Awesome, bitch.
I often wonder how to nail down self esteem. What is it exactly? Is self esteem the way I view myself - Wombat, blogger, Australian living in Florida - or is it more about the internals - Wombat, worried blog readers will dislike this post, wondering what dopey decision led him to live in Florida?
Parents of young kids seem inordinately concerned with their sprogs' self esteem. Schools in the United States appear to an outsider to be all about teaching it, along with how to address a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person so as not to offend their self esteem.
But that's not my point of interest. I'm consistently confounded by the way in which women can appear to be loaded with confidence, and yet choose men who treat them like shit. How can it be that powerful females who look to have the world by the balls end up doormats for oaves? A friend explained it this way:
There is a certain je ne sais quoi to bad boys. I think there are a million psychological reasons as to why women go for them, each one of the reasons pretty fucked up. "I want to piss off my parents by showing them I'm autonomous", "He's a rebel and Hollywood shows us that rebels are hot", and my personal favorite, "It feels good when he makes me feel bad". It's true...some chicks dig on feeling like shit. Call it a Martyr Syndrome if you wish, but she gets off on bitching about everything. I had to consciously rip myself away from that path, lest I become like (that). Thesedays I prefer men who treat me like the fucking awesome bitch I am.
Indeed. Awesome.
10 comments:
Self-esteem cannot be taught.
And on the other point, don't they say women are attracted to men who are like their fathers? Well if a woman has low self-esteem it's probably because their fathers were not good...and the circle is then completed when they choose their partner.
Well, *I'm* an awesome bitch, with the world by the balls!
And have the shit-treating boyrfriend to go with it. Doh!
I dont know what it is, but let me know when you figure it out!
Honestly, there are things in my life that I am super awesome at, and at the same time I can uber-suck at others. I think its more the "all or nothing" personality type with me. I'm 100% in everything I do. 100% good, and 100% bad. There really isnt much I'm average at.
While I love that a good day is a freakin AWESOME day for me, bad days can be pure hell, so thats not so good.
So do the massive highs outweigh the massive lows? And is it better to forgo the peaks and troughs for monotony?
I'm not sure I could give up my highs, or my high points. Even if it meant I didn't have the lows or the super-sukky parts of me werent so bad.
I kinda like the awesome. The rest looks dull and boring. Maybe we're just drama queens?????
It IS all about us, remember, coz WE"RE AWESOME!
Jesus, Wombat, why the hell did you move to Florida? :)
Seriously, though, good self esteem comes mostly from being backed up by people you respect, I think. If someone you look up to tells you that you're awesome, it makes it all so much easier. I don't care if an anonymous stranger thinks that I'm an idiot if my girl smiles when she sees me.
That being said, your friend is right. It's important for us to distance ourselves from people who seek entropy in their lives. None of us exactly have it all figured out, but some people really try (often consciously) to make their lives an ongoing train wreck. Hence the name of my blog, and you of all people probably remember how that started!
No, give me an awesome honest woman with a few hangups who's willing to admit it, any day. So she's loaded with confidence? I don't believe it. I've got my own hangups; I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
Epskee: I've been through that roller coaster before. I humbly submit that it's a false dichotomy, that choice between "massive highs" and "massive lows" versus "monotony." You can have it really really good. Just don't ask me how, that's an exercise for the reader.
Interesting, PMFOOW. Teaching self-esteem could be more about providing contrasting examples (as Martian does, above ^^^^^^^) than pure instruction. It's one of those amorphous mental stances one can adopt that feel awkward to start with - like good rowing technique, or addressing a golf ball correctly - that only show value in time.
Sad that we so often blindly repeat the mistakes of our parents.
I see you're quite the hard-core roller-coaster-er, Epskee. I thought a lot about your comment, and wanted to say a lot...then I realized that the key is right there. You said it yourself; you like the awesome highs too much to change. Is that fair?
It's clear to me that 'awesome' is totally in the eye of the beholder.
Martian, you kill me. Can you tell me why I was so boneheaded as to leave that wonderful land of mountains, trees and water? What a dummy, me.
Still, I think your noodling around the subject is terrific, especially the avoidance of the entropy-seekers. That is a BRILLIANT classification method. Likewise, I want to avoid entropy, which actually might be a teachable skill. What do you think? It's kind of a back-door approach to teaching self-esteem.
There's something telling me that self-esteem is one of those nefarious abstract animals that lurks in between dimensions. Its existence can only be implied - direct evidence simply evaporates. It's the Higgs boson of the human condition.
Yes, I sure do remember the Venus days. God, your pain came through in great big lumps. Awful. Compelling too. And yet the counter-entropy way of nature works its magic again and again. Carbon turns into trees, silicon turns into computer chips, heartbreak turns to love.
That's awesome.
Hello Wombi, and Martien, how lovely to see you again.
Even though I agree whith what Martien says, I think self esteem does actually come from the self.....It's lovely when people give you a boost, but if your sense of who you are depends on that, it'a a fragile foundation to be built upon.
I developed self esteem by pushing myself past my fears, which I obviously still have
I think true self esteme comes from courage, courage to do the thing you have to do, even though you feel no confidense at all..and having done it, your self esteme natuarly becomes stronger .
It also comes from concoiusly pushing yourself past your comfort barriers, putting yourself in siuations that you learn and grow from.
So that's my Saturday morning ramblings.
Wombat, after visiting Australia, I seriously question your decision to live in Florida.
Many women live, lust, want, need, desire drama in their life. The feed on in like zombies on brains. Choosing a man that will treat them like crap will give them what they crave.
Other women are smart, like me.
Well Wombat, Engima has a good point: put her way, I agree. Self esteem should start from the inside. However, it's hard to hear that voice if the entropy seeker is rioting outside! I know that my sister suffers greatly from lack of self esteem, mostly from being henpecked and belittled all of her teenage years. Having the courage to disbelieve those people, especially when young, is hard. After a while, it can just be one's received wisdom that there nothing special about oneself, when nothing could be further from the truth.
"The Higgs boson of the human condition."
Now that, I like!
And you know, you can always come back to the Emerald City...
Thanks martien, i DO agree that being put down when young isn't the best for self esteme building.
My mother constantly put me down as a child, and at school i was the local punching bag,so i understand where your sister is coming from.
When i was young I have a series of belittling relationships, but as i have gotten older what it my early experiances created in me was an urge to prove people wrong.
Actually this post is rather timely, as i am currently organising a very ambitious project, dealing with people who will be way more experianced than myself.I said to one of those people yesterday "You know I am not very confident in what I am doing" She said"You don't need confidense, you just need the courage to lead it, which you are...the confidense will come"
Good for you, Enigma, to have overcome that. That's such a shame that your mother treated you that way. In my mind, it's equivalent to kicking a puppy: parents should build up their children. And our parents did; my sister's great crime was to be tall -- 6'1", to be precise, by the time she was 13 years old. Hence she stood out, and you know how other kids treat the ones who stand out.
Experience is good, if we can learn from it as you have.
And yes, it's lovely to see you again, too :)
How I love it when folks come here to dig around in the Kissnblog veggie patch. There's so much to learn from experiences outside our own. Sorry I missed the Friday night chat, Martian, Enigma, Nitebyrd et al. Work. You know, it interrupted. Again.
I wonder if there's not a prerequisite to healthy self-esteem, and that is knowledge of how one, I, Wombat, fit into the universe. I know I'm human, therefore not perfect, therefore I make mistakes. That defines one portion. But I also have skills and understandings that I can use to be net additive to the universe. Finding them and doing so provides a goal on the other side of things.
Once I know kinda what's possible, what's not, and what I should be doing, self-esteem comes from living aligned with that understanding.
Dunno, just musing.
Nitebyrd, we need to discuss Florida further.
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