True self-esteem goes much deeper. It’s finding the source of power and aliveness deep inside. We talked about the lake. Realizing that within the depth of your being, there is that continuous source of intense aliveness and power, which is the stillness out of which everything comes. The potential, the unexpressed potential for all form is there for every human being. You have to become still.
Acceptance involves acknowledging the “unvarnished facts” of ourselves and our situation – the good and the not so good, without judging ourselves. Rather than this causing us to be stuck with things as they are, acceptance is the foundation for growth and change [9]. Self-esteem is our sense of value or worth. It is based on judgement about how good we are in specific areas of our lives (e.g. performance at school, work or in sport or in relationships) or relative to other people. As it can be dependent on our judgements about success or failure or on comparison to others it can be fragile [10]. The pursuit of self-esteem can lead us to overly focus on, or inflate, the positive aspects of ourselves and our performance and ignore or hide areas we don’t feel good about.
How to Free Your Soul From Disturbance
Joy is about subtraction: not about aggressively seeking to add pleasure to our lives, but about removing the things that cause us needless frustration, without reducing our desire to take action that we can.
