Everything You Know About Self-Esteem is Bullshit

Self-esteem: an individual's overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth; encompasses beliefs about oneself, as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame; the positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it.

- Thanks Wikipedia

Self-esteem a "subjective emotional evaluation." Subjective means that it can vary based on our own evaluations and emotions. Because our emotional states and our beliefs about ourselves are based on external influences, our self-esteem is usually based on those external factors.

From this perspective, we can only achieve high self-esteem when we're perfect or when things are going well. But we can never be perfect to all people all the time. We have no control over external factors.

This means that all the assholes in your life have control over your worth. Every time life throws a curveball, your value as a human being diminishes. Every time you make a mistake or fail, self-esteem plummets.

You might be thinking, "Naw, I'm more emotionally intelligent than that. I won't let that happen."

News flash: You aren't that evolved.

Few of us have enough emotional mastery to separate our emotional experiences from our self-esteem.

Instead, let's focus on self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance is the awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses, the realistic (yet subjective) appraisal of one's talents, capabilities, and general worth, and, feelings of satisfaction with one's self despite deficiencies and regardless of past behaviors and choices.

In other words, you still feel worthy even though you have weaknesses.

Or self-confidence.

Self-confidence is about feeling self-assured in your personal judgment, ability, power, etc. It is a positive belief that in the future you can generally accomplish what you wish to do.

Self-confidence is not the same as self-esteem, which is an evaluation of your own worth, whereas self-confidence is more specifically trust in your ability to achieve a goal.

Self-acceptance and confidence do not come from self-esteem.

Self-esteem expects perfection.

Self-acceptance and confidence do not.