736. Gender Differences Revisited — Group K

1. If she does not need him more than he needs her, she will tire and find him inadequate.
2. If she talks a man into marriage, it won’t last. A man’s devotion to marriage is very different than his devotion to a woman.
3. The women seeking masculine-style sexual freedom have made sex more fashionable than stable and long-term relationships. With help from men, Hollywood, and the media, it strengthens male dominance and directly weakens female influence in relationships.
4. Men instinctively think in terms of ‘you and me’. Women think in terms of ‘us’.
5. A man’s marital entrapment of a wife bonds him. A woman’s marital entrapment of a husband fools him once.
6. Marriage to women is monumental life enhancement. To men, it just happens.
7. Men are the more frank. Offer them what they don’t want or can’t use, and they will tell you. Women accept graciously, but do nothing with it.
8. Men are risk takers and tend to minimize risks after exposure. Women are risk avoiders and tend to eliminate risks to avoid exposure.

735. Adult Mistakes with Kids’ Self-image

NOTE: What follows excludes gift-giving events such as birthdays, Christmas, graduation, etc.

Trying to directly improve a child’s self-esteem (see #734), adults provide gifts and praise for little more than effort, good intentions, and trying. It impacts self-image harshly and slows development.

·        Adults misuse this psychological principle: We all keep doing what we’re successful at. Therefore, they reason, if kids are given symbols of success, they will do better. Not so! Symbols are not substance, kids know or shortly learn the difference, and repetition works against adult hopes.

·        Unearned gifts and praise confuse a child’s developing value system. For example: If trying hard is sufficient for reward, why finish a task? Or, if results don’t count, why try so hard?

·        Self-image defines what we think we can and can’t do, our capabilities. It develops primarily from failures, successes, and self-talk.

·        Unearned gifts and things reverse development of a child’s self-image. They short-circuit natural development that occurs through accomplishments, dreams, and integrating associated and unrelated thoughts.

·        Kids have a conscious mind. They know when they try hard and do well. Gifts and praise become meaningless, when the child’s conscious mind disagrees with the reasons for unearned rewards.

·        Disguising failure to keep a child from thinking ill of himself is counterproductive. If he doesn’t learn to handle it in childhood, his adult life will fill with misery.

·        A child knows when he tries, what he accomplishes, what he deserves. Contradict those thought processes, and confusion arises about his true value in the world in which he tries to grow.

·        Immediate gratification removes the challenges that build self-respect and shape character and a child’s picture of his integrity. 

·        Enough disagreement with adult decisions, and a child loses respect for adults. Or, self-respect never develops in the child.

·        Boys and girls conclude something like this about unearned gifts and praise: ‘They shouldn’t do that. I don’t deserve it.’ After some respect for adults is lost, this natural follow-on occurs: ‘I wouldn’t do it for them.’ It turns them toward self-centeredness and selfishness.

·        Finally, this surprise: Unearned gifts and praise show adult disrespect for a child. Making kids feel good to prevent bad internal vibes sends this uncomplimentary message: ‘You can’t do it or handle it for yourself. You need my help.’ 

Kids appreciate it more, and their self-image develops more smoothly, when they receive only what they earn. Rewards, especially those imposed by Self, condition the mind to repeat successes and avoid failures.

734. Adult Mistakes with Kids’ Self-esteem

I needn’t cite all the concepts, premises, and techniques that the education establishment has concocted and parents copy in the name of improving self-esteem. If it’s being done to improve self-esteem, odds are great it is wrong. (For example, grades and trophies given for participation rather than accomplishments and adequacies rather than excellence.)

Parents and teachers misunderstand self-esteem and self-image, and it leads to much adult wrongheadedness. They try to improve the self-esteem of kids, but they can’t. (It tampers with self-image, and they don’t know it. See #735.)

Adults try to make kids feel good by gifting and praising for good intentions or just trying. Immediate feel-goods are not the same as inflating self-esteem. When it doesn’t produce the desired results, the adults try harder to no avail.

·        They seek to provide incentive for greater effort by the child next time. But they teach that immediate gratification follows effort alone, which produces an unsatisfied adult in the business world.

·        Indulging children to improve their self-esteem goes beyond ineffectiveness, it goes against human nature.

·        Rewards or praise for trying sells the idea that good intentions are good enough. It sells parents the idea that they are doing all that is required of them, plus the success of their giving rewards them. They easily convince themselves that they do the right thing.

·        Providing unearned gifts and praise does not uplift a child’s self-esteem, which is hardwired and unchangeable. On the contrary, it leads to a boy’s disrespect for givers, and a boy’s love rises from respect. For girls, such symbols ultimately become stressful in their relationship with givers.

·        Unearned gifts and praise produce cognitive dissonance aka mental noise that confuses the child. Its conscious mind works to clear opposing beliefs. The simplest way concludes that the well-intentioned adults are wrong, which means respect for adults declines.

·        In the end, the only benefits accrue to the adults. They make themselves feel good by recognizing, giving, and pleasing.

All done with good intentions, but the outcomes damage the immature psyche, worsen life for adults, and weaken society for all. That’s because the well-intended things they do slow or prevent development of self-image (#735).

733. Response to Viewer — Item 19

Her Highness LoveLikeNoOther asked how to get, cultivate, and display ‘inner beauty’ such that a man stays attracted for the long haul and into marriage. Consider these things and use what makes sense.

‘Inner beauty’ is not so much what she has as what he perceives. She’s challenged to expose her inner self such that he at least perceives her qualifications for becoming his wife.

Anything about her that makes him grateful probably puts her on the right track. Keep in mind, though, men don’t express their gratefulness to the same degree as females. So, he’s easy to misread.

A man’s primal need ranks at the top of his expectations for a wife: It’s a place to flop, eat, throw his things, and prepare for his battles tomorrow. Dodge that, and her inner beauty may sour before it can sweeten.

He expects her to see and agree with him about who he is and what he does. His sense of significance ranks as more important in his world than hers. If she tries to reverse it, she weakens her inner beauty.

Except for sex and delaying conquest, she should wait until deep within courtship to disclose anything that would compete with his dreams, interests, and personal ambitions. This requires the ability to accept defeats and treat victories with the same face, but this serendipitously generates greater mystery about her.

Waiting until deep within courtship to ‘unveil’ her total self guarantees nothing. However, it generates more time for him to be exposed to her desirable qualities, admirable character, and likeability as mate.

Certain relationship issues cause mental conflict in men and consequently disturb a woman’s inner beauty:

·         Cheap and easy sex qualifies her for temporary relationships, but it makes marriage questionable for him.

·         Codependency stretches a normal relationship out of shape and unbalances how each one views the other.

·         Her independence during courtship earns a man’s respect. And, a man’s love is based on respect. (Her dependence after marriage earns his respect.)

·         Respect for him and gratitude for who he is or what he does, all shown regularly, are essential for his staying around.

·         Her claims to personal virtue coupled with low standards about her sexual habits call her honesty into question and weaken admiration for her character.

·         Her feminine virtues, emboldened by strong streaks of independence in courtship, confirm her candidacy for lifetime marriage.

These are a few of the flags that signify the presence or absence of inner beauty in females. I’ve not mentioned the many blessings that the bible describes so readily and clearly.

732. Self-esteem, -image, and -interest: Self-interest

Self-interest is the universal motivator. It’s whatever makes us do something. What we ignore is not self-interest. What we pursue is. It includes responsibilities, dreams, and fears. It inspires our get up and go, our energy for what keeps us going. It’s everything that pushes or pulls us along the road of life.

Life’s Superhighway

·        Self-interest is the engine. It keeps us moving.

·        Self-esteem is both horn and accelerator. It greatly influences how well we travel with others, those we pass and those that pass us.

·        Self-image sets boundaries on our behavior. It keeps us in the lane that’s right for us at the time and between the shoulders. Although we may drift into the wrong lane accidentally or purposely, self-image brings us back to the right lane for us.

·        These psychological factors reside in the subconscious mind, where they are mixed and churned by experiences in life and modified by daily feedback aka self-talk.

·        Out of this mixture arises our attitude, which reflects outwardly the outcome of all the constant mixing and churning. On the roadway, attitude becomes our speed. The right attitude for road conditions pushes us ahead of others. We trail behind when our attitude conflicts with those around us.

And that’s how the subconscious mind works to protect each of us behind the scenes of our conscious world.

Although this closes the series, a connected article about practical applications will be posted as 734 -Adult Mistakes on Saturday morning.

731. Self-esteem, -image, and -interest: Self-image V

What follows is the toughest part for understanding this series: When one’s self-image makes one like oneself, why isn’t that self-esteem?

Self-image

We like and appreciate ourselves daily. Some victory, accomplishment, or memory generates feelings of elation and appreciation for whom and what we are. We temporarily have a good picture of ourselves.

We also dislike and feel bad about ourselves daily. Some incident or memory triggers feelings of dissatisfaction, doubt, and guilt about whom and what we are. We temporarily have a negative image of ourselves, and we’re glad when it doesn’t develop into a picture viewable by others.

Both the daily ups and downs are temporary and based on our conscious thoughts. They remain part of our self-image; they’re merely several of the pixels* that light up or dim when cued by an incident or memory.

Our current self-image includes the ups and downs of daily life; they’re temporary and easily changed. In fact they’re as changeable as the various environments we pass through each day: work, mealtime, travel, home, entertainment, relaxation, waking up in the morning.

We work diligently to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. We primarily do it with accomplishments (males), associations (females), and lessons learned. That is, we work constantly to generate a better picture of ourselves in our mind’s eye. Self-image develops throughout life.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem, on the other hand, is already developed and operates in background. It’s the subliminal super-opinion one has of Self that the daily ups and downs of self-image don’t change.

Perhaps you love yourself regardless of what happens. Perhaps you hate yourself regardless. Or, more likely, you’re somewhere in between and neither hate nor love yourself. But you have a definite sense of your overall worth as a person—e.g., good, adequate, inadequate, bad, average, better than acceptable. It’s yours for life, because your brain was wired that way in infancy.

This sense of one’s worth in and to the world doesn’t change, but it can be replaced by a new super-opinion of yourself. Committing one’s life to Jesus Christ immediately smothers one’s faults, defects, and demons with a soothing blanket of His love. Living such a life heals the discomforts of self-loathing and even self-hatred.

Self-interest

Self-interest concludes this series tomorrow with #732. An examination of wrongheadedness about self-esteem follows with 734 – Adult Mistakes due to post Saturday am.

* Pixel: A tiny dot of light that is the basic unit from which computer and TV screens are made and pictures built.

730 — Self-esteem, -image, and -interest: Self-image IV

I deviated from my own self-image for explaining this subject. I’ll try to recover by summarizing the basics about these often-confused terms: self-esteem and self-image.

·        Self-esteem means how one likes oneself as a person. It’s also used to compare one’s apparent value to that of others. Self-image is the picture one has of oneself and their place and importance in the world around them.

·        The infant’s brain wires itself with self-esteem according to parental, family, and caregiver treatment. With actions, self-talk, and dreams, we continually program and reprogram our self-image throughout life.

·        Development of self-esteem begins and ends in roughly the first three years of life. Self-image blooms after a child’s conscious mind opens and the child can make decisions about himself. The toddler’s picture of Self builds under the influence of personal accomplishments, real and imagined, good and bad, failed and successful.

·        As a child ages beyond toddlerhood, self-image blossoms in the tweens and teens. Development accelerates and grows from conclusions about successes and failures. Also, a child’s dreams and imagination foster gigantic expansions of beliefs and convictions for the years to come.   

·        When your self-esteem takes a hit, you’re limited to temporary pick-me-ups. When you deviate from or violate your self-image, your attitude and outlook on life can change permanently.

·        Three things develop self-image the most: (1) Accomplishments enlarge and improve it. (2) Imaginative dreams of the future stimulate expansion. (3) Self-talk explains, compensates, rationalizes, and otherwise makes everything all fit together in one acceptable picture of Self.

There remains one question that probably lingers in readers’ minds. When one’s self-image makes one like oneself, why isn’t that self-esteem? The question introduces tomorrow’s post.

729. Gender Differences Revisited — Group J

1. If he cheats, she wants to talk. If she cheats, he wants to walk.
2. A woman’s enduring love builds around her need for a brighter future. A man’s enduring love builds on respect about her virtuous character, her self-respect, and her likeability as a mate.
3. Girls dream of a happy life with Mr. Right, but she learns in marriage that it’s up to her. Men know they are the right man for any woman, and each expects one woman to energize and shower him with wedded bliss.
4. Men focus on the present and plan tactically for the future. Women focus strategically on the future and plan tactically for the present.
5. Women value and focus primarily on who people are. Men value and focus primarily on what people do.
6. Love motivates women. They seek to love something or somebody. Conditions motivate men. They seek to prove their significance at handling challenges.
7. Hard-hearted men are natural. Hard-hearted women don’t like themselves as female; they are ‘standing up inside’.
8. She is the expert on relationships and ultimate authority on yielding sex. He is the expert on copulating and primary authority on leaving or keeping a sex partner.