You can be loved by your family, your mate, and your friends yet not love yourself. You can be admired by your associates yet regard yourself as worthless. You can project an image of assurance and poise that fools almost everyone yet secretly tremble with a sense of inadequacy. You can fulfill the expectations of others yet fail your own. You can win every honor yet feel that you have accomplished nothing. What shall it profit a person to gain the esteem of the whole world yet lose his or her own?

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.

How do we nurture the soul? By revering our own life. By learning to love it all, not only the joys and the victories, but also the pain and the struggles.

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

Your life is important. Whether you achieve what you want in life matters. Whether you are happy matters. Honor and fight for your highest potential. Self-realizatio n-the realization of the best within you-is the noblest goal of your existence.

It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.

Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.