing behind one’s back, that one may soon be sacked or disgraced, that one is an appropriate target for bullying and rejection and that persecution and worse may be heading towards us.

March 2019

The School of Life believes that, more than ever, modern life forces us to confront our own mediocrity. Our computers and phones constantly bombard us with news of the achievements of exceptional people: actors winning awards; athletes performing incredible feats; royals being praised for their beauty and philanthropy. As we sit and scroll, we can’t help but feel distinctly ordinary - and inferior - by comparison.
The School of Life also argues that our culture has tried to project an idea of an organised, poised and polished self, as the standard way most people are, which encourages us to get impatient and disgusted with ourselves when we don’t live up to expectations. We want to shout that we need to buck up, get it together and stop being so weak or so weird. But in fact no one is ever quite normal.The only people we can mistake for 'normal' are those we don’t yet know very well. From close up, we are all gloriously compulsive, over-anxious, confused and bizarre. This is no reason for shame, just confirmation of our essential shared humanity.
Further reading:

February 2019

Workplace stress is inevitable, but in many situations it is women who feel the pressures of their careers more acutely, argued the Financial Times. Beyond managing the expectations of homes and families, women - in their work - can have the less tangible feeling like they do not belong, a particularly common occurrence in male-dominated fields. Anybody who is viewed as being lower in social status, standing or importance in a field can experience rejection sensitivity: an anxiety about being undervalued or not taken seriously. Women are not the only individuals who experience this, but for the FT it is clear that women are frequently plagued by worries, especially when they find themselves in competitive situations where they have not previously been present in high numbers.
The School of Life noted that, because shyness can grip us in such powerful ways, it’s tempting to think of it as an immutable part of our emotional make-up, with roots that extend far into our personality and perhaps biology - and that we would be incapable of ever extirpating. But in truth, shyness is based on a set of ideas about the world that are eminently amenable to change through a process of reason because they are founded on some touchingly malleable errors of thought.
The School of Life also noted that, in many challenges - personal and professional - we are held back by the crippling thought that people like us could not not possibly triumph given what we know of ourselves: how reliably stupid, anxious, gauche, crude, vulgar and dull we really are. We leave the possibility of success to others, because we don’t seem to ourselves to be anything like the sort of people we see lauded around us. Faced with responsibility or prestige, we quickly become convinced that we are simply impostors.
Further reading:

December 2018

The School of Life believes that self-analysis can work because, as we reflect, we let our sadness take its natural, due shape. We dwell at length on the wounds. We give space to our nostalgia. There may not be an immediate solution to the sorrows, but it helps immeasurably to know their contours and give ourselves a chance to square up to them. Our pains need a hearing. The more we think, the more our fears, resentments and hopes may become easier to name. We may become less scared of the contents of our minds. We may grow calmer, less resentful and clearer about our direction.

November 2018

Rimmel launched #IWILLNOTBEDELETED, a campaign to fight cyberbullying. The Coty-owned makeup brand surveyed over 11,000 women aged 16-25 across 10 countries, and found that 1 in 4 have experienced cyberbullying, 46% of whom have gone on to self-harm. Launching on the Cybersmile website in 2019, a tool will guide users to approved local resources and organisations that can help those facing cyberbullying.

August 2018

For The School of Life, the sublime grants us a perspective within which our own concerns are mercifully irrelevant. Bits of our egoism and pride seem less impressive. We may be moved to be more tolerant, less wrapped up in our own concerns. We’re reminded of our fragility and transient occupation of the world – which can move us to focus on what’s genuinely important, while there is still time. The Sublime foregrounds a sense of equality, which we can otherwise find it hard to hold onto. In the face of vast things, the grades of human status lose meaning.
We too often assume that we must accept the levels of confidence we currently possess. However, confidence is not a given: it is a quality we can learn about and develop in ourselves, argued The School of Life, who wants to remind us, for the sake of confidence, not to think too well of others; to learn to watch our tendencies to self-sabotage; to imagine strangers sitting in the bathroom; to speak to ourselves in kinder tones; and to remember that the greatest thing we should fear isn't messing up, but dying without having given it a go.

July 2018

Lifefaker claimed to be the world’s first online life-faking service, where users can sign up by purchasing packages that range from photos of perfect pets, holidays and meals, and post them as their own. The website offers thousands of ready-made photo packages to fake a perfect life on social media without the trouble of actually living it. The purpose of Lifefaker is to remind users of the pressures of social media, highlighting that 62% of people feel inadequate when comparing their lives to those online. Part of a campaign by mental health startup Sanctus, the site confronts unhealthy behaviours that can harm mental health and explores ways to change them.

June 2018

Evolution made it hard for humans to ask for help, suggests recent research. The fear of losing status within a community is hardwired into primate brains.

Pre-2018

Some now believe that social media sites like Facebook are competitions for the most imaginary friends.
Back in 2010, University of Houston research professor and author Dr. Brene Brown gave a TED Talk, The Power of Vulnerability, that stands up just as well today. She said meaningful human connection is impossible without a willingness to be vulnerable. People with low self-esteem often feel unworthy of social connection and suppressing their vulnerability merely intensifies their shame. Breaking the cycle means finding the courage to take risks and reveal your human side.

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