Hi, everyone!
I'd like to discuss with you the problem of self-esteem. I personally want to
get to the bottom of the matter because this question has bothered me
during all my life and all my other problems just fade in comparison with this
one.
At school we were told that there's a formula for defining self-esteem:
self-esteem is to divide success by claims.
So, either you get more success or lower your claims.
I guess first I strove to achieve many goals and though in most cases I
succeded, still I almost didn't respected myself at all and feared much. Then I tried to do just the opposite - accept myself by no means and never try to change myself. I began to respect myself (at least I learnt what it was for the first time in my life), but the fear remained, I felt my self-esteem wasn't high enough and I after some time I wanted to grow and achieve goals and
change my personality again.
So first I tried to grow to booster my self-esteem, then I switched to
self-acceptance.
Steve's article "Self-Acceptance vs. Personal Growth" resolved my inner
conflict and I understood that both personal growth and self-acceptance are
important. However, I still don't see that the solution is living beyond linear
mindset and having a stable system of values.
For example, Steve says a lot of criticism will do him nothing - he'll just play
with his kids or go for a walk and his self-esteem won't suffer. I think he will
feel good after criticism poured at him not because his system of values is
stable, but because he has people who love him much. Going for a walk? It
can be pleasant also because in some place of this planet there are people
who love him. I think it would be very hard to have high self-esteem set on a
stable system of values, when a person is in prison, has no relatives, no
friends, only enemies, a lot of humiliation and offense (really sorry
for such dissapointing thoughts, but I'm just trying to get to the bottom of
this problem). It seems to me that our self-esteem totally depends on other
people, on the correlation of love and humiliation we get, on the amount of
our friends and enemies (if a person lives alone in the forest... let me
think...). I personally don't like this conclusion but it seems close to the truth.
So, I still can't find the answer, maybe together we smart people
will solve this problem.