Thankfully, the alternative to boundless self-esteem doesn’t have to be self-loathing but rather self-acceptance—our third approach to fighting the Cult of Self. Where self-esteem means thinking you’re amazing regardless of the objective reality, self-acceptance (also called self-compassion by some researchers) means understanding our objective reality and choosing to like ourselves anyway. So instead of trying to be perfect—or delusionally believing they are—self-accepting people understand and forgive themselves for their imperfections.
