WEBVTT 00:00:03.005 --> 00:00:07.974 I want you to imagine two people. The first man wakes up and does his usual 00:00:08.019 --> 00:00:13.610 routine before work, and it’s all a blur. He goes to work and when he comes home, he 00:00:13.061 --> 00:00:18.310 isn’t even really conscious of what he did. He starts eating the junk food he bought on 00:00:18.859 --> 00:00:23.867 his way home and watches TV while his wife tries to talk to him. 00:00:24.659 --> 00:00:30.460 Now imagine another man. He wakes up and tells his wife how thankful he is for their life. 00:00:30.046 --> 00:00:35.082 He drives over to his business and is passionately working to build it into something great. 00:00:35.082 --> 00:00:39.103 He comes home, and he and his wife have dinner together while they stay present to the moment 00:00:40.003 --> 00:00:44.007 with each other. Out of these two people, which one do you 00:00:44.007 --> 00:00:50.816 think is going to have higher self-esteem? The first pillar is the practice of living 00:00:50.879 --> 00:00:52.730 consciously. 00:00:52.073 --> 00:00:59.073 Lately, my hair has been thinning. What I haven’t done is this: “Uh, how come John’s 00:01:00.629 --> 00:01:06.710 hair isn’t thinning? How come John has better genetics? Oh and did I mention that John is 00:01:06.071 --> 00:01:12.082 also 6 foot 4?” Okay, the reason I haven’t done that is because, that’s a game you 00:01:12.082 --> 00:01:18.098 can’t win. I promise you. I don’t care who you are, even John can’t win that game. 00:01:18.098 --> 00:01:22.127 What I have done is what anyone who’s practiced building self-esteem in their life would do, 00:01:23.027 --> 00:01:30.027 and it is this: improve what you can change, and learn to accept what you can’t. Improve 00:01:31.026 --> 00:01:35.068 what you can change, and learn to accept what you can’t. 00:01:35.068 --> 00:01:40.091 Now let me address a common issue. There are people who think that self-acceptance somehow 00:01:40.091 --> 00:01:45.182 goes against self-improvement. It doesn’t. In fact, self-improvement can only follow 00:01:46.082 --> 00:01:50.153 self-acceptance. If I didn’t accept that my hair was thinning, I wouldn’t start researching 00:01:51.053 --> 00:01:55.065 what the right haircut needs to look like for me, and I would end up looking like Bobby 00:01:55.065 --> 00:02:01.142 Charlton. The second pillar is the practice of self-acceptance. 00:02:02.042 --> 00:02:07.050 I know a lot of people who are so physically unfit that it jeopardizes the most important 00:02:07.005 --> 00:02:12.011 things in their life like their health and their relationships. And when they get confronted 00:02:12.056 --> 00:02:17.056 about it, a lot of these people have learned a little trick that has been really trending 00:02:17.056 --> 00:02:22.065 lately. Apparently, everyone I know who is unhealthy is unhealthy because of a medical 00:02:23.046 --> 00:02:27.051 condition. Now, let me just be clear that I’m not saying that these conditions don’t 00:02:27.096 --> 00:02:32.162 exist. I’m just saying that 19 out of 20 of these people don’t have it. If you do 00:02:33.062 --> 00:02:38.075 not exercise, if you do not eat healthy, you probably shouldn’t be going around telling 00:02:38.075 --> 00:02:43.094 people how you’re overweight and unhealthy because of a medical condition. Yeah, they 00:02:43.094 --> 00:02:47.123 might treat you like you’re the victim, but guess what? The only reason they sympathize 00:02:48.023 --> 00:02:52.117 with you is because the last thing they care about is whether you’re taking care of yourself 00:02:53.017 --> 00:02:59.018 or not. The third pillar is the practice of self-responsibility. 00:02:59.027 --> 00:03:04.035 I don’t know of a single person who doesn’t take responsibility, loves playing the victim 00:03:04.035 --> 00:03:07.112 and also has high self-esteem. 00:03:08.012 --> 00:03:12.087 If I had a kid and I could only teach him one thing before he went to college, it would 00:03:12.087 --> 00:03:17.158 be how to stay authentic to his true self under pressure. Other than special occasions 00:03:18.058 --> 00:03:22.102 with my girlfriend where I’ll have some champagne, I don’t drink. I haven’t found 00:03:23.002 --> 00:03:27.036 that to be something of value to my life. When I was in college, I would go out with 00:03:27.036 --> 00:03:31.133 my friends and there was always that thing of, “Come on! Let’s get drunk.” And 00:03:32.033 --> 00:03:36.034 I was bad at a lot of things, but the one thing I was really good at was being really 00:03:36.034 --> 00:03:41.099 grounded in what I believed in. In fact, in almost every case it turned into guys having 00:03:41.099 --> 00:03:47.100 respect for it and girls being attracted to it. Now again, I didn’t say I sort of believed 00:03:48.009 --> 00:03:55.009 in it. It was fully standing for what I believed in, 100% unapologetic, and if that was a problem, 00:03:55.349 --> 00:04:01.530 everyone always knew I could just leave and go have fun somewhere else. I wasn’t half-assing 00:04:01.053 --> 00:04:06.078 anything. The fourth pillar is the practice of self-assertiveness. 00:04:06.078 --> 00:04:10.159 Now let me make it clear that asserting yourself doesn’t mean lacking social awareness or 00:04:11.059 --> 00:04:15.538 being pushy. I didn’t go to a party where I knew people would be drinking and start 00:04:16.069 --> 00:04:20.115 converting and preaching. Don’t be stupid with this, it depends on the context. I’m 00:04:20.529 --> 00:04:24.551 going to act a little differently if I’m in a classroom environment than if I’m around 00:04:24.749 --> 00:04:31.749 friends, but I’m not going to go against my authentic self in either situation. 00:04:31.083 --> 00:04:35.472 If you meet an entrepreneur who is passionate about his business, and if you also meet a 00:04:36.219 --> 00:04:42.400 person who is indifferent towards his regular job, the entrepreneur will almost always have 00:04:42.004 --> 00:04:48.803 higher self-esteem. Why is that? Because the entrepreneur is the modern day warrior. Just 00:04:49.199 --> 00:04:55.217 like the warrior has a strong sense of purpose and lives to conquer, so does the entrepreneur. 00:04:55.379 --> 00:04:59.413 He has higher self-esteem because he lives with a purpose. 00:04:59.719 --> 00:05:05.764 The fifth pillar is the practice of living purposefully. 00:05:06.169 --> 00:05:13.169 And finally, the sixth pillar – the practice of personal integrity. Notice how I said personal 00:05:13.409 --> 00:05:17.494 integrity, not someone else’s integrity. I went to a military academy and there were 00:05:18.259 --> 00:05:22.265 thousands of rules I had to follow, and I broke most of them and it didn’t bother 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:26.415 me at all or affect my self-esteem in any way, because those weren’t the things that 00:05:27.279 --> 00:05:33.279 went against what I believed in. But, if I act against what I believe in, my inner voice 00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:38.285 will tell me how I’m worthless over and over again. And only I will know, but when 00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:43.938 it comes to self-esteem, my inner voice is the one that matters the most. You can’t 00:05:44.469 --> 00:05:48.900 have the voice in your head telling you how worthless you are and build self-esteem at 00:05:48.009 --> 00:05:50.208 the same time. 00:05:51.099 --> 00:05:57.106 And these are the six pillars of self-esteem by Nathaniel Branden. Notice how each pillar 00:05:57.169 --> 00:06:04.169 starts with “the practice of.” Self-esteem is not something you build by reading a book 00:06:04.189 --> 00:06:09.287 or watching a video; it is something you build by constant practice for the rest of your 00:06:10.169 --> 00:06:10.194 life.