I'm awesome ! (but then, how come ?)

This is something that I've felt an important topic for a while. Mind you, self-esteem and self-confidence are important, but we certainly have shoved a lot of virtues aside for becoming "awesome" (or at least appearing to be).

I'm just curious as to how much we understand ourselves and lend that understanding to others.

It is worth discussing.

Great topic!

For now I'm not fully replying, but adding some text I think is relevant to the topic. It's an excerpt from the first chapter of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of highly effective people.

At the same time, in addition to my research on perception, I was also deeply immersed in an in-depth study of the success literature published in the United States since 1776. I was reading or scanning literally hundreds of books, articles, and essays in fields such as self-improvement, popular psychology, and self-help. At my fingertips was the sum and substance of what a free and democratic people considered to be the keys to successful living.

As my study took me back through 200 years of writing about success, I noticed a startling pattern emerging in the content of the literature. Because of our own pain, and because of similar pain I had seen in the lives and relationships of many people I had worked with through the years, I began to feel more and more that much of the success literature of the past 50 years was superficial. It was filled with social image consciousness, techniques and quick fixes -- with social band-aids and aspirin that addressed acute problems and sometimes even appeared to solve them temporarily -- but left the underlying chronic problems untouched to fester and resurface time and again.

In stark contrast, almost all the literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the character ethic as the foundation of success -- things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man's effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.

The character ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.

But shortly after World War I the basic view of success shifted from the character ethic to what we might call the personality ethic. Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction. This personality ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relations techniques, and the other was positive mental attitude (PMA). Some of this philosophy was expressed in inspiring and sometimes valid maxims such as "Your attitude determines your altitude," "Smiling wins more friends than frowning," and "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.

Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the "power look," or to intimidate their way through life.

Some of this literature acknowledged character as an ingredient of success, but tended to compartmentalize it rather than recognize it as foundational and catalytic. Reference to the character ethic became mostly lip service; the basic thrust was quick-fix influence techniques, power strategies, communication skills, and positive attitudes.

Perhaps due to society seeming to speed up people don't have time to assess character so much anymore rather it just becomes about personality.

In job interviews they say its most usually the person they get along with the most in that short interview who will get the job, (provided they meet the minimum requirements) over better positioned people. While yes they have to 'work with them' - it seems to ignore that personality can be faked and psychopaths for example are quite skilled in using fake personality to their own purposes.

So while I think there is good value in some of the narcissistic behaviors, its really only when they serve to uplift and refine ones spirit as a tool, and most definitely not to define ones self identity nor purpose in life. But if that is the way the world works and one wants to make progress in that world.... monkey see monkey do.