“Connect with your best self and improve your self-esteem”, “Manual to be happy and succeed”, “Life will pay any price you ask for”, “Thank all those people who told you no, thanks to them you managed to do everything yourself”…
The coaching landscape or self-help books have filled self-care with motivational messages to face any challenge and numerous courses and conferences promise quick and effective solutions for everyone. But what can personal growth talks really offer to help people?
“There are people who at some moments in life go through difficulties and, when they have the necessary tools, that little push can help them take the step. For example, it could be useful to change jobs, a situation that can be somewhat scary,” says Anna Valentina Caprioli, a clinical psychologist at Buencoco.
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre conceived a thought translated as “man is what he does with what they made of him”, around the “condemnation” that freedom supposes for people. There is a capacity for individual maneuver and responsibility within a more or less wide range of possibilities to reach what is sometimes referred to as the “optimum version of oneself”. But that fork is not identical for everyone.
A problem that can emerge from motivational messages is that they generally use the same yardstick for all people, ignoring personal differences, especially in terms of resources of all kinds. These range from economic or social, to tools that the individual has developed to adapt to the world.
Social, cultural or economic conditions determine almost more strongly how far an individual can go than his will. In this sense, people with lower incomes have worse mental and physical health than those with higher incomes. Also, women hold fewer positions of responsibility or migrants find it much more difficult to rent a home. If they want, they can’t always.
The word coach translates from English as “trainer”, the person in charge of squeezing the athlete to win the competitions. Coaching has been transferred with this objective to the business world, where it is especially useful since it improves the performance of the workforce and the numbers of the companies. Applied to personal growth, it often leads to the intermingling of happiness and self-esteem with performance.
The evidence does affirm that feeling effective when, for example, achieving achievements, which can range from getting out of bed to climbing an eight-thousander, is related to better self-esteem. Setting realistic goals is key to moving in this direction. But not only success intervenes. Other factors, such as having healthy relationships and feeling appreciated, are linked to a more positive assessment of one’s own person.
The issue of performance, linked to the fact that the focus when it comes to achieving change is placed almost exclusively on the individual, can end up being a hard blow for those who fail to improve according to the established standards.
Many people come to Caprioli’s office with the weight of self-demand. “Culturally, we receive a message of a model that must be achieved. When we feel outside of that model, this can cause us that feeling of feeling inadequate”, explains the psychologist. It is important to her both that people recognize her strengths and accept her “defects, if we want to call them that, which is what makes us human.” Thus, both sending messages to oneself that extol one’s own strengths and that show respect and compassion improve self-perception according to scientific literature.
Examples of pathological success can be found in vigorexia or orthorexia. The search for perfection in the physique or in food sometimes leads to extreme patterns that are not at all healthy from a global perspective of the individual. A person can be optimal in terms of the diet they follow, but complying with the imposition would be detrimental to other health markers, as it is likely to encourage extreme control and concern or reduce social encounters for not breaching the diet .
In this way, a good self-esteem and an optimal version of oneself often emerge as incompatible with the presence of weaknesses or defects. Emotions considered negative such as fear or sadness do not seem to fit either. However, this type of affective state plays a key role for people and is useful, although it may not seem like it, for well-being. Thus, sadness causes people to come to offer help, fear protects from dangers or anger helps to express needs, according to the psychologist.
The key to talking in terms of health is to avoid extremes. It will not be beneficial to be happy at all costs or never to be happy, nor will the search for the best or perfect bring positive consequences for the subject at the same time that laziness does not help. As Caprioli explains, when one objective is reached, the next one is ready, and it can become an endless and never satisfactory cycle.
The scale will depend on the person himself. The “12 keys to happiness” are by no means universal. For someone happiness may come, in part, from getting time each day to spend with her friends and for someone else getting that time for herself.
“In all the decisions we make in life, in all the things that happen to us, we gain something and lose something. We always have to ask ourselves the price that is paid. If you keep it in an area that gives you well-being, perfect”, says the psychologist.