A study by Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick asked participants to say "I am a lovable person" to themselves sixteen times in four minutes. People with low self-esteem actually felt worse about themselves after the four minutes were up. Time's John Cloud offers several explanations for this failure of a commonly recommended mood-lifting technique. For one thing, he writes, "when people hear something they don't believe, they are not only often skeptical but adhere even more strongly to their original position." So if you think you're terrible, but tell yourself you're lovable, you may end up feeling even more terrible as a kind of rebellion.

A variant on this explanation is the finding that, "when people get feedback that they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better." Most people, even if they have normal self-esteem, have probably walked away from excessive praise feeling weirded out, or wondering if the praiser really knows them very well. And blanket affirmations like "I am lovable" may be the self-talk version of excessive praise.

What Cloud doesn't address is how vague — and kind of depressing — the statement "I am lovable" is. Being lovable doesn't mean you're actually loved, or kind or interesting or smart or happy. Most people, in fact, are lovable at least to someone, and the word doesn't say anything about a person's actual being. Telling yourself that it is possible that someone could love you actually seems like setting the bar pretty low.

Compliments from other people tend to carry more weight the more specific they are. It's easy to brush off "you're great," less easy to ignore "what's great about you is how you approach new situations with such confidence." And while it's always harder to believe your own compliments than other people's, it might help to start with compliments that don't suck. We'd like to see a study where people were asked to come up with something specific that they authentically liked about themselves, and then repeat that bunch of times. They might end up feeling more than just "lovable."

Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking [Time]

She writes:

The last couple of years have been an egopalooza of celebrities, politicians, businessmen, and religious leaders behaving not just badly, but with overweening sense of entitlement. Paris Hilton: Jail is worse for me than anyone else! Oprah: the Hermes store wouldn't let me shop because I'm black! (The fact that the store had just closed apparently had nothing to do with it.) And Hillary: Oh, dear God, Hillary. If she hadn't radiated an almost-cartoonish, Daffy Duck-like aura ("The presidency is mine-mine-MINE!"), maybe she would have been the Democratic candidate.

Note that all three of Newman's examples are women. Probably she's just considering her target audience, but the message stands — don't be like these ladies, or like Cynthia, unless you want to be pilloried in Allure. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Newman just lumped Oprah and Hillary together with Paris Hilton, and the fact that aggressively seeking public office apparently now makes you a cartoon character — are these women really that bad?

Cynthia achieved great success after "a modest upbringing," and now she's extremely confident. She believes she'll succeed in her career, and says, "there's value in being opinionated when you have really good opinions." Maybe Cynthia isn't the most considerate person in the world, but we'd sure rather hear from her than someone who couches every statement with "I'm not sure, but . . ." There is value in being opinionated, and in being confident, and in feeling that people should listen to you — and more women and men should embrace this value.

Of course, some cases of ASN (which Newman defines as "a form of self-absorption and grandiosity developed not in childhood, as classical narcissism is thought to be, but rather [...] after an individual has acquired modest fame and fortune") may cause problems — the "luxury shame" sufferers Sadie wrote about should probably try thinking of the less fortunate for a change. But we may not have to hear from them much longer: Newman says the best cure for ASN is failure.

Cynthia, for instance, suffered a failed project and a series of bad dates, including one with a guy who said, "I don't think she asked one question about me." Now she's way nicer, even asking Newman about herself when they meet up for drinks. Cynthia could probably stand to learn a thing or two about consideration, but we're still a little disturbed that Newman's recipe for bringing an uppity woman to earth is a stinging remark from a man.

[Allure] (Official Site)