Raising Your Self-Esteem
David Tuffley
Published by David Tuffley at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 David Tuffley
No one can make
you feel inferior without your consent.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Contents
Building a positive self-belief
Self-esteem enhancing beliefs & practices
Introduction
It is a rare person in the world who could not benefit with some help with improving their self-esteem. We are all imperfect, make mistakes, have problems. While it might seem that the people around you are doing so much better than you, the reality is that they are probably just as messed-up and confused.
We cannot help but compare ourselves with the people around us. And in the media, we see idealised versions of perfect people. Despite putting on a brave face, most people judge themselves to be inferior.
There is one benefit to feeling this way; it can make you take a good hard look at yourself, and motivate you to make some changes.
So this eBook is for you if you feel inferior to others, not worthy, flawed, unlovable, unattractive, or just generally a loser.
Be encouraged by the certain knowledge that you already have the capabilities to change these negative beliefs into positive ones that will help you find a whole new enjoyment in life.
Definition of self-esteem
Self-esteem is our evaluation of ourselves; a measure of our perceived worth. It is what we believe and how we feel about ourselves. It is also influenced by what other people think of us.
It is a judgment that we make. Being judgmental is helpful up to a point, but as you will read in this eBook, it can be a harmful mental habit when taken too far. It gets in the way of understanding a person or situation clearly because having decided that something is good or bad, we have effectively declared the matter closed. No further investigation required.
We judge the people in our lives (I like her, but I don’t like him), and we also judge ourselves (I’m so stupid).
We have to lighten up on ourselves and everyone else too by becoming less judgmental.
When self-esteem is low
People with low self-esteem engage in negative self-talk. It can become so pervasive, perhaps up to 90% of the time, that you have difficulty recognising your good points. When someone gives you a compliment, you are likely to dismiss it.
Try this simple exercise; say ‘I like myself, I like myself, I like myself …’ or if you prefer ‘I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best …’ over and over to yourself. Say it like you mean it, with feeling. Notice how it makes you feel. It will probably make you feel quite uncomfortable at first, but if you make a conscious effort to do this for several minutes at different times during the day, you may very well notice something good happening to how you feel about yourself.
People with low self-esteem have a baseline emotional state of anxiety, guilt, shame or anger. This is how they feel most of the time. When someone criticises, they react badly, defensively. When there is a chance of intimacy, they do something to sabotage it. When challenges come their way, they are likely to step aside and let it go past, believing that they are sure to fail.
People with low self-esteem are especially at risk of substance abuse, whether alcohol or other drugs. Eating disorders, social phobia and suicidal tendencies have also been associated with low self-esteem.
What causes low self-esteem?
Core beliefs
As children, we instinctively absorb information from our environment as a way of learning about the world. We are instinctively programmed to do this, and we do so uncritically, believing what we are told by the older and hopefully wiser people in our lives.
Over time, after we have absorbed a large amount of information, we try to make sense of it all, to construct a world-view. We come to conclusions about who and what we are, and what kind of world we live in. These become our core-beliefs.
In an ideal world, we would be given enough love and correct information to enable us to arrive at healthy self-esteem. Of course, no-one lives in an ideal world, so we inevitably reach conclusions in which we partly see ourselves in a negative light.
Do you have painful memories from childhood or adolescence? Are you still harbouring resentment towards those who caused you pain? The first thing to understand is that the people who gave you these negative ideas about yourself were more than likely struggling with their own negative self-image. After all, we tend to treat others the way we ourselves are treated. There is nothing to be gained from blaming and resenting people. On the contrary, there is everything to be gained by forgiving them.
Forgiveness is necessary for growth. Anger and resentment, feeling like a victim will only hold you back. Anger is an acid that burns only the container that holds it.
Parental expectations
Some parents believe that the best way to prepare their child for the big bad world is to toughen them up with what seems like constant criticism and punishment. Tough love, it is euphemistically called.
Their parenting style is to say nothing when you were behaving well, and punish when mis-behaving. There is a major flaw in this method. Children crave love and attention, so if they are not getting it when being good, they will do the bad things more often, simply to get the attention. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all.
A far better approach all round is to reward desirable behavior, and not reward the undesirable. Punishment would be used either very sparingly or not at all. In Psychology, this is called operant conditioning. It works!
Back to the child who is often criticised and punished. A child will take only so much of this before they conclude that the parent can never be satisfied, and that it is useless to continue trying. The parent has effectively lost the close connection with the child at that point. The child stops listening. This is a major cause of conflict between parents and their children, particularly their teen-agers.
It may be helpful to understand that if your parent was like this, it is almost certainly because their own parents were also like this, only more so. Parents will usually try to not repeat the mistakes of their own parents, but end up still repeating some of them, albeit in a lesser form.
Abuse
It is a deplorable fact that there still far too many children in the world who are abused, physically and/or emotionally, or indeed neglected and left to become feral. It need hardly be said that these experiences can have a devastating effect on how the child comes to see themselves. It can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which often then leads to substance abuse as the person tries to self-medicate the pain away.
Sadly, without understanding, the victims of the past often become the perpetrators of the present and future.
When abused children look around at their peers, they see apparently happy, well-cared for kids, a crushingly poignant contrast to their own miserable life. The inescapable conclusion is that they are worthless; this is the foundation, the bed-rock of low self-esteem.
The reality however behind the appearance is that many of those other kids are feeling the same way. They are learning to put on a brave face to hide the scared, hurt, resentful child within.
Being the odd one out
Low self-esteem can develop when a person is the odd one out, the one who is out of step with everyone else. The things they are interested in, the way they talk and dress. They feel as though they do not belong anywhere. Why does it matter? Humans are social creatures; we need to be validated as worthwhile by the group, and this validation is not forthcoming for people who do not fit in.
Their self-talk is along the lines of I’m just weird.
Another source of alienation is when a person is physically different; unusually tall, short, thin, fat, pimply, etc.
Being overwhelmed
There is an old saying that some people should not be parents. This saying could have been coined for those who struggle so much with their own problems that they are unable to deal effectively with anyone else’s. Their own pain and suffering inevitably spills over onto those around them, including their impressionable children.
This can apply to people in their middle-age and beyond; people that a child might expect should know better, but obviously does not. The overwhelmed adult will probably still demand to be treated as all-wise and worthy of respect, something which a child as they grow older will be less and less likely to go along with.
Having a scarcity mentality
A variation on the previous point about being overwhelmed is where the parent is only barely coping with the demands of parenting. As a result they give their children just barely enough love and attention and no more. Sensing their own inadequacies, the parent may withhold their attention as a harm minimisation exercise.
Children who grow up in this kind of environment develop a scarcity mentality that is the emotional equivalent of being starved for nourishment at the physical level. Implicit in this child’s developing ego is the belief that if they were better, their parent would love them more. This is particularly the case where one sibling receives approval while another does not.
How society views your family
A person who belongs to an ethnic or religious group, or a sub-culture that is disapproved of by society is likely to develop negative attitudes about themselves and resentment towards the society that discriminates against them.
Later in life
The previous points have focussed on how low self-esteem can develop in children. While a person’s early life is the primary source of such feelings, they can also be produced by a range of experiences in adulthood. For a wide variety of reasons, from being institutionalised in correctional facilities to being a refugee from persecution, a person can be subjected to many pervasively negative experiences that have an impact on their self-esteem.
Negative feed-back loop
A person subjected to one or more of the above factors increasingly finds him or herself thinking more and more negatively. As they act from these negative beliefs, they experience the negative reactions that inevitably derive from such beliefs. These reactions serve to confirm in the their mind the truth of the original thought, setting up a feedback loop in which the negative beliefs are reinforced.
By the time the cycle has been reiterated many times over the years, a person, not surprisingly finds themselves the unhappy possessor of low self-esteem.
A self-perpetuating cycle
Once established, low self-esteem perpetuates its existence through the following process:
Negative core-beliefs are formed and reinforced through the feedback loop described in the previous section.
What we subsequently experience is filtered through the lens of these negative beliefs. Thus we see what we expect to see, and interpret the world in terms of these beliefs.
Situations that challenge our negative self-beliefs (like I’m very awkward in social situations) automatically activate the core belief, much like switching on a light bulb.
Once activated, the negative core-beliefs lead you to expect that things will not turn out well. You might also become highly self-critical.
The negative beliefs become self-confirming, having led you to engage in the kind of behavior and self-talk that leads to this conclusion.
Breaking the cycle
The cycle can be broken by substituting positive beliefs and expectations in place of the negative. If these are reinforced repeatedly, they replace the old, self-limiting beliefs.
This method has been found to work with all kinds of people, and it can work for you. It involves hard-work and some discomfort, but compared to the on-going misery of low self-esteem, this is a relatively small price to pay.
Distorted expectations
Distorted expectations, the result of filtering perceptions through a biased lens, are the life-blood of low self-esteem. They arise when situations occur that threaten or challenge our existing negative self-belief and we start looking for confirmation that this is indeed a dangerous or uncomfortable situation. The distorted expectation is a prediction of how things will turn out based on the existing negative self-belief.
The distortion can take the form of (a) an unrealistic likelihood of an outcome, (b) an exaggerated view of how bad it would be, (c) underestimating your ability to deal effectively with the situation, and (d) ignoring any factors that suggest the situation is not as bad as you expect.
The distorted expectations cause you to feel anxious, with the natural consequence that you will try to either avoid the situation altogether, or place conditions on it (like arriving early and leaving late) that serve to minimise the exposure to the anxiety producing situation.
In this way, the negative self-belief is perpetuated. Through giving in to the fear and rushing to find our comfort zone again, we miss an opportunity to dispel the negative belief.
Refuting the distorted belief
Refuting the distorted belief means to challenge the belief, shining the light of reason and logic upon it while learning to tolerate the discomfort that you feel while this is happening. This is perhaps the basis of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous saying that what does not kill you makes you strong.
Notice what is happening here. By looking objectively at the belief, you have disassociated yourself from it. No longer is it a part of who you are. It is merely an aspect of what you used to think. Anything that you can stand aside from like this is not part of who you truly are.
Distorted thinking
There are a depressingly wide range of ways that we humans can distort reality. Here is a list of some of them:
Catastrophising. When you expect the worse to happen. It begins with a lot of what if self-talk. Perhaps you doubt your capacity to adapt to new situations.
Rules and regulations. There are cast-iron ways that people should behave. People who break those rules make you angry. You judge people harshly for these infractions. When you break the rules yourself, your self-esteem plummets.
Filtering. As mentioned above, when we filter, we take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out the positive aspects. The whole situation can be coloured by a single detail.
Polarising. When the world is reduced to black and white, even though there are always shades of grey. You perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground. Either you are perfect or you are a failure.
Overgeneralisation. Generalising a conclusion based on insufficient evidence to warrant a conclusion. Something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. You avoid future failures based on the single event.
Global Labelling. You take a single quality and generalise it as a global judgment.
Mind Reading. You project your own thoughts and feelings onto others and assume that they are thinking and feeling this too. Mind readers jump to conclusions that might be true for them but do not check if it is true for others.
Personalisation. Its all about me. For example, thinking that what people say and do is a reaction to you. The underlying problem is that you feel your worth is being questioned and you need to continually compare yourself with others.
Blaming. Everyone else is responsible for your problems when in fact we are responsible for creating whatever conditions exist in our lives.
Emotional Reasoning. What you feel must be true. If you feel dumb, well, you must be dumb. Feeling guilty? You must have done something wrong.
Being Right. Needing to always be right. Being wrong is grossly shameful.
Building a positive self-belief
Having made a start on dismantling the network of self-limiting beliefs that have kept you bound in sorrows and misery for so long, the task is now to replace them with something much better.
Noticing the positive
As discussed in the section above, Refuting the distorted belief, becoming more objective and rational about who you are and what you believe about yourself has the powerful benefit of allowing you to recreate yourself with a positive new perspective.
Becoming more rational about yourself is enormously helpful in building higher self-esteem. Its because so many self-limiting beliefs are irrational. They do not stand up to scrutiny. They fail the reality test.
So while you are cultivating a more rational mind-set, start looking objectively at your good points. I assure you, whoever you are, you do have good points, many good points. If you can not see them, it is because you have allowed yourself to become blind to them.
Ask yourself what you like about yourself, what are some of your achievements, what difficulties have you overcome, what skills or talents do you have, what do people say they like about you, what bad qualities do I not have?
Adopting more open-ended rules
Rules can bind, they can also liberate. Habits, for example are rules that are applied often, forming a pattern. Good habits, the kind that help you grow and be fulfilled, are hard to acquire. Bad habits, the kind that limit you and lead to unhappiness and addiction, are easy to form, but hard to live with. Underlying all habits are rules that you have instituted for yourself.
Good rules are realistic, flexible, and adaptable. They allow you to function safely and happily. Bad rules are unrealistic, unreasonable, excessive, rigid, and unadaptable. Do you see the difference? The good kind is open-ended. They allow you to grow. The bad kind place arbitrary limits on what you can do, and who you can be.
Think carefully about the rules you currently live by. Start observing how you apply those rules on a moment-by-moment basis.
Practicing mindfulness
Mindfulness is a simple, but very powerful therapeutic technique that anyone can do. It is cultivated by observing your own mind, by allocating a portion of your awareness to monitor what is going on in your mind at all times.
Mindfulness helps you to stop thinking so much about the past and the future by removing the dimension of time from your thinking.
When you are being mindful, your awareness, your consciousness is firmly in the Now moment. In the Now you observe the world of phenomena in a judgment-free way. You better able to accept it without mental resistance.
Mindfulness is effective at putting past hurt behind you. If you struggle with issues that occurred in your past, whether recently or a long time ago, then mindfulness can be a great help. By withdrawing your attention from the past and focussing on the present, you break the cycle of having to re-live those painful events over and over. The important thing is to let go of the victim self-image that goes along with the pain. We can get so used to living with that negative self-image that it becomes who we are, as painful as that is.
Mindfulness can create a positive self-image by seeing our self as a present-dwelling person who lives in and reacts to only the present. A person who rarely thinks about the past and who refuses to feel sorry for themselves any more. This is a tremendously liberating thing to do.
It is also an excellent way to overcome the various addictions and destructive coping mechanisms that go along past hurt.
Judgment versus understanding
One benefit of this judgment-free mind-set is the development of intuitive insight into people and situations. The human mind is unable to simultaneously judge and understand a situation. It is either one or the other. A judgmental mind-set effectively declares the matter closed, the decision made. And all of this is usually done based on the slimmest of evidence and faulty assumptions.
On the other hand, an open mind allows room for new information. It acknowledges that there is always more to people and situations than meets the eye. It effectively says I will suspend judgment long enough to understand, then maybe I will make up my mind, or maybe I will continue to keep my mind open in case new information comes to light.
Acceptance of what is and not minding what happens does not mean you have to put up with a bad situation and not take reasonable steps to get yourself out of that situation. It simply means coming to terms with being in that situation for the time being without resorting to anger, self-pity, accusations or other negative emotional reactions. All situations, pleasant and unpleasant, are ultimately transitory. You might as well conduct yourself with quiet dignity while the unpleasantness lasts.
Non-attachment
One of the four noble truths of Buddhism holds that people experience suffering because they are attached to worldly things, which, by definition must eventually pass away. These ‘things’ can be more than just physical objects. They can be the egoic self, social structures and networks, relationships and human lives in general.
It is tempting to want to hold onto and re-create the good times from the past, but we must let the past go if we are to grow. If the past was good, it can fill us with nostalgic longing. If it was bad, it can haunt us with pain and regret. Either way, we must let it go. Come to believe that whatever is contained in the now is fully sufficient in itself, and needs nothing more for it to be perfect.
Resist the temptation to define your self as your possessions or your role in society, including any titles you might have. You are much more than that. If you had a sudden reversal of fortune and lost all your possessions and good reputation the essential you should still be present and sufficient. Such a loss would be completely devastating to materially-minded people, possibly leading to suicide, yet all such material possessions and egoic structures are destined to disappear one day anyway. What is left after all your worldly possessions are gone is who you truly are and always have been. This is not to suggest you should take a vow of poverty, or give your possessions away so that you maintain a sense of non-attachment to them. Enjoy them by all means, but do not be defined by them so that you wonder who would you be without them?
Non-attachment is about seeing yourself as a complete person, in and of yourself. You do not need anyone else to complete you or to feel good about yourself. As strange as it might sound, if you do this, the quality of your relationships will improve because you will be relating to people as they are, not as they make you feel about yourself.
Do you depend on someone for your happiness? If you do, that person is sure to disappoint you sooner or later. How can they not? They are not perfect. Healthy relationships are those in which the parties are independent but who choose to spend time together for the enjoyment it brings, not because of addictive craving. Sadly for some, the romantic image of a soul mate that completes you is not a healthy one because it defines you as incomplete. Deep down you are a whole person who needs no completing. Examine closely the nature of any relationship that does not want you to be a whole person.
An attitude of Gratitude
Gratitude is a force of Nature that has a powerfully transformative effect on those who practice it. Gratitude can bring more of what you want from life by demonstrating that you deserve it and are ready to receive it. By being grateful for what you already have, you are saying to the Universe that you like what you have, and that you are ready to receive more by having created the right conditions in your self.
Gratitude acknowledges the many good things already in your life and creates the conditions for more to come in. They come because they are appreciated and there is a place for them. On the other hand, the person who complains about what they have or do not have is closing the door to further gifts by saying, I don’t like what I have already have, bring me something better, sounding like a petulant restaurant diner. Life does not reward this attitude with greater blessings. You are left with what you already have until you learn how to appreciate it. If what you have remains unappreciated for too long, it too will go, hence the old saying you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till its gone.
It is highly recommended to begin each day with an expression of profound thanks for the gift of this day. Sit for a few moments on the side of the bed before standing up and generate a strong sense of gratitude for the gift of another day of life!
It is normal for people to take the new day for granted, but imagine this day is your last on earth or you have recently survived a life-threatening event, how very precious life seems then.
This is the carpe diem (seize the day) philosophy; live each day as if it were your last while gratefully working towards a long and happy future.
Mindfulness is meta-consciousness
Mindfulness is meta-consciousness; which is to say consciousness about consciousness. Being aware of your on-going stream of awareness is a dimension of thought that the human mind is uniquely capable of given the complex neural infrastructure of the evolved human brain. Indeed, it has been observed by neuro-scientists that the human brain is the most complex biological structure known to science.
Perhaps this is what sets humans apart from intelligent animals. It allows us to make choices based on the conscious awareness of alternatives. Put another way, we are never more human than when we are being mindful and making conscious choices.
Chain of cause and effect
Mindfulness raises your consciousness to the point where you become aware of how your behaviour in the present will influence what happens in your future. Once you see this you can consciously choose the behaviour that will cause a desirable future effect. Likewise, you become aware of how you arrived in your present circumstances as a result of your previous actions. The linkages between cause and effect become apparent. You use this awareness to consciously create the life you want for yourself, and avoid the situations you do not want.
You realise that you are ultimately responsible for what is happening around you. This is the real meaning of Free Will. You have the capacity to choose, but only if you are conscious enough to exercise that choice. The person busy ruminating on the past and worrying about the future is not mindful and therefore not fully conscious. They are unlikely to see these cause and effect linkages, and will continue to behave in their habit-driven way, indulging in self-pity and complaints that their life is such a mess and that it is everyone else’s fault.
Self-esteem enhancing beliefs & practices
Here are a range of strategies you can use to build health self-esteem. Remember, feeling good about yourself is your right as a human being. There is no good reason why you should be denied this human right.
Dealing with disapproval
Humans are such social creatures that the approval and disapproval of others exerts an enormous amount of influence on how we think and act. Society and those around us particularly let us know what behavior they would like us to do more of by approving of that behavior. Likewise they discourage us with disapproval.
A person with high self-esteem is someone who does not allow the approval or particularly the disapproval of others to unduly influence them. When they encounter rejection, it does not send them into a downward spiral because they see this rejection for what it is; simply the opinion of another person who may or may not know what they are talking about. They do not let it worry them or make them upset. As hard as this might sound, get into the habit of shrugging off disapproval.
Thinking in action-oriented ways
This attitude is summed up by the well-known Nike slogan – Just do it! (Nike, by the way is the ancient Greek Goddess of Victory). When there is something to do, people with high-self-esteem do not waste time procrastinating, they simply knuckle down and do it. What’s more, they keep at it until the job is finished. They do not look for excuses to stop. They know that their self-esteem depends on knowing that they are the kind of person who does what say they will do without making excuses.
Dealing constructively with negativity
People with high-self-esteem have developed the habit of dealing constructively with negative thoughts or emotions by substituting positive thoughts and emotions in place of the negative.
You can only think or feel one thing at a time, so if you are being nagged by a persistent negative thought, you consciously think of a positive thought and simply replace the negative with the positive. I know I make this sound simple when it is actually quite difficult, but with persistence and practice, any negative thought can be dealt with in this way. It does indeed require self-discipline and a willingness to let go of the negative thought or emotion. As strange as it might sound, we can become attached to negativity and unwilling to part with it.
They do not waste time feeling guilty about past mistakes. They make amends if necessary and resolve to learn from the experience and make a commitment to themselves to not repeat that experience. Then they simply move forwards.
Avoiding superstition
People with high self-esteem are nothing if not rational. They think logically about the world and their place in it, and avoid indulging in superstitious beliefs like avoiding black cats, walking under ladders or the number 13.
When something good happens to them, they do not automatically believe that something bad will follow. They know that the good thing happened as a result of their own choices and the law of cause and effect.
Learning from failure
People with high self-esteem have a superior ability to cope with failure. They understand that every successful person who ever lived experienced a lot of failure on the way to becoming successful. They refuse to allow failure lower their self-esteem.
Accepting the reality of failure as a necessary step on the way to ultimate success allows them to get rid of the fear of failure that prevents people with low self-esteem from undertaking activities that might result in failure. By thinking it through and with good planning, a reasonable risk is fine.
The American inventor Thomas Edison is said to have experimented with literally hundreds of materials to use as a light-emitting filament of a light bulb (which he invented). When asked if he became discouraged at so much failure before finally hitting upon tungsten, he remarked that he did not see it as failure. He had simply found another mater that was not suitable, bringing him one step closer to finding a material that was suitable.
Avoiding categorical thinking
People with high-self-esteem avoid imposing the straight-jacket of categorical thinking. They keep their minds open and flexible, not ruling out possibilities simply because they fall into a certain orthodox category.
Orthodox means what is held to be true. It is saying, in effect, that we hold these views to be self-evidently true, and no further debate will be entered into. People with high self-esteem avoid orthodox thinking because what was once true may not longer be true since the world changes over time. Thinking outside the box might earn a person the disapproval of society (as discussed in the section on dealing with disapproval), but high-achieving people who change the world all think this way.
People with high self-esteem do not see the world in black and white, a world that is polarised into opposites. They see that there are always shades of grey. They also accept people the way they are without judgment. For example, a homeless man might have an excellent idea. A close-minded person would dismiss any idea coming from this category of person.
Realistic optimism
People with high-self-esteem approach life with a practical optimism that hopes for the best while preparing for the worst. They are realistic in their expectations, deliberately keeping their expectations low so as to avoid the possibility of disappointment.
Realistic thinking means an absence of delusion, of wishful thinking. They see the world as it really is, not as it should be. They remain positive and cheerful in the face of adversity, accepting that adversity is a necessary part of getting anything worthwhile done.
Being open to new experience
People with high-self-esteem are not afraid to try new and perhaps unconventional things. They are willing to leave their comfort zone for the sake of having new experiences. They know that not everything they try will turn out well. Perhaps only half of the time will it turn out well. They do not know in advance which half it will be, so they move forwards with optimism anyway, ready to learn something new and while taking the occasional knock.
Where to from here?
Beyond high self-esteem is self-actualisation. This section gives you a taste of what lies in store for you if you work hard at improving your self-esteem.
The humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow is well-known for his ideas on a hierarchy of human needs. Basic needs must be satisfied before higher order needs are felt. The hierarchy is represented as a pyramid, with the basic needs at the pyramids broad base, and with self-actualisation at the apex. A Self-Actualised person has found a way to satisfy all of his or her lower needs and has cultivated the conscious awareness of their highest self. They allow this awareness to express itself more fully in their lives.
The achievement of Self-Actualisation is recognised by Maslow as a human need, so in a sense it is everyone’s birthright to be happy.
The need for Self-Actualisation asserts itself once we have satisfied the lowest-order needs for food, shelter, sex, then middle-order needs for safety and security, then the higher middle-order needs for love and belonging. Above these is the higher-order need for self-esteem, the subject of this eBook. The highest need of all, sitting like the capstone of a pyramid is the need for Self-Actualisation.
The annals of various religions tell us that a person can achieve enlightenment with only some or none of the higher and middle order needs being met, and with only the barest of lower-order needs like food and shelter being satisfied. This is more difficult, requiring you to become an ascetic recluse and engage in mortification of the flesh in order to free yourself of these normal human needs. This eBook is not recommending this course of action. Our body is not an impediment to happiness. Quite the opposite, it is a great ally. We owe it to ourselves to take the best care of our body that we can by eating well, getting enough exercise and rest, and avoiding toxic and/or addictive substances.
About the Author
David Tuffley PhD combines a career as a university lecturer and researcher with his personal search for enlightenment over the past 40 years. This book is one of the fruits of that journey.
David's academic interests range across Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Psychology, Anthropology, Literature, History, Software Engineering and Architecture.
See Being Happy (about self-Actualisation): http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52691
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