The Many Faces of Self Esteem

Self Esteem has always been the stepchild of human development. We tap dance around all of the problems people have with illness, relationships and communication issues, but it never seems to fall specifically on development of one's self esteem. It is posed as a need for assertiveness, self-improvement, or self-help. It is broken down into having depression, dysfunction, addictions, co-dependency and the like. When all of this is boiled together, it actually comes down to having high or low self-esteem in my opinion. It has always been somewhat taboo to use the word self esteem for very long when identifying an issue of dysfunction. Immediately it is turned into another category as I have mentioned above. I believe the reason for this is because self esteem is actually a scary term. Self Esteem means getting down into the core of your own feelings, which is a very protected area. Some people have suppressed feelings for one reason or another and the thought of unleashing anything that might make us feel out of control for a period is scary. There is also the problem that we inherited someone else's self esteem growing up. Finding out later that our perceptions about these significant mentors could have flaws is overwhelming and we feel disloyal to their teaching. Yet we strive in attaining their approval by continuing the inappropriate behavior whether it is for our good or not. So not only do we have our feelings to deal with, we have to face the fact our family or friends may have issues that help manifest powerful habits that influence bad behaviors. There is much "masking" out in the world to keep people off guard to what they may truly be feeling inside. This can extend from world leaders to a teacher or a boss. Through my own voracious thirst for figuring all of this out, I decided to try and put this into layman's terms that each person can relate through feeling what I am saying. I am convinced that self-esteem is the key to healing thyself. It encompasses your physical, mental and spiritual balances. It is a simple result, but not easy of course. If you change yourself for the better, the world will change in tandem. As you can see, the world is out of control with itself. It is a perfect time for an malevolent leader to say all the right things and everyone follows. If you begin development of your own esteem, no one will be able to lead you into an immoral direction.