Ideal vs. Ought

“Empirical research reveals that there is a significant correlation between low self-esteem and psychological disorders and a high correlation between high self-esteem and happiness.” – Marvin Kohl in Wisdom and the Axiom of Futility

Self-esteem is an issue I’ve grappled with often in my life. When someone has it in high doses, others call him self-centered. When others lack it, they would often give up a body part to accumulate more of it.

I wonder if we’re born with high self-esteem. Is it something that our parents instill in us or is it something that comes with the genetic makeup of every individual? If we’re born with it, then that puts a lot more responsibility on the parents and environment of a child to sustain it. If it doesn’t come inherent in our genetic structure, how exactly do parents, teachers, environment, or mentors establish it?

As I kept reading the above paper, I ran into this most interesting distinction of different causes of lack of self-esteem:

“Of the many sources of low self-esteem, two are central to the present discussion. That is to say, human beings compare their behavior to at least two different kinds of expectancies which typically have become internalized standards (or selves) whose point is to guide self-regulation. These selves are the ideal self and the ought self. The ideal self is the kind of the person an individual would really like to be…The ought self is the kind of person an individual believes he or she had the duty or obligation to be?”

The distinction between the two different forces at play fascinated me. Once I saw it on paper, it was obvious but somehow I’d never made the connections before. Since I’m a list-maker, I took out my pen and paper and tried to list the influences of my two selves. Here are a few from my lists:

I think it’s important to make the distinction of feeling bad cause you can’t become who you want to be and feeling bad because you’re not what others want you to be. If your list looks like mine, it has a lot more things on the ‘ought’ category than the ‘ideal’ category. Which is a good thing. It means that I have been reaching the goals I’ve set for myself and that I’m controlling the things that I can. It also symbolizes that the conversations that repeat in my head are just other people’s priorities and I really need to shut them up, which is easier now that I can easily see they are not mine.

What are some of the items in your lists?

Previously? Picky.