YOU NEED TO KNOW YOU'RE GREAT
By Dr. Daniel A. Bochner
You need to know you're great! People often don't understand what it
means to have good self-esteem, but it really all comes down to that: You
should feel like you are a great person. Yes, I mean really, really great. You
may feel that sounds silly or simplistic, and you'd be right if you said feeling
that you're great is not the easiest goal to accomplish, but people with healthy
self-esteem really do feel that they are great.
And I do mean “healthy” self-esteem. So now you're probably
concerned that I'm telling people to become self-centered jerks, or that they
should think of themselves as better than everyone else. In response, I need to
make one thing perfectly clear. I do not think you should think you're greater
than others. You just need to think you're great.
In fact, the way you prevent yourself from becoming some selfish maniac
is by knowing that you're not greater than anyone else (please see article,
“From Materialism to Integrity: The Building Blocks of the Healthy Human
Structure”). You should know you're better at some things and not as good at
others. You should know you can learn a lot, no matter how studied you
might be... and so can everyone else. You need to know you're a work in
progress and that you need to keep working on yourself, but you also need to
know you're great. You are great because of who you are, and because there
is only one you.
This might sound funny, but you are not greater than anyone else just
because you're beautiful. You are not greater than anyone else just because
you have a bunch of money. You are not greater than anyone else because
you have attained more education, or because people think you're great, or
even if you have spent your life doing “good works.” You are not greater than
anyone else.
Everyone is equal! And everyone should know they're great. Okay now,
I can hear you thinking... “surely he can't be saying that rapists, criminals,
mean people, haters, backstabbers, and egotists are great, can he?” My
answer to that is, if they truly knew they were great it would not be possible
for them to be any of those things. The primary attributes of each of these
“types” at the time that they are engaged in the behavior that gives them that
name, requires that they ignore the needs of others, which does not happen
much if you know you're great. If you know you're great, you have no need
to ignore the needs of others because you have no need to make yourself
greater by exploiting or downing others. If you know you're great, you know
you'll manage to get what you need in a legitimate way. That is, because you
know you're great, you won't have a problem asking for what you need or for
legitimate recognition of your accomplishments. More often than not you'll
feel like you get plenty, so why would you need to hurt anyone else?
Knowing that your needs are legitimate is, in actuality, one of the most
important aspects of knowing you're great. When you know you're great you
also know that you deserve to be treated like you're great (please see article,
“Assertiveness: The 30% Solution”). Of course that doesn't mean you'll
always be treated like you're great, but it does mean that you're not going to
spend much time with those who treat you badly. It wouldn't make sense to
continuously experience treatment from others that is clearly inconsistent with
your view of yourself. People who know they're great don't stay in
relationships in which they're not treated accordingly.
If you know you're great, then you know you count. That is, if you
know you're great, then you know that what you want and desire, and what
you think, are legitimate desires and thoughts. You may not always get what
you want, and you might not always be right in what you think, but if you
want it or think it, it should not be ignored. At the very least you should know
you deserve your desires and thoughts to be considered. At least that's what
you'd think if you knew you were great.
So you might be wondering if knowing you're great means you don't get
depressed, or anxious, or moody. As a matter of fact, knowing you're great is
a way to stay somewhat protected from mental illness, but it does not prevent
bad things from happening. Knowing you're great will not prevent a whole
slew of hardships that have nothing to do with what you think of yourself. It
also doesn't change your genetics or the circumstances in which you're born.
However, if you know you're great, you are certainly less likely to be in bad
relationships because you treat others with respect and expect the same from
them. You're less likely to take ill-advised risks because you have no need to
bolster a weak ego. So you're also less likely to have bad relationships or have
bad things happen to you. If you know you're great, you are, indeed, less
likely to get depressed or anxious or moody for a large variety of reasons.
Perhaps the most important reason that knowing you're great does make
you less likely to develop emotional problems is that when things are tough you
feel things will likely get better, and when others are not treating you well, you
can see your part in the problem without taking all the blame or taking others
views too personally. You see, if you know you're great, you can consider the
opinions of others without thinking you stink and without your pride boiling
over and thinking you need to prove others wrong. Because you know you're
great, where some would get mad as though insults are too much to bare, you
can maintain your knowledge of your greatness without fear that you've been
truly damaged by someone's opinion. Knowing you're great works as sort of
a balancing mechanism that helps you right the boat when the seas get stormy
regardless of what kind of storm is brewing.
Of course that might make one think that knowing you're great always
has a positive effect on every relationship. However, the effect of knowing
you're great on relationships can be mixed. Knowing you're great does not
make you get along with everyone, even if they too know they're great. There
are still going to be those who are more like you and less like you, and some
you like more than others. Knowing you're great might make you more likely
to get along with others, but it doesn't make you like them and it doesn't make
them like you. Actually, even when you really know you're great, and yet you
have perfectly healthy humility, some will dislike you just because you clearly
know you're great. Mostly that will come from those who don't know they're
great because they'll resent that someone could feel so good about themselves.
You see, knowing you're great is not the most common phenomenon, and is
actually a phenomenal accomplishment.
Unfortunately, developing the knowledge that you're great is not exactly
natural for many people. Often, life does not treat people like they're great,
and it would be very hard to imagine that developing such confidence could
occur in some circumstances (please see article, “self-esteem and its
connection to cognitive dissonance”). Even in the best of circumstances, the
knowledge that you're great does not always occur because it is not possible to
clearly show children that they are loved unconditionally. Even though most
parents do love their children unconditionally, the love they offer must always
be balanced by the discipline that is required in teaching children to be
responsible (please see articles, “Knowing what's 'right' in parenting”
“Freedom and Responsibility” and “Obsessive Compulsive Personality
Disorder”). So, successfully developing really good self-esteem, or the
knowledge that you're great, is actually quite rare even in the best of
circumstances. It is so rare that, in a way, it is the ultimate focus in any
psychotherapy.
Knowing that you're great is, in fact, a great way to simplify what therapy
is all about. Even where someone has been traumatized, even in those cases
where someone used to know they were great but seems to have lost that
knowledge, even when working with a couple and each of them needs to see
the greatness in the other, or in families where if only everyone could see the
greatness in one another everyone would prosper, knowing you're great helps
to solve every problem. If there could be one human idea that could change
everything for everyone simultaneously, one truly humanitarian ideal, it would
be that everyone would know that they all are great. It would be shared and it
would spread. And it starts in each individual (please see article, “From Id to
Family System”). It doesn't come easy, but if it came, it would make the
whole world a much easier place to live, grow and be healthy.
If you don't know you're great, you do not have good self-esteem.
That's a problem. I wish I could say it's an easy problem to fix, but that would
be a lie. As overly simplistic as this might sound, if you don't know you're
great, then learning that you're great, and believing it, is going to be the most
important goal you will need to set in feeling better about your life. In order to
accomplish that goal, however, you will need to accept and know that you are
not alone in your greatness. Each in their own way, every person is great.
You are not any greater than anyone else. If you know you're great, you will
have no real problem treating others as your equals because you will have no
need to demean or exploit them in making yourself feel greater than others. If
you know you're great, you'll have little difficulty knowing that your thoughts
and feelings are legitimate and should be considered. If you know you're great,
of course you'll be less likely to get depressed, anxious, or moody. Of course
you won't get along with everyone, but you'll be far less likely to get into
meaningless conflicts. Unfortunately, you might just find some people who
dislike you because you've accomplished something unusual. Unfortunately,
it's not so easy to develop the knowledge that you're great. But developing
that knowledge, and sharing that knowledge, the knowledge that you're great
(and so is everyone else), could be the beginning of a great revolution in your
thinking, and could be the seed in making the idea grow. If you haven't yet
developed it, developing the knowledge that you're great would undoubtedly
change everything about your life. If everyone developed the knowledge that
they're great, the feeling would spread. If everyone knew they were great, in
fact, there is no doubt that the world itself would be a far greater world, a
world in which we all could truly live and love freely, and fully flourish and
thrive.