What Is Self-Esteem?

Self-esteem is a term that we use to understand a variety of different aspects about our personality, our thoughts and behaviours, it’s not a real thing on it’s own, it's not something you can reliably test for in isolation. You can only reliably test for traits or potential for what we understand as low self-esteem by taking the more in-depth and rigorous big-5 personality profile, which is what I use with my clients.

So self-esteem on its own you can’t reliably be tested, however it gives us an understanding for a lot of other thought processes that go on, below the surface in our subconscious.

But you need healthy self-esteem!

So this thing that isn't real, this self-esteem, if our level is too low, it can subconsciously steer us in directions that we don't want our lives to go in, we’re effectively fighting a battle we can’t win - we consciously want one thing but our subconscious overrides us and goes in a different direction.

Yet if we have a healthy level of self-esteem, our subconscious steers us in the direction we consciously want to go in - it assists us rather than works against us. It doesn’t sabotage our progress. Does that make sense?

So we want healthy self-esteem, not inflated egos or a sense of entitlement like narcissists, not  thinking too highly of ourselves or that we're righteous, more deserving other people but that we're at least of equal worth to other people - that is healthy self-esteem.