Earlier this week I read a blog post Building Self Esteem by personal development blogger Alex Shalman. I've followed Alex for a while, taking part in his happiness project about 18 months ago.
Alex has just started dental school – good luck to him as dentistry is a total turnoff to me! But he was reflecting on a class where his tutor defined self esteem as:-
…it’s a feeling that you are a valuable human being by possessing a quality that makes you such. This could be for a number of reasons, including but not exclusive to, having a skill, talent, job, relationship, helping people, being attractive, etc.
Do we have to possess some quality to make us valuable? If someone spends all day at home watching TV, with no interaction with others, does that mean they have no value? And by this definition, low self esteem?
If you do a search on Twitter for "self esteem", the main attributing reason people describe their self esteem as low is through how they look. Unfortunately many deem themselves unattractive – thats why the Dove video looking at image manipulation was so effective.