The truth is, people with good self-esteem are not constantly evaluating themselves. It’s the ones without it who do this. Our culture teaches us that having self-esteem is an active process of building ourselves up. It isn’t. Cats, three-year-olds, and adults with good self-esteem aren’t doing much of anything—they’re just focused on the task at hand. The active process is to have low self-esteem, to be constantly tearing ourselves down. When we wake up in the morning, before our mind starts going, our self-esteem is fine. We only begin feeling inadequate when we start rehearsing the negative
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