The world is flooded with self improvement books. Each one of them acts like a coach to guide the reader on his path of success both professionally and socially. There is one common denominator as far as self improvement or self help books are concerned. Another “selfish” word – self esteem. Since the “self help movement” started a couple of decades ago, the experts authoring these books came to the rather unscientific conclusion that people are obnoxious losers because they lack self esteem. It may have something to do with an unhappy childhood, but the gurus felt and so many still subscribe to that “you’ve got to love yourself before you can love others” myth.
How do we know it’s a myth? Because after an entire generation of self help books with thousands of titles published and billions of dollars spent on all the “non-fiction” bestsellers, America is still the same old country full of unhappy and unloved people. And Singapore is not spared this rip-off. Some years ago, two of my buddies in the army used to snap up every single self help book in the local bookstores. They were single, unhappy and not rich enough. After spending thousands on these books, they were still single, lonely, unhappy and a few thousand dollars poorer. Have the gurus thought of preaching a diametrically opposing doctrine?
Who are the people who are often unhappy and usually unloved; with few friends and even fewer successes in life? Who are the losers? Personally, the losers that I see around me are typically self-centred spoilt brats with poor emotional control. Is there a problem with their self esteem? Do they love themselves too little? Hell, no. In fact, they often have too much self-respect and too little respect for others. They turn hostile when others merely express impatience in repeating something to them. On the other hand, they don’t seem to realise that all the while, others are being very tolerant to their impatience and rudeness which they can’t see. Of course the spoilt brat may choose to live in denial and accuse the whole world of being against them. The objective indicator for who is right and who is wrong lies in the number of friends they and the people they criticise have. The genuine spoilt brats have few friends and even more telling is their propensity to blame the very nature of the environment for their unhappiness.
Like the yin and yang theory in Chinese medicine, boosting the self esteem of these individuals will merely upset the balance of yin and yang further. And without self help books, the parents of these spoilt brats are already doing a very good job perpetuating their self-centredness. These helpless folks agree with everything the spoilt brat says because they fear that disagreeing will trigger a round of tantrums. This way, the spoilt brat will never learn his/her mistakes. Certain cultures actually consider this as appropriate action in the face of unreasonable people/behaviour. I beg to differ. The more we give in to unreasonable behaviour, the more we encourage it.
No country can progress without peace and stability. No personal achievements can be made without hardwork, patience and a calm, peaceful mind. Glitches and mistakes are sometimes caused by our own carelessness. Sometimes they is caused by others’ carelessness or a breakdown in communication. They are intolerant to any glitches in life, getting angry and throwing tantrums whenever things don’t turn out right. By blowing up and blaming everyone instead of staying calm to resolve the matter amicably with people who are not impossible to work with, they effectively set bridges on fire, cutting off opportunities for future interaction and cooperation. Do we still need to add the oil of self esteem on those burning bridges?
The majority of people are able to deal with spoilt brats simply by avoiding them. Not when it happens in your family. Some parents continue to pamper those spoilt brats all the way to adulthood, soothing their already fiery ego on a daily basis. Ironically, that is meant to stop these grown ups from throwing tantrums or issuing malicious threats. What else can the aged parents do?
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