The source or reason is not important, you get to choose it yourself. You don’t even have to tie it to your magnificent jugs or giant brain. You really don’t have to make it dependant on anything at all. It’s as simple as saying “I like myself and feel good about me”, without letting some unhappy miserable SOBs pull you down. If it’s genuine, even if you get disfigured or whatever, you will still accept yourself (failings and all). Any other things are just icing on the cake. I know people who are amazingly good at one thing or another, but are never happy about anything. I know others who are pretty average / mediocre in everything, who are having the time of their lives. But, you have to accept and respect yourself. tdn, you found that out, and I bet you are much happier now. You got a few self help books, loked around, and figured it out. Self respect comes from within. It even helps you get over the failures, because they are only failures in some task and do not diminish you. Then you can wink and say “I may not be perfect, but damn I’m good”.
Not at all. People can sense it.
All of the things I’ve listed are usually the mark of someone with a poor self-esteem. Let’s take ego: Egotists usually come off as boastful to mask a deeper insecurity. The prevention of that outcome comes from a lack of need to produce that outcome. Like I said, if you’re secure in your own life, you don;t need to build yourself up in front of others, and you don;t need to tear them down.
Why does it need an action? Happiness is a state of being, not a state of doing. Now I will admit, when I was doing all of the self work, I would employ what I called “The Ritual” – I would tie a concept in my head with some sort of action. For instance, when I told myself that I deserved to live in better than in a pig sty, I cleaned. Not to get a clean room, mind you, but to cement in my head that this was what I deserved. But it was the state of my head, not my room, that was the point.
Pretty easy, really. If you don’t care about your self, then you’re going to allow people to hurt you. If you feel you’re worth protecting, then you’ll take steps to protect yourself.
I think you have it backwards. If you depend on others for your happiness, then you are at their mercy. They can yank the rug out from under you at their whim. That’s a horrible way to live. But when you depend on yourself, then you can rely on yourself.
And why must you impose a limit on your self-esteem? Would you say “Oh, his heart is too healthy”, or “Her vision is too acute”? Of course not. So how can emotional well-being be too healthy?
Once again, this should be self-evident. If you don’t like yourself, then you’ll want to take the reins on your own happiness, rather than leaving it to the haphazard whims of others.
Ask a wife beater. A common technique is to tear the wife down so that she believes she can’t live without his “benevolent” hand. This is why abused women often don’t leave – they have been convinced that on their own, they are worthless.
Well, I’m no longer suicidal, and I now actually enjoy the process of living. I’d say that’s a pretty good yardstick.
Ah. Let’s posit that I’m not terribly concerned about the concept of self-esteem in the hands of someone who’s been suicidal - climbing out from that abyss requires a whatever-it-takes approach, and I’m glad (truly) that it’s worked for you.
What concerns me is what self-esteem can do with everyone else. I want limits, because in the hands of someone whose ego is at all healthy, what you’re describing can (and, in my observation, does) produce self-absolving, self-absorbed monsters. The problem of the abused spouse is not that her self-worth depends on others’ opnions - it’s that she’s relying on the wrong opinions.
As I was beginning to suspect, you are confusing self-esteem with egotism. The two are not the same thing. In fact, they are pretty much polar opposites. As I said, an inflated ego is often a mask to hide a low self-esteem.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of the middle-aged guy who wears a toupe and drives a red convertable and is always going to singles bars to pick up yet another trophy coed. You may look at him and think “Big inflated ego.” Others may look at him and think “Tiny penis.”
That’s a simplistic way of thinking, but basically it describes the situation pretty accurately – the guy most likely is overcompensating for his own feelings of inadequacy. By acting like Mr. Big, he’s covering up, to himself and to the world, his own shortcomings.
Now take his neighbor, Mr. High Self-Esteem. He drives a Geo. He doesn’t mind losing his hair. He’s more than happy with his middle aged frumpy wife. He doesn’t boast. And everybody likes him. He doesn’t need the trophy trappings to feel good about himself, because all of his good feelings come from within. And those good feelings radiate out from him. He’ll let you boast about your own life because he’s not threatened by it. And he can take an insult, because he knows who is is. He’s affable.
Since he is so comfortable with himself, he gladly helps others when they are in need. He has enough good feelings to go around.
See the difference? Please don’t confuse the two.
I started kindergarten in 1967. In a suburb of Philadelphia, (which is admittedly closer to Trenton, but on the PA side of the river). Attended the same school district K-12.
I am not a stupid person. I was reading (and comprehending, retaining) at a college level in 4th Grade. However, as the youngest of seven children, all at least 7 years older, I had no “self-esteem”. I was afraid to try anything, because public failure was the worst thing I could imagine, the worst thing I had experienced. Remember, 6 bright, much older siblings. Of course I felt incompetent. Compared to everyone I knew, I was. So being a thinker, I decided that if I did nothing I couldn’t be judged on anything. So that’s exactly what I did, I never turned in any class or homework, only took tests. In elementary school, I read encyclopedias & dictionaries instead of my classwork. Sometimes I read my textbooks, but only if they were interesting to me. I developed a lot of interests. I liked geology, archeology, sociology, psychology, anthropology. I was fascinated with ancient myths…greek, roman, scandinavian…I loved them all. I was never held back a single grade. I was quiet, not a class clown, (after all I was afraid of everybody), so I never caused a teacher a bit of trouble, and year after year I was passed along, even in math, which I most assuredly should have failed. To this day, I can’t do basic math quickly, or in my head. Give me an audience, and I can’t do it at all. Now, this behavior did get me labeled as lazy by the other kids, but nobody could say I couldn’t do things, because they had no way of knowing. If somebody called me stupid, I could ignore it, because there was no evidence, and I believed stupid was the worst thing you could be, (nah, I wasn’t raised by intellectual snobs…much :rolleyes: ). In eighth grade I finally had a math teacher (elementary algebra part II, a one year course had been divided into 2 for the total idiots) who made me do my homework, by promising me that if I turned it in I would not fail, but if I didn’t I would fail no matter what else I did. I did every bit of homework in that class, (very slowly, but doggedly), got mostly a’s & b’s on it, and never managed to pass a single test. But, true to his word, he passed me. It was the first time I’d ever heard about test anxiety, although those may not have been the words used. PA graduation requirements were very different in those days, and I never had to take another math class after that, since I already “knew” that I was not college material. So, in 12 years of schooling, only one teacher figured out that I wasn’t lazy, I was scared. To be fair, in High School I only took the classes I liked, so I did actually start doing some of the work. Lots of English, (Shakespeare, Drama, but nothing with the word composition in the title), lots of social sciences, (psychology, afro/asian studies, comparative religions, history of civilization) but no math, and no hard science. Not for lack of interest in hard sciences, but because I knew they took math skills I just don’t have. So there we go…I am a 42 year old under-achiever who fufilled the “does not work to potential” prophecy of every single report card. I wasn’t good at sports, I wasn’t good at art. There wasn’t a single area of school that I felt good in. Is it any wonder I never saw myself as college material until it was almost too late? It’s never too late to learn, but it may very well be too late to correct my earning potential. As I said, I’m not stupid, but I have made many stupid choices. And maybe if there had been a teacher or two along the way who cared about my self-esteem there would have been an intervention. Because I chose this path in 1st or 2nd grade, when I could hardly be considered responsible for my choices, and by the time I figured out how I had screwed myself I was so far behind that I didn’t think it possible to correct. Except for math, I realize that my extensive life-long reading probably gave me a better education than my peers got at school, but it’s not in anything useful, or productive. And while I’d love education to be about learning, in our society it’s about producing. Which is a whole different ball of wax.
Yeah, but 42 isn’t that old. (Dammit, it’s the perfect age, and will be for another 2 months! Then 43 will be the perfect age!) So, you’ve wasted the first 42 years. You can still make the next 42 count. It can get better, truly. I even know someone that can give you all the help you need. 
Well said! And I think this is the key. You are not your actions. You can be proud of your accomplishments, but you don’t need to tie your ego up in them.
Something else I should add – on this and on other threads it has been said that if you accept yourself, you have no impetus to change or improve yourself. That couldn;t be further from the truth. When you believe in yourself, you tend to want to stretch your limits, and you’re in the right mindset to do so. It’s when you don’t like yourself that you give up on improving. Or even worse, you do great things, but always to please others. The point of your life becomes constantly seeking approval from the outside. What a horrible, shitty way to live.
WTf…
“Ask any artist” is hardly scientific proof, is it?
No, of course you don’t want to argue it, because it has no validity. You just want to make blithe assertions and retreat to saying “it’s not important”.
Well no, the article was clear about the reasons, and those last two were not mentioned.
I’m not questioning the teacher’s right to use whatever color they want. They have every right to use purple ink if they like, and I have every right to point out that their reasoning is silly.
Well I’ll agree that the folks who are mired in the self-esteem debate ARE reading too much into it. But the rest of us are just saying, “This is silly.”
But it’s NOT for “whatever” reasons; it’s explicitly because they are saying red is too “agressive”. And that’s stupid.
I think that people are treating two things–encouraging self esteem and being exacting–as mutually exclusive when, in fact, they are independent of each other.
I have found with my own students (high school English) that the trick is lots and lots of carrot and lots and lots of stick. It’s huge, mountainous piles of both positive and negative feedback. It’s why private schools do so well; with a student load of 75 or 80 kids, you can take the time and expend the emotional energy to give every child individual positive and negative feedback almost every day; with 180 (as one of my co-workers has), you can’t.
There are certainly teachers out there who give lots of positive feedback and no negative–they are the ones who produce kids who don’t know they can’t think and who don’t know they are completely unprepared for life. kids like them, but don’t remember them.
There are teachers who give nothing but negative feedback–they are the stone bitches who don’t understand why it is none of their kids are willing to just do the work and know the material–they are constantly suprised at how lazy everybody is and say, everyday, that “if they don’t want to learn, I wash my hands of them. I can’t make them.” They produce kids who know they haven’t learned anything but don’t give a fuck, or are convinced there is something wrong with them because no one’s ever told them how to do anything.
Then there are the many, many teachers who simply give little feedback at all. They may take up work and grade work and return work, but they never say anything good or bad about anything, and never really come into focus for their kids–they produce kids who don’t know they don’t know anything, but who have learned that by going through the motions you can get through much of life.
The hardest thing to do as a teacher is to lay on both the positve and the negative feedback–and I don’t mean just by marking on papers–I mean by grabing kids in the hall and telling they did a crappy or a fantastic job on the work they turned in yesterday. I mean by listening to their comments in class and either praising or dismissing them as they deserve. I mean by correcting mistakes in their grammar when you see them at a football game, and by telling their girlfriends when they impressed you with a revision. I mean by being avalible before and after school for conferences and giving them feedback that they can build on and insights they can use. I’ve found that if you do this–and if I didn’t genuinely love my kids and my job, I couldn’t, 'cause it saps my brain and heart and soul–you can produce kids who want the negative feedback because they trust that it will help them get better and because they know that when they do improve, they will get the positive feedback and it will be worth having. It’s a constant balancing act and I don’t always get it right, but it’s the only way I’ve found.
If you are only willing to give so much feedback that you just have time for positive or negative, get out of the profession. Real teaching lies in giving both.
As far as color for grading goes: I, myself, like to grade with Crayola thin tip markers. When they go on hella-cheap sale at the beginning of the year, I buy half a dozen boxes and dole them out all year: every time I open a new box I grade in red and green and blue and purple until I lose them and them I grade in gray and pink and orange and brown until I lose them and they cycle begins anew. I pick the color I do because it makes me happy, and I won’t apologize for that.
Data point:
I grade with green; not so much for fear of wounding egos as that many of my comments on essays are not so much “this is incorrect” as offering suggestions and asking questions. My experience has been that things written in red are always taken as negative.
No. I don’t want to argue the color psychology reasons because it’s not important to the main point I was making. I absolutely believe that red is considered an agressive color by most people. What kind of sites do you want?
[rul=“http://www.basictips.com/tips/article_78.shtml”]Or perhaps this?
Or any of thousands of sites that purport the same thing? Or have you ever read through Kandinsky’s treatises on color theory, that come to the same conclusion? For whatever reason, red is an agressive color and triggers an intense psychological response. Supposedly, the most “disturbing” color psychologically is orange. Personally, I agree. The reason I didn’t want to argue the point is because it’s beside the main point, which is let the teachers choose whatever color they want. If you want to believe that red is not an agressive color, fine. Continue believing that. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you’re wrong.
In military school ( 8th and 9th grade) we had a history teacher that would sit at his desk and clean his .357 while delivering his lecture. I have no sympathy for a student that trembles at the sight of a red pen. Hell, after I saw the movie Secretary I went out and bought a box or red Sharpies. 
Didn’t realize I was on the first page. I hereby grade myself in red. :smack:
Adam
So, is “color psychology” real? What we have been seeing on this thread seems to be merely opinion. I decided to ask my girlfriend, who is a psychologist. Her answer? “Yeah, sort of. Color studies have been done, and some colors have been shown to invoke certain emotions. But real psychologists don’t take it very seriously, as not everyone reacts in the same way to the same colors. But yes, I grade my students’ papers in green, because red is too aggressive.”
Take that as you will.