To a great 2008!!!
To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.
We tend to feel most comfortable, most "at home", with persons whose self-esteem level resembles our own.
There is no greater barrier to romantic happiness than the fear that I am undeserving of love and that my destiny is to be hurt.
What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage.
It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.
Self-esteem--high or low--tends to be a generator of self-fulfilling prophecies.
High self-esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quicker to pick themselves up again.
If my aim is to prove I am "enough" the project goes on to infinity--because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.
Self-esteem is not a substitute for a roof over one's head or food in one's stomach, but it increases the likelihood that one will find a way to meet such needs.
We have reached a moment in history when self-esteem, which has always been a supremely important psychological need, has also become a supremely important economic need.
If we lack adequate self-esteem, the amount of choice offered to us today can be frightening.
To have high self-esteem is to feel confidently appropriate to life.
The right use of our consciousness is not automatic, is not "wired in" by nature.
We are the one species that can formulate a vision of what values are worth pursuing--and then pursue the opposite.
A disservice is done to people if they are offered "feel good" notions of self-esteem that divorce it from questions of consciousness, responsibility, and moral choice.
In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn.
Self-respect entails the expectation of friendship, love, and happiness as natural, as a result of who we are and what we do.
A concern with right and wrong is not merely the product of social conditioning. A concern with morality or ethics arises naturally in the early stages of development.
Pride is the emotional reward of achievement. It is not a vice to be overcome but a value to be attained.
Relaxation implies that we are not hiding from ourselves and are not at war with who we are.
High self-esteem is intrinsically reality oriented.
A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.
We are challenged to raise the level of our consciousness in the face of emotional resistance.
I can project an image of assurance and poise that fools almost everyone and yet secretly tremble with a sense of my inadequacy.
Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness.
What determines the level of self-esteem is what the individual does.
We must become what we wish to teach.
Our mind is our basic tool of survival. Betray it and self-esteem suffers.
When we live consciously we do not imagine that our feelings are an infallible guide to truth.
Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.
A business leader who operates at a high level of consciousness plans for tomorrow's market.
To find it humiliating to admit an error is a certain sign of flawed self-esteem.
Do I know what I am doing when I particularly like myself and what I am doing when I don't?
Self-destruction is an act best performed in the dark.
We tend to be more conscious in some areas of our life than in others.
Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.
I cannot forgive myself for an action I will not acknowledge having taken.
Accepting, compassionate interest does not encourage undesired behavior but reduces the likelihood of it recurring.
When we fight a block it grows stronger. When we acknowledge, experience, and accept it, it begins to melt.
We can be as frightened of our assets as of our shortcomings.
No one owes me the fulfillment of my wishes.
Taking responsibility for my happiness is empowering. It places my life back in my own hands.
Often what people call "thinking" is merely recycling the opinions of others.
Self-assertiveness means the willingness to stand up for myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect in all human encounters.
My life does not belong to others and I am not here on earth to live up to someone else's expectations.
Healthy self-esteem asks that we leap into the arena--that way be willing to get our hands dirty.
Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy.
The temptation to self-betrayal can sometimes be worst with those about whom we care the most.
The root of our self-esteem is not our achievements but those internally generated practices that, among other things, make it possible for us to achieve.
If I don't do something, nothing is going to change.
When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes.
Most of the issues of integrity we face are not big issues but small ones, yet the accumulated weight of our choices has an impact on our sense of self.
The idea of Original Sin is anti-self-esteem by its very nature.
Once we see that living up to our standards appears to be leading us toward self-destruction, the time has come to question our standards.
One of the most positive aspects of the women's movement is its insistence that women think for themselves about who they are and what they want. But men need to learn this kind of independent thinking as much as women do.
Lies do not work.
The challenge for people today, and it is not an easy one, is to maintain high personal standards while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.
No other individual or group has the power to determine how I will think and feel about myself.
At the most fundamental level, I am for myself.
My self-esteem is more valuable than any short-term rewards for its betrayal.
To evolve into selfhood is the primary human task. It is also the primary human challenge, because success is not guaranteed.
The greater a child's terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder the task of building a strong and healthy sense of self.
Long before a child can understand words, he or she understands touch.
We do not serve a child's development by making self-repudiation the price of our love.
When we convey love, appreciation, empathy, acceptance, respect, we make a child visible.
Inappropriate praise can be as harmful to self-esteem as inappropriate criticism.
No one was ever made "good" by being informed he or she was "bad".
Making mistakes is integral to a great deal of learning.
There is perhaps nothing more important to know about children than that they need to make sense out of their experience.
Were you encouraged toward obedience or toward self-responsibility?
To perserver with the will to understand in the face of obstacles is the heroism of consciousness.
Of any professional group it is teachers who have shown the greatest receptivity to the importance of self-esteem.
Self-esteem pertains to that which is open to our volitional choice. It cannot properly be a function of the family we were born into, or our race, or the color of our skin, or the achievements of our ancestors.
What is needed and demanded today, in the age of knowledge workers, is not robotic obedience but persons who can think.
Low self-esteem teachers are typically unhappy teachers.
One of the greatest gifts a teacher can offer a student is the refusal to accept the student's poor self-concept at face value.
A teacher should be a prospector; looking for gold.
Compassion and respect do not imply lack of firmness.
We can learn to recognize and accept our emotions without losing our minds.
We know a lot about the skills that make for competence in human interactions, and this knowledge needs to be part of a young person's education.
The economic need for large numbers of people with decent levels of self-esteem is unprecedented and represents a turning point in our evolution.
Freedom means change; the ability to manage change is at least in part a function of self-esteem.
A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
Everyone who has any familiarity with psychology knows about the danger of disowning the murderer within. Far fewer people understand the tragedy of disowning the hero within.
When we eliminate negatives, we clear the way for the emergency of positives, and when we cultivate positives, negatives often weaker or disappear.
If we develop properly, we transfer the source of approval from the world to ourselves; we shift from the external to the internal.
Ideas do matter and do have consequences.
The American culture is a battleground between the values of self-responsibility and the values of entitlement.
The challenge is not to take the assumptions of one's culture as a given, as "reality", but to realize that assumptions can be questioned.
Genuine self-esteem is what we feel about ourselves when everything is not all right.
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