What is your self-esteem/self-worth based on?

[CasanovaFrankenstein]

I guess a person with healthy self-esteem/self-worth doesn't see failures or setbacks as a reflection of his worth or value as a person. If he loses his job and struggles to pay the bills, or gets rejected by a woman or whatever, he might think "this sucks" or "what's her problem?" but he never has the feeling that "its this way because there's something wrong with ME". He has the ability to separate his circumstances from who he is as a person. If he's wealthy, and then loses everything, he still feels the same way about himself as when he was rich....who he is hasn't changed, only his circumstances have. That's always been my problem I think: my self-esteem goes up and down with the ups and downs in my life, and (from my perspective anyway) its been mostly downs.

But don't we need SOME way of judging whether we're worthwhile or not? If not by our circumstances and conditions then what? I guess Wayne Dyer may be a little too new-agey for some of you, but he said (and he was repeating something that Buckminster Fuller told him) that 99% of who you are cannot be percieved with the senses. Anyway, if you've been able to maintain your feelings of self-worth regardless of whether things in your life are going great or going sh!tty....how do you do that...or is it even something you do consciously or just the way you've always been? If you feel like a worthwhile person regardless of what's going on in your life at the time, why do you?

 

[Furyguy]

but he never has the feeling that "its this way because there's something wrong with ME".

I don't agree. When you fvck up, you have to be man enough to admit that you fcked up. You also have to be willing to learn from that mistake and make the necessary changes. Failure doesn't make you less of a person, it just means you're human. It's how you handle the failure that is important.

But don't we need SOME way of judging whether we're worthwhile or not?

Yes. You set your own terms by which you define your worth as a person. For one man it may be his success in the business world, while for another it's his accomplishments on a sports field.

Never live your life by someone else's terms. Figure out what is important to YOU and then become that person.

 

[CasanovaFrankenstein]

I don't agree. When you fvck up, you have to be man enough to admit that you fcked up. You also have to be willing to learn from that mistake and make the necessary changes. Failure doesn't make you less of a person, it just means you're human. It's how you handle the failure that is important.

Yes I think if anything, an emotionally healthy person is better at acknowledging and learning from mistakes than a person with low self-esteem, because his ego isn't wrapped up in his successes and failures. He's able to separate his successes and failures from who he is. It's the feeling like less of a person that I was talking about.

 

[slaog]

I think Dyer also said (I might be wrong) that sometimes setbacks are a good thing. When you have an image in your mind and you're trying to attract that life to you you will have a few setbacks but doesn't mean it's bad i.e a setback is getting dumped by a girl but is it really a setback if you meet a much better girl as a result of being dumped?

It depends how you see things. Always look on the positive. I know I've had many setbacks and felt low at times but looking back they have been good now because I've learned things and they made me determined to improve myself which I am doing.

 

[ChrizZ]

It´s based on my good friend Jack Daniels.

 

[oakraiderz2]

It´s based on my good friend Jack Daniels.

I like the way you do buisness.

 

[GaryUranga]

it SHOULD be based on identity dude

not anythign external cept jack daniels

 

[Canadian Catnip]

I think I can speak from experience on this one. I've gone from hating myself to accepting myself and actually liking and loving myself.

All self-esteem comes from inside, hence the word self at the beginning.

I used to have a terrible self image of myself for years and believe me, nothing on the outside could change it for me.

Your own image of yourself always wins out when it comes to what others say and feel about you compared to what you say and feel about yourself.

Take a person with low self esteem, if you try to complement him he will think in his mind that it's just a lie or something like that.

On the other hand if you put down someone with high self esteem he will think the problem is with you and not take on your beliefs of what you think of him. In both situations what the person thought of himself won out.

On a side note, hating yourself is a sentence in hell. Nothing in life is good. I look back on the years I spent hating myself and wonder why I did it. Now that I am feeling more normal, things are easier to do and I feel like I have woken up from a nightmare.

Please, to anyone that hates themselves, do whatever you can to get over it. There is another way of thinking and if you work on it then you will change.

I've considered starting a thread here about hating yourself and how to overcome it. Of course I'm no psychologist but I have traveled the seas of self-hatred and know how dangerous they can be.

 

[CasanovaFrankenstein]

You set your own terms by which you define your worth as a person. For one man it may be his success in the business world, while for another it's his accomplishments on a sports field.

Never live your life by someone else's terms. Figure out what is important to YOU and then become that person.

That's part of my problem I think. I've gauged my self-worth my whole life by what I thought others thought of me or would think of me if they knew me (ie HB's), and lived such a sheltered life, that I'm in my mid-30s and I'm like "who am I to decide what path in life I should choose? who am I to say I'm a worthwhile person? who am I to set my own standards for who/what I should be? what do I know about life, or anything?" I've always searched for someone who had all the answers and I could just live my life by what they said. And its scary to realize that I have to decide for myself, and what if I'm on my deathbed saying "what if my whole life was lived wrong? did I live the way I was meant to live, supposed to live?"

I wish there were right and wrong answers to everything. Like in school, 2+2 always equaled 4 and the capital of Illinois was always Springfield and someone TAUGHT you the answers and you just regurgitated them back when you took a test. I wish it was like that in life: A+B = the right way to live, the correct way to live, the way you're supposed to live. "thinking for myself" is still something I'm just starting to learn.

 

[Canadian Catnip]

I've always searched for someone who had all the answers and I could just live my life by what they said. And its scary to realize that I have to decide for myself,

I went through something similar to this recently and I hope this helps you.

I would always wonder what others thought of me and wished with every fiber of my being that I could just read other people mind so I could know what they thought of me and everything would be ok.

I had a change of mind when someone told me the proper default way of thinking should be to look inside yourself and make your decisions on how you think and feel. That was so foreign to me as a concept that I had no way to even begin to try to do it.

I remember when I first started I would have to stop myself whenever I started wondering what others thought and tell myself I was doing this wrong and then look inside ME for my answer.

At first it feels totally weird to rely on yourself for feedback but keep telling yourself that it's the proper way a person is supposed to live. Eventually you'll get the hang of it and it will happen more often and you will have more confidence in that inner voice.

You would think that letting the decisions on how you act and feel come from inside of you and not from outside sources would lead you to very selfish decisions but I am here to tell you that the inner voice is by far the best and least selfish voice to listen to.

It has astounded me several times on how well the inner voice can make simple, intelligent and communal decisions for you. Just trust it man and you will see.

I don't want to come off as new age here but truly the best decision you can make is the one that comes from inside of you.