IAmNotAPerson6 t1_j1c1br1 wrote
Reply to comment by EchosEchosEchosEchos in Knowing the content of one’s own mind might seem straightforward but in fact it’s much more like mindreading other people by ADefiniteDescription
1000% this. It's important to acknowledge how much other people don't know things or wing it or are faking it and whatnot, to help mitigate the impostor syndrome and low self-esteem, though those are not always sufficient, admittedly (I'm exhibit A lmao). It really does seem to be about doing your best to accept that everything is tentative and best guesses, based on convention and rarely are things hard and fast, etc.
The abuse of being willing to admit faults is a whole other ball game. But at least for the personal individual matters, even being willing to admit fault and apologize shows that one generally knows when an error was made, and that knowing can then potentially be used to alleviate impostor syndrome and low self-esteem, because it can be used to make one's self better. That's way easier said than done, and someone might just as easily feel worse when admitting an error (hi, it's me again), but it doesn't have to be that way.
This is a really cloudy area to talk about as it's super abstract, but I do wanna try to outline a certain path that helped me a little. Political stuff I've read has always involved a lot of self-criticism, but the last couple years I've read a lot that has involved taking in way more perspectives and academic research than usual. It's helped me see that how things are framed matters immensely and that usually most perspectives have something to contribute. This has helped me become totally fine seeing when something a political opponent says is correct, or when someone points out something bad about me or something. I'll freely admit that, but just incorporate it into the frame and/or reshape the frame of the conversation or interaction based on whether or not it's relevant, how it is, how it does or does not change anything, etc. And I'll freely admit when I don't know something and don't know how it affects the framework of something. Because everything's tentative. I realize this may all sound meaningless because I'm not giving a lot of detail, it's just super hard to talk about without going insanely in-depth if someone hasn't gone through a similar intellectual path (I realize how unbelievably pretentious that phrasing is, I just can't think of any other way to put it lmao). But basically, reading and learning lots of self-criticism of my own and similar political tendencies, learning a bit about the vast amount of research on subjects involved in political stuff that's emphasized in those tendencies, seeing how nuanced and controversial and surprising and ingenious and whatnot that that research can be, seeing how various perspectives color one's interpretation of the world and the ways they do and don't contribute things that are true, all helped me be more okay with the tentativeness of my own understanding of things and how it can change, especially when encountering new or different understandings.
Again, that's not all necessarily sufficient for alleviating low self-esteem, but it could possibly help.
ChaoticJargon t1_j1d89y6 wrote
I appreciate this post, though what I'd like to say is that low-self esteem is a multi-faceted problem that starts with our core beliefs about ourselves and includes both conscious and unconscious biases.
But I will just mention here how I overcame my own self-esteem issues - I addressed two problems within my core beliefs about self-worth. The first belief I addressed was how self-worth related to my failures - to solve this I tied my failures to self-growth and the idea of being a better person, in other words, recognizing my failures would inevitably help me grow as a person since I could resolve those failures and learn from them.
The second thing I did was develop my concept of self-compassion. Many people have negative self-talk which tends to cause a low-self esteem, so I changed my self-talk to be more encouraging and I also recognized that there's an emotional investment tied to self-talk, and that emotional investment can be helpful or harmful depending on the words I use, so I use encouraging words instead of detrimental ones.
Finally, I realized the inherent humanness of having flaws, the unique perspectives they bring, and the fact that perfection is impossible, these thoughts allowed me to see everyone as equal and unique. Everyone is growing at their own unique pace and everyone only needs encouragement to be better or do better, since seeking approval is fairly normal for people to do.
Though that is what helped me, I could elaborate more if need be, but there is no end to how we can improve our beliefs. I've written quite a lot about it on my profile if you're interested in learning more.
fugazikolo t1_j1dbp8c wrote
Lovely comment! Thx for posting. Related to it alot. Been going thru similar things in recent years
iiioiia t1_j1j6mop wrote
> That's way easier said than done
So have been many capabilities humans now wield/enjoy (consider how long it took to get from London to New York before flight was figured out), until someone actually decided to figure out how to do it.
Apologies for the optimism. 🙏
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