Self-esteem is the confidence in our ability to think and cope with the basic challenges in life. It is also confidence in our right to be happy, the feeling of being worthy, deserving, entitled to assert our needs and wants, and to enjoy the fruits of our efforts.

Self-esteem is a powerful human need. It is also a basic human need that makes an essential contribution to the life process. It is the base or normal and healthy development. Self-esteem is vital to our survival. 

Lack of self-esteem, on the contrary, hampers our psychological growth! When our self-esteem is low so is our resilience to life’s difficulties. Consequently, we lack the strength, resistance, and capacity for regeneration. We become vulnerable to adversities and incapable to deal with whatever life throws at us.

In today’s societal demands and an abundance of choices and options, healthy self-esteem is needed more than ever. We are required to become more autonomous and exercise independent judgment, cultivate our own recourse, and actively take responsibility for our choices and actions that shape our lives.

Cultivating healthy self-esteem is not an easy task. Years of negative experiences, possible unpleasant pasts, and dysfunctional families could leave us with very little insight and ability to understand what positive self-esteem looks and feels like.

Some of the effects of negative self-esteem are:

• Avoidance of difficult circumstances
• Sensitive to criticism
• Anxiety
• Withdrawal from social situations
• Inability to trust yourself to make the right choices
• A continuous needs for acceptance
• Insecurity