Up from Nothing by John Hope Bryant

Author:John Hope Bryant [John Hope Bryant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2020-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Self-Esteem and Confidence

Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself, the inside you. Confidence is how you express your competence or competencies, the outside you. Both matter.

Quincy Jones once told me, “Not one ounce of my self-esteem depends on someone else’s acceptance of me.” Over the years, as I was actively ridiculed, with people all around me literally rolling their eyes at my pursuit of my dreams, I took his words to heart.

Early in my business career, certain business types encouraged me to just focus on using my sales skills to “make money” any (legal) way that I could. Even back then, I knew that was a very short-term view of both the world and my potential in the world. They did not see me as I did—as a winner—before I visibly won. And so I didn’t take their advice. I did something that most everyone around me ignored, or placed on the back burner—I focused on the inner development of my true and unique self.

I accepted what my new friend Dr. Deepak Chopra said to all of us in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: “We’re not human beings that have . . . spiritual experiences, we’re spiritual beings, that have . . . human experiences.”2 Translation: energy matters. Ever since I reached this realization myself, I focused on finding the positive (path) in most everything around me, in recognizing the value of having positive and productive people around me. People who were and are “about something”—people who loved themselves, or at least tried to, and so would not have a problem sending love and good energy to me too.

I focused on becoming more conscious and aware of what made me and the world around me tick. I focused on getting out of my own way, on my own self-talk, and on my number-one spiritual goal for myself: becoming reasonably comfortable in my own skin. This would become the gift that just keeps on giving.

When I was coming up, I was very tender and sensitive about anything that anyone said about me that was not complimentary. When someone said something “bad” about me, I felt wounded. But today, I find that I am quick to point out my own limitations before anyone else does. But doing that is not some form of self-sabotage or self-hate. It’s just the opposite, actually. It is total self-acceptance. Because I realized that no one is perfect, and that there is no perfect, that we are all simply striving to become reasonably comfortable in our own skin. Ideally we can be perfectly imperfect, meaning that we can accept and acknowledge all of ourselves, the good and the bad, as whole and complete.

I hope we can accept that we are not as good as our compliments nor as bad as our critiques—especially those we level against ourselves. I want all of us to simply be happy enough with who we are. Did you know that the greatest compliment you can give yourself is to

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