Wait a minute. Did he really just say martial arts don’t boost self-esteem? Is this dude insane or something?
Maybe so, but that isn’t why I made that statement.
The reason I say martial arts don’t boost self-esteem boils down to one thing: definitions. There are two terms that many people define incorrectly, which leads to this erroneous belief about martial arts. One term is self-esteem, and the other is self-confidence. Many people believe these terms are interchangeable.
I assure you they are not, and I intend to show you how.
What is Self-Esteem?
If I want you to understand my point, then I need to give you the definitions I am using, right? After all, we cannot communicate if we are going by two completely different meanings.
Self-esteem is something that comes from within us. Nothing external to our own minds can give this to us (not should anything external to us be allowed to take it away). There may be moments where you achieve some goal or someone gives you a compliment, and you feel good about yourself. However, that is not self-esteem. (There is another term for that, which we will discuss later.)
With that in mind, I provide you with the definition that I use, which comes from the “father” of self-esteem psychology, the late Dr. Nathaniel Branden: “Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness.”
BRIEF SIDE NOTE: Here is an article that you can read as a companion piece to mine. It contains the definition I just used, plus many other pearls of wisdom.
https://nathanielbranden.com/what-selfesteem-is-and-is-not/
The key part here is in the words “experience oneself.” In other words, what you think of you, not what your teacher or boss said about you at the last staff meeting. It’s not about winning an award or hearing “yes” when you asked out the person you’ve been pining after for as long as you can remember.
What are those things to be called then? Well, let’s take a look at that.
What Self-Esteem Is NOT
Tonight in your martial arts class, you witnessed an amazing thing: Sam Smith broke 100 boards at once…with one punch! Everyone was praising Sam. In fact, his hand was left sore from all the high-fives he received.
Then when he got home, Sam wondered what kind of content he’d write if he composed a suicide note.
Why would Sam contemplate this?
It’s because he doesn’t have true self-esteem.
The good feeling you get from accomplishments is called “external validation.” It means it took some positive achievement for you to feel good about yourself. Unfortunately, what many fail to realize (even when it is proven time after time) is that the joy from these things is fleeting.
Aside from receiving praise or winning awards, do you know what other external things can give fleeting moments of joy?
Drugs and alcohol.
Although the high you get from winning an award is nowhere near as destructive as drug or alcohol addiction, it still leads to the same place: absolutely nowhere.
What is Self-Confidence?
As I said in the beginning, many people believe self-esteem and self-confidence are the same thing. This has to do with how people define the terms, although there is something else going on: people mistakenly believe any good feeling that you have about yourself constitutes self-esteem.
I will discuss that later, but for now I want to provide a definition of our other term. Self-confidence is trust in your abilities, in knowing what you can and cannot do. Period. End of story. That is all it is.
It has nothing to do with how you feel about yourself.
Look at a rock star like Kurt Cobain. His songs completely changed the face of popular music (for better or worse; just listen to the correlation and don’t get caught up on whether Cobain’s music sucked or not). He was praised as the spokesperson of a generation. Millions of fans loved him.
And what did he do?
He killed himself.
Why? He had millions of fans, fame, money, a wife, and a child. In my opinion, he had an amazing voice; whatever he was feeling, you knew what it was when he sang, which is actually a rare gift. Also, not for nothing, but he was a rather handsome gent to boot, but even though he had all these things going for him, he took himself out.
It’s because everything he had was external. To quote directly from an Article on ReadandSpell.com (available to be read here), “If confidence is a matter of trust, esteem is an assessment of value. It is possible for an individual to be confident in certain areas of his or her life and still have low self-esteem.”
Conversely, there was another 90s rock star who had suicidal thoughts at one point, but did not act on them: Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins. (Many people wish he weren’t here, but again the quality of music is irrelevant; only the correlation is.) In fact, ever since he overcame those feelings, Billy has gone to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. He is considered to be boastful, arrogant, and conceited. It’s like he is trying to overcompensate for years of low self-esteem.
Of course, what he doesn’t realize is that he still doesn’t have self-esteem. This is evident in interviews he gives. For example, one Pumpkins album got an average of 3-star reviews. In one interview Billy said, “No one believes I could ever release a 3-star album.” If Mr. Corgan had true self-esteem, he wouldn’t even care how many stars critics gave his albums.
Martial Arts is Like a Drug
The correlation is probably obvious, but I will spell it out anyway.
Martial arts can in fact give you a good feeling. It can definitely raise self-confidence, meaning your trust in your ability to do things. However, this is not the same as raising self-esteem.
The number of tournaments you win, boards you break, and praise you get on how well you execute your forms cannot fill the hole of low self-esteem. It is dangerous to even think so. I will explain why in the form of a question.
Let’s say you are the best practitioner in your martial arts school. You beat all opponents soundly, people don’t even bother signing up for forms competitions because of you, and bricks and boards choose to break themselves to avoid facing the wrath of your fists and feet. You feel as high as the top of a mountain. Like many others, you believe this means you have good self-esteem.
Then you get in a car accident, and you are left a quadriplegic. Now you can’t do any of those fancy kicks, or execute those forms with such precision, or beat a single opponent.
Here’s the question: you thought so highly of yourself because of all the things you could do. Now you can’t do them, so what does that mean? That you are worthless? Garbage?
If you think “yes,” then you do not have good self-esteem.
Reality is Required for Good Self-Esteem
Anyone who avoids reality will never have good self-esteem.
You know that one person who, whenever they make a mistake at work and it gets brought to their attention, blames their error on everyone else? Yeah, well, that coworker will never have good self-esteem until he owns up to what he did. Taking responsibility is part of self-esteem.
This goes back to something I briefly mentioned at the start of the section on self-confidence: not every good feeling equals good self-esteem. In fact, self-esteem isn’t even 100% about feeling good.
Anyone can feel good when faced with their own positive qualities. The trick is to still feel like a competent, valuable person who deserves to be happy even when faced with the negative aspects of ourselves.
To illustrate my point, I want to quote the fictional character Tiffany Maxwell from Silver Linings Playbook. She appeared in the 2008 novel by Matthew Quick and was played with undeniable grace and beauty by Jennifer Lawrence in the 2012 film adaptation. Tiffany says (to main character Pat Solitano, played by Bradley Cooper): “There’s always going to be part of me that’s sloppy and dirty, but I like that. With all the other parts of myself. Can you same the same about yourself?” (She added a crass word at the end there, but I omitted it to keep things as close to G-rated as I can.)
As crazy and dysfunctional as Tiffany may be, there is one thing this statement shows that she does have going for her: a healthy level of self-esteem.
Conclusion
What was I getting at with all of this, you wonder? Well, it certainly wasn’t to say martial arts is useless or to knock it in any way. It was simply to point out that it cannot build self-esteem because true self-esteem is not based on accomplishments.
Martial arts is one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me. I have learned so much about life and myself through my experiences, but at the same time I don’t want people to think it can be used for something that it can’t.
It’s great that you feel good about yourself because you won first place at the All-Valley Karate Championship. However, you are fooling yourself if you believe that feeling means you have high self-esteem. That is an illusion
If we want to get anywhere in life, then we need to face reality as it is. Illusions are dangerous things. You might go to sit on a chair at your kitchen table, only to fall and break your neck because the chair was never there.
So let’s be realistic about what martial arts can and cannot do. I don’t want anyone breaking their neck on my watch.
His YouTube channel (Geek Wing Chun) gives free training tips and ideas for people who want to get better at Wing Chun but can't make it to class as often as they'd like. Check it out by simply typing "Geek Wing Chun" into the YouTube search field!
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- Martial Arts Do NOT Boost Self-Esteem - September 28, 2022
- TRAINING TIP – Ignore the Latest Shiny Object - August 4, 2022
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