Strive for self-understanding, not self-esteem
As we live in a rabidly competitive society, we may feel that we lack self-esteem. Such feelings become aggravated when the media bombards us with images of people who look perfect.
But such a quest of self-esteem sentences us to insecurity because we conceive our esteem worthiness largely through comparison: we evaluate whether we are good enough based on how good others are. We can become far more securely situated if we strive for self-understanding instead of self-esteem.
Such self-understanding can have three aspects. Firstly, it implies understanding who we really are. The Bhagavad-gita (02.13) explains that our identity extends beyond our material body and things connected with it – things that are usually the basis of our self-esteem. We are at our core souls who can have lives of contribution and satisfaction, provided we just live as we are meant to be, as parts of the all-attractive whole, Krishna. As his parts, we can serve him devotionally with whatever abilities and resources we have.
Secondly, self-understanding means understanding what we are in our present embodied state. That is, we understand our talents and strengths, and learn how we can do justice to them – without agonizing why we are not Xerox copies of some media-created stereotypes of perfection.
Thirdly, self-understanding means becoming more understanding of ourselves. That is, instead of condemning ourselves for our shortcomings, we can remind ourselves that we never fall off life’s learning curve – we can still learn and improve. In this spirit, we can gently counsel ourselves, as we might counsel a friend. We avoid the two extremes of denying our failings and obsessing over them. Instead, we kindly but firmly encourage ourselves to better bring out our strengths.
When empowered by such self-understanding, we can bypass the insecurities inherent in comparison-centric notions of self-esteem, and increasingly unleash our latent potentials.
June 27, 2016
Very good article,enriched with core wisdom…Thank you…
June 30, 2016
It is very difficult to escape from self esteem,but KRISHNA BHAKTI only does it