The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

by Nathaniel Branden

The stability we cannot find in the world we must create within our own persons.

Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities.

This sentence makes me want to read all of this author's works.

In other words, a problem of self-esteem.

Could this be what the phrase "you are too sensitive" acts as a place-holder for? What if all of our issues, our goals, our purpose, our sense of self - really is all about our low self-esteem?

Freud suggested that low “self-regard” was caused by a child’s discovery that he or she could not have sexual intercourse with Mother or Father, which resulted in the helpless feeling, “I can do nothing.” I

I agree with the author that this is a simple explanation, humorous, but quite unhelpful to understand how to improve self-esteem.

An important principle of human relationships is that we tend to feel most comfortable, most “at home,” with persons whose self-esteem level resembles our own. Opposites may attract about some issues, but not about this one. High-self-esteem individuals tend to be drawn to high-self-esteem individuals. We do not see a passionate love affair, for example, between persons at opposite ends of the self-esteem continuum—just as we are not likely to see a passionate romance between intelligence and stupidity.

This could be an interesting argument when discussing friendships. Especially the way cliques are formed: jocks with jocks, nerds with other nerds. This could be a good example of how unlikely relationships may be formed because of matching self-efficacy, but not self-esteem. TBD