Nathaniel Branden's definition of self-esteem

Packing for the Caribbean trip, I knew I would have a ton of free alone time to read - so much so in fact that I figured Goethe's Faust Part Two might not be enough. That's why I also brought a copy of Nathaniel Branden's book, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. Having read Honoring the Self, I was convinced that this book, too, would be worth my attention.

In the book, Branden defines self-esteem as

the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and as worthy of happiness.

This means that self-esteem has a dual composition of self-efficacy and self-respect. He also specifies that to have high self-esteem is to feel confidently appropriate to life, and to have low self-esteem is to feel inappropriate to life, or wrong as a person.

Which means that I am royally fucked.

(Stay tuned for next week's episode of RK realizing she has detrimentally low self-esteem.)

RK