Interviewing for High Self-Esteem Women

author:          "David Shade"
date:             Sat, 7 March 2003 15:00:00 GMT
website:       www.fastseduction.com
subject:        Interviewing for High Self-Esteem Women  ...Self-esteem is an experience. It is a particular way of experiencing the self...

I specifically interview for high self-esteem women. The most comprehensive discussion on self-esteem I have seen is by Nathaniel Branden at nathanielbranden.net. He articulated it well when he wrote:

"Self-esteem is an experience. It is a particular way of experiencing the self. It is to move toward life rather than away from it; to move toward consciousness rather than away from it; to treat facts with respect rather than denial; and to operate self-responsibly rather than the opposite."

He defined self-esteem as "being competent to cope with the challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. It is confidence in our ability to learn, make appropriate choices and decisions, and respond effectively to change. It is the experience that success, achievement, fulfillment, and happiness are right and natural for us. It is a consciousness to trust our self. It strives for rationality, coherence, clarity, and truth."

He defined six practices of a healthy self-esteem:

1)  Living consciously: Respect for facts, open to new knowledge and feedback, and seeking to understand the world and ourselves.

2)  Self-acceptance: Realism applied to self. The willingness to own, experience, and take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, without evasion, denial, or disowning.

3)  Self-responsibility: Realizing that we are the author of our choices and actions; that each one of us is responsible for life and well being and for the attainment of our goals.

4)  Self-assertiveness: Being authentic in our dealings with others; treating our values and persons with decent respect in social contexts; refusing to fake the reality of who we are or what we esteem in order to avoid disapproval; the willingness to stand up for ourselves and our ideas in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts.

5)  Living purposefully: Identifying our short-term and long-term goals or purposes and the actions needed to attain them.

6)  Integrity: Living with congruence between what we know, what we profess, and what we do; telling the truth, honoring our commitments, exemplifying in action the values we profess to admire.

"What all these have in common is respect for reality."

What we call high self-esteem and low self-esteem, Nathaniel Branden calls self-esteem and pseudo self-esteem. He defined pseudo self-esteem as: "trying to compensate for deficiencies; a pretense at a self-confidence and self-respect; the effort to protect self-esteem with denial and evasion, which only results in a further deterioration of self-esteem."

Pseudo self-esteem can be easily identified by: "the defensiveness with which insecure people may respond when their errors are pointed out, or the extraordinary feats of avoidance and self-deception people can exhibit with regard to gross acts of non-consciousness and irresponsibility, or the foolish and pathetic ways people sometimes try to prop up their egos by the wealth or prestige of their spouse, the make of their automobile, or the fame of their dress designer, or by the exclusiveness of their golf club."

Traits of pseudo self-esteem include: delusional, ignorance, denial, evasion, betrayal of consciousness or conviction, lack of integrity, grandiosity, fantasies of superiority, conceited (exaggerated opinion of oneself,) boasting, arrogance, and the victim mentality of blaming others. What all these have in common is the lack of respect for reality. But the biggest indicator is the angry denial of low self-esteem or the denial that self-esteem is significant or desirable.

I have found the following to be true of HSE women and LSE women:

LSE women are insecure and seek validation from men.

HSE women are secure in themselves and have nothing to prove.

LSE women have a bottomless pit of emotional need that can never be filled. HSE women are self fulfilled.

LSE women will manipulate a man to make him meet her needs.