Julia,
Thanks for your post.
Firstly on the issue of defining self esteem: is it more important to you define self esteem or to have self esteem? Perhaps it's impossible to havea n all encompassing universally accepted definition of esteem, or any other word for that matter.
So then it becomes important to ask what does self esteem mean to you? That's the first question I ask my clients when they come to me: what does _______ mean to you?
They'll start off with a fuzzy definition and I'll help them clear it up. When you get really clear on what you want, getting it becomes easier.
I have my own
definition of self esteem, which fits into
my definition of self confidence.
Finally I'd like to ask is self esteem an end in itself for you? Or merely a means to an end? For example do you want to feel valuable inside or do you want to have self esteem because you feel you need it to accomplish something? It might be worthwhile looking at what exactly you want, you maybe caught up in a how.
I trust this helps, lots of love,
Colm