The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
Nathaniel Branden
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem is Nathaniel Branden's definition of self-esteem as the experience of being competent to cope with life and worthy of happiness, earned through six practices: living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully and personal integrity. It is not thinking well of yourself but the reputation you acquire with yourself, and it is built by practice rather than declared.
Self-esteem came to mean feeling good about yourself, and Branden, who had spent a career on it, wrote this book to take the word back. His version is stricter and more useful: six things you do, any of which can be resumed tomorrow.
The book in essence
Branden argues that self-esteem is a need, like calcium, and that the culture's substitute, praise and affirmation without competence, produces the opposite. His definition has two halves. Self-efficacy is confidence in your ability to think and cope with life's challenges. Self-respect is confidence in your right to be happy and to have your wants matter. Both are earned through six practices, each described as a discipline rather than a feeling. Living consciously: seeking to see what is real, including what you would rather not. Self-acceptance: refusing to be at war with your own experience, which is not approval but the refusal to disown what you feel, think, want or have done. Self-responsibility: owning your choices and their results. Self-assertiveness: honouring your wants and views by expressing them. Living purposefully: having goals and acting toward them. Personal integrity: matching behaviour to values. Each chapter includes sentence-completion exercises, Branden's clinical tool, and the book closes on self-esteem in work, parenting and culture.
Published in 1994 after The Psychology of Self-Esteem in 1969, it is the summary of a career and a common reference for the stricter definition; its six pillars are used as a diagnostic in therapy and coaching.
Who it's for
- Anyone who has tried affirmations and found them hollow
- People whose confidence is low in one specific area and who want to know which practice is missing there
- Readers who want self-esteem as work rather than mood
Who it's not for
- — Readers wanting a warm book; Branden is demanding and a little austere
- — Anyone expecting the six pillars to be quick; they are practices for a lifetime
Key lessons
01
Self-esteem is a reputation with yourself
Branden's definition has two halves. Self-efficacy is the confidence that you can think, learn and cope with what life brings. Self-respect is the sense that you are worthy of happiness and that your wants matter. Neither is produced by thinking well of yourself. Both are acquired the way any reputation is, from a record: what you watched yourself do when it was hard. Acting, learning from what went wrong and correcting it build the record, which is why a person who treats every failure as information is building self-esteem whether or not it feels that way on the day.
An accountant in Bursa who reviews a bad meeting as 'I did not prepare the first two minutes' rather than 'I am hopeless' is building the reputation; the review is the practice.
02
Self-acceptance is the pillar to start with
It is not approval. It is the refusal to disown what you feel, think, want or have done: 'I was afraid in the meeting' stated plainly. You cannot change what you will not admit is there, so acceptance is usually where practice has to begin. A person at war with their own experience spends their energy fighting the feeling and has little left for acting; once the feeling is acknowledged, it becomes something to work with rather than something to hide. Acceptance also makes the other pillars possible: you cannot express a want you have not admitted having.
A junior architect in Istanbul cannot accept that he is anxious in reviews, fights it, and has nothing left for saying what he thinks. He starts by saying 'I am anxious in reviews' to himself without argument, and the assertiveness follows within the month.
03
The pillars are a diagnosis
When confidence is low in an area, one pillar is usually missing there: a decision not owned (self-responsibility), a want not expressed (self-assertiveness), a value not acted on (integrity), or a fact not looked at (living consciously). Scoring the six from one to five for that specific area turns a vague sense of inadequacy into a named practice. The lowest score is the one to resume this week, and because each pillar is a behaviour rather than a mood, it can be resumed tomorrow, on a bad day as well as a good one.
The architect scores consciousness four, acceptance two, responsibility four, assertiveness one, purpose three, integrity four. The picture is exact, and the two lowest are where he starts.
Try this today
Score the six pillars from one to five for the area where your confidence is lowest, and choose the lowest-scoring one as the practice you will keep this week.
Quick check
What is self-esteem, in Branden's definition?
What does self-acceptance mean here?
Selected quotes
“Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.”
“To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.”