Popular educator Richard (Rick) Lavoie has a brilliant take on self-esteem. It is affectionately known as the "Poker Chip Theory." Lavoie purports that some people have huge piles of poker chips, and these people are undeniably unstoppable winners. Others start off with just a couple of short stacks in front of them.
Watch any World Series of Poker and it's quite evident that almost always when big stacks meets short stack, big stack throws his weight around. Also, short stack is usually cautious and timid.
Every morning we wake up, we pick up our stacks, and head to our poker tournament. A disgruntled word with a roommate, sibling, etc. robs us of some chips from our stacks. An angry driver or insane traffic, near accident, or the like depletes 3 stacks, and by the time you reach work, you're down 4 stacks. You may have only woken up with 7 stacks, so you're down to 3 stacks to last you an entire day. Your day begins in earnest and you realize you're right up against a deadline and not feeling very confident you're going to make it. Your ever efficient coworker offers to help you out and bungles her assignment, but don't worry about her because she has lots of stacks of chips to fall back on. You reach your deadline just in time and get praise from your boss. Up some chips. You break for lunch and bump into a friend you haven't seen in forever. You chat, she compliments you, you laugh over a shared joke...chips are piling up...When you get back to the office there's a crisis, but you have a poker chip reserve to fall back on and make it out of there without any tears.
To make a long story short, somethings deplete poker chips more than others. However, instead of avoiding such situations, we just need to head into the game stronger. We need to find ways to grow our chip stacks.
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