People are comfortable with good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people. They are uncomfortable with good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people.
Sometimes people would say that how one is received by others is a reflection of their own self-esteem. I have seen the opposite. When your self-esteem is too high, people will want to tear you down; when your self-esteem is too low, people will want to build you up. And while there will always be bullies and opportunists who prey on low self-esteem, there will always be people who have their own idea about how good someone’s self-esteem ought to be and react accordingly.
Is there a correlation between how you see yourself and how others see you? I do not know that there is either one or the other. What I do know is that I treat people not based on their perceptions but on my perceptions. I know wonderful people with low self-esteem; I know terrible people with good self-esteem. I also have seen it the other way around. I have acted toward people in my life not based on how they see themselves but on how I see them.
One thing is for sure. There is absolutely no way to see self-esteem as being either necessarily for, or leading toward, being a good person. Instead it works the other way around. If you have high standards for yourself, you will find it harder to see yourself as a good person than if you do not. The person with lower standards will have higher self-esteem; the person with higher standards will have lower self-esteem. Encouraging high self-esteem does not encourage being a good person; in many cases it does the opposite.
Now when some people saw what I was writing on the subject, they accused me of being a predator. That is completely wrong. I do not seek to prey on anybody at all. I seek to redress misconceptions. And of these there are more than plenty.
The solution to the dischordance between being a good person and being a bad person, like the dischordance between having high self-esteem and having low self-esteem, is redressed by encouraging being a good person, whatever the level of self-esteem. Once again I am not going to treat you based on how you see yourself; I will treat you based on how I see you. Some people’s self-esteem is too low and some people’s self-esteem is too high. I will encourage people – especially people in mental health – toward greater clarity on this matter. And then I will encourage people toward encouraging actual goodness instead of perceived goodness. The result will be more people actually being good.