Your Self-Esteem Guide to a Better Life
by Raulston Nembhard

INTRODUCTION

Self-esteem, whether low or high, positive or negative, may be more important than many might have thought. The word is easily bandied around or glibly used in various contexts, but often people do not realize how significant it is to their success and purpose in life. I believe that this is especially so since the dawn of the recent economic crisis. Not only is self-esteem necessary for our own survival, whether rich or poor, but even for our mental, physical and spiritual health. This book is written with this truth in mind.

Self-esteem as I shall describe it here, is not a mere fancy or a passing feeling, but is in fact a state of being. It affects our lives in more fundamental ways than we may be aware of. It speaks to the beauty within us, the simple absence of which can lead to a distorted image of ourselves and our place in the world. These distortions are not merely situations which can or should be treated with medications (to which pernicious negative self-esteem may lead). Awareness of what drives these distortions will assist in the development of positive programs that can lead to meaningful and purposeful lives.

This book is not about a psychological or therapeutic approach to the subject. Many books have been written on the subject from those perspectives and there is no need to add yet another to our already crowded shelves. I am merely inviting the reader to a conversation developed over many years with people from all walks of life about a subject which many do not realize is not that well understood. My main intention is to help the reader to understand how important a healthy or positive self-esteem is for a successful and purposeful life and to have a clearer view of the things that lead to low self-esteem some of which might not have been seen as significant in the past. These observations will be supported as necessary with relevant anecdotes.

In this sense then, I am offering a guide on how we can achieve high self-esteem and avoid the many pitfalls that cause people to have a negative estimate of themselves. This is the main thrust of the book. If the book can help someone to a more holistic view of self or to take a new path that leads to greater fulfillment and meaning in his life, then I believe I would have achieved my purpose here. In the end, a high self-esteem is about inner beauty and how you can tap into it and stay tapped in securely. It is about finding and sustaining that inner beauty that lies within you.

There are powerful forces that fight against you attaining this inner beauty. Some of them are obvious to you, others are not. Some of them you have seen in your own life over the years but you have remained powerless to confront them. I will explore some of these forces in this book and expose the ones that might be less obvious. You will not always agree with what I have to say. The development of a high self-esteem is a personal matter and requires a personal battle which you have to fight and win. No one can do it better than you for no one can live in your skin, however thick or thin it is. My task here is to give you some tools as honestly as I can give them to help you in this battle of gaining and sustaining a high self-esteem. The rest is up to you. Let’s begin the journey.

People with low self-esteem often allow others to push them around or to generally exploit their weaknesses. People who exploit other people’s weaknesses often do so without thinking; others do so deliberately and in keeping with their own disfigured personalities. There are a lot of emotionally wounded people walking around seeking new victims. Their hero is Sad Sack, the Harvey Comics fictional character who endured all kinds of humiliations in army life and walked around with a sad countenance. If you tell those kinds of people good morning they are likely to ask you what is so good about the morning. There is a saying that misery loves company and there are people who are prepared to mess up our lives if we allow them to do so. They will pull us into their own chaotic world. They will sow weeds in our carefully manicured lawn. Nothing will please them more than to know that our lives are just as messy as theirs. We alone have the power to prevent this and so we have to be strong and know how and when to respond to such people when they try to press our buttons. Part of building resilience then, is cultivating the power of saying no, of knowing what battles to fight and how to fight them, and of knowing which friendships to walk away from and which to keep. No one can push our buttons unless we allow them.