In the last few decades, there has been a boom about self-esteem, how important it is to personal happiness and fulfillment. And it is true, to have that state of satisfaction and fulfillment, self-love is necessary, to love oneself. In addition, one of the most used cliche phrases is that to love others you need to love yourself.
All of this may have some truth. But when we look more deeply at the concept of self-esteem, we cannot help but conclude that it is a very subjective appreciation. No two people will define love in the same way. Therefore, it is much more practical to speak of self-concept, what we think about ourselves, rather than self-love.
When I speak of self-esteem as a construct I mean not only the obvious subjectivity of the concept, but also that very few things we can say about ourselves that are totally objective. I would say only two things: that we are Homo sapiens, and the biological sex, male or female (and sometimes not even this, in some chromosomal conditions).
Everything else that we think of ourselves has been built up over the course of life. It depends a lot on what parents, teachers and peers said, what they told us, the early experiences of childhood and adolescence, or even the perception we had about these things. All the experiences of adulthood, personality traits, successes and failures, among hundreds of other things, are also influencing.
In ancient times in human history, no one paid attention to whether he loved himself or not, no one spoke of self-esteem. And today, this depends on the built self-concept, and what we think love is. It also depends on our paradigms about what is the value of a person, the role of humanity and even religious concepts.
As you can see, self-esteem and self-concept are built elements, they are not goals by themselves.
Everything you think of yourself is built. Whether you love yourself or not, it was something you worked out in the course of your life. Therefore, if there is any deficiency in your self-esteem or self-concept, it can be changed, since whatever you create of yourself, it is something created, it is not the absolute reality.
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I wish you the greatest blessings.
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Guillermo Mendoza Vélez www.SaludMentalyEmocional.com
