Why do we hold on to the concept of the self all the time? Why do we continually struggle with private and public standards of achievement, appearance, etc.? There are three associated motivations with the self:

- Self-verification - Self-assessment - Self-enhancement

Among these three associated motivations, no motivation is more powerful than self-enhancement. The motivation for self-enhancement pushes a person to seek new information as to how he can improve himself in different ways.

This self-motive is present in everything that we do unless a person consciously avoids thinking about himself when he tries to accomplish things. Self-awareness and self-motive are intimately associated; one cannot exist without the other.

When a person is motivated by self-enhancement, he looks for positive information that will help him achieve goals or satisfy standards. There is a big contrast if we compare self-enhancement with self-verification.

Self-verification is primarily concerned with finding differences or discrepancies between groups of self-schemas. In a way, this leads a person to focus on negative aspects of himself rather than on positive aspects. It is alright to seek out genuine weaknesses and areas that you can improve but I have to warn everybody that you should never dwell on negative aspects of the self.

Dwelling on something is quite different from acknowledging it and acting upon a negative aspect to improve that aspect. If you focus on self-enhancement most of the time, you will be able to modify your behavior in such a way that you will be able to continually reach your goals by simply being yourself. The modification of negative traits will come naturally as you implement plans that you have devised after you have utilized the self-enhancement motive.

Self-Enhancement Strategies

People make use of two main strategies to maintain their positive outlook in life. The first strategy focuses on self-affirmation. Self-affirmation usually occurs when a person suffers from low self-esteem, either because he feels that he has not been able to attain his goals or he his ego has been threatened in some other way by people or situations.

A person affirms his positive traits and qualities in the face of low self- esteem to raise his self-esteem and to improve his outlook in life. This strategy is useful not only for raising your self-esteem but also for improving the chances of following through with plans and goals.

According to a foundational study, it was discovered that people who affirmed that they possessed a particular trait or were ready for a particular undertaking were 95% more likely to respond to a similar undertaking just so they can re-affirm that they indeed possess this trait or capability.

Let me explain how this strategy is actually implemented: when something good happens to a person, he will immediately attribute his success to internal factors, like his traits. Inversely, when a person experiences something bad, like failure, he will attribute the failure or negative event to extraneous factors (i.e. other people, society, circumstances, etc.)

Here are some examples of how this strategy is used by people to maintain their level of self-esteem:

“I aced the exam because I have always been clever in Mathematics.” “I failed the exam because the teacher did not discuss the subject matter adequately.”

“I got a hole-in-one today because I’ve been working so hard on my swing these past few months.” “My golf was horrible today because of the wind speed and we tried out a new golf course.”

“I sold a lot of products today because of my good marketing skills.” “I wasn’t able to sell a lot of products because people didn’t have money and they don’t know how to respond to a great marketer like me!”