Theresa Francis-Cheung

Improving your self-esteem isn’t about becoming selfish, loud, competitive and arrogant. It’s about taking care of yourself so that you have the strength and energy to help and give to others when appropriate.

The problem with self-esteem based on temporary externals is that you only feel good about yourself when things are going well, but when things don’t go so well, you lose your self-esteem.

To prevent this, self-esteem needs to be grounded firmly in self-acceptance. The concept of self-acceptance is based on the knowledge that we are all fallible human beings, we all make mistakes and nobody is perfect. So although you would like to be 100 per cent perfect all the time, the important thing is to learn to accept that sometimes you will be wrong and you are fallible.

Whatever the cause, when self-esteem is low, the world you live in is a frightening and unpredictable one because you are always dependent on the whims of others or the turn of events. If you can compare your life to a car, when self-esteem is low you are not in the driving seat. Other people or events are steering the wheel, while you crouch in the back wondering where they will take you next. That’s exactly what low self-esteem does to your life. You are alive, but you aren’t really living.