As humans, we are all magnificent by nature. We possess the ability to overcome obstacles, achieve meaningful accomplishments, honor our most important values, attain happiness and contribute our special, unique gifts to others. In short, we can take responsibility for making our lives work optimally. Unfortunately, through the course of experiencing life’s challenges, we often lose sight of these facts. From birth and continuing throughout our lifetimes, we encounter countless experiences that can either enhance our self-esteem or erode it, and thus bring us levels of low self-esteem. The process of diminishing our self-esteem begins with a simple observation that we somehow do not measure up. We judge ourselves as different and deficient in some way. We decide that we don’t belong. From this point, our lives unfold in accordance with our expectations. These expectations directly relate to how we feel about ourselves. Either we are worthy of all the good things life can offer or we deserve pain and suffering because we lack value.

When we judge ourselves harshly, we dramatically diminish our ability to merit love and achieve the success and abundance the world reserves for those most valuable. When we base our actions upon the belief that we lack what it takes to deserve rich relationships, material wealth and happiness, we trigger those very things we fear most: As our self-esteem insidiously continues to diminish, we find ourselves incapable of directing our lives and fortunes productively. Resignation sets in like dry rot, killing our spirits. This ensures that deeming ourselves as undeserving will viciously cycle into results consistent with this expectation and reinforces our sense of worthlessness. The lower our self-esteem drops, the less likely we are to act in a way that will generate positive feedback to elevate our deteriorating self-worth.

For most human beings, for a certain time after birth, life is good. Our parents meet our every need while providing us with the love and security we come to depend upon to develop into self-assured, well-adjusted individuals. Early in life, we learn to attach a value to the identity we create for ourselves. In this book, we will explore in detail how something happens during this process of self-discovery, sometime between birth and adolescence, to have us begin the process of judging ourselves harshly whether an event occurs or someone makes a remark, somehow we decide that we do not measure up in some way. This psychological trauma or series of traumas can range in severity from an abusive experience to a simple misinterpretation. For some, it may involve sexual or physical abuse or the experience of being abandoned or terrorized. It may start with a simple spanking or be as extreme as a beating. Something happens that plants the idea that they are not worth loving. The event need not look severely traumatic to anyone else. To be damaging, it just needs to disturb the inner peace and identity of the person experiencing it.

In any event, the result is the same. We start to compare our essential self to others and to feel bad about who we are in that comparison. This negative self-opinion begins distorting our relationship to others. Seeing ourselves as inadequate, we now respond differently to daily situations. Our results match our distorted self-image and low levels of self-esteem ensue. This reinforces our feelings of unworthiness by providing us with concrete evidence to justify them. In short, we have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The label we affix to describe our condition further compounds our feeling of inadequacy. Our self-esteem suffers more so. Before we know it, we have built into our lives as fact that we are not good enough and are surely unworthy of love, abundance and happiness.

This self-judgment brings with it enormous pain. Because our inherent human nature has us instinctively seek out pleasure and avoid pain, we alter our behavior in an effort to avoid further rejection. Barraging our internal conversations with constant criticisms and dire warnings, we protect ourselves from potentially painful relationships and avoid communication, interaction and risk. We give up on our dreams and lower our expectations for fear of being hurt. We settle for less and then justify our actions to protect us from further harm. Resignation and the slow, subtle death of our spirit, with the resulting loss of vitality, inevitably result from our worsening self-opinion.

Low self-esteem can pervasively infiltrate every aspect of life or it can be limited to particular situations or circumstances. The latter occurs when you determine that you are inadequate in some domains but not others. Perhaps, you might feel good about who you are in business matters but suffer a poor physical self-image, thinking you are unattractive. Maybe you realize you excel in sports, but you have little self-confidence socially. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, areas where we feel confident and others where we feel lacking what it takes to fit in and do well. This limited type of diminished self-esteem, relegated to one or a few specific arenas, can be much more easily managed and addressed. In contrast, the all-encompassing loss of self-esteem where we feel unworthy of happiness and not good enough to compare with others in most areas of life is much more devastating.

This pervasive loss of self-esteem and the resultant feelings of low self-esteem can become a rapidly progressing self-fulfilling prophecy. We compare ourselves to others and find countless ways that we don’t measure up. As we judge ourselves to be inferior, we blame ourselves for everything that goes wrong. We strive harder and harder for perfection, but can’t shake the destructive feeling that everything we do is inadequate. We constantly amplify our weaknesses and label ourselves as stupid, ugly, a failure, hopeless and unlovable. Our smallest mistake or oversight gets magnified in our eyes to the point where we lose faith in our abilities to communicate, relate and perform effectively. We fall into the trap of thinking that the entire world sees us as being as pathetic as we see ourselves. This has us misinterpret people’s generally harmless words and actions, thinking that they’re pointing out how pitiable we really are. We consistently overreact to situations and statements because everything feels like a personal attack on our inadequacies. Others then perceive us as strange and notice that our energy is off. Their reaction reinforces our fears. We damage our relationships and alienate ourselves further. This proves us right about how we saw ourselves in the first place and further erodes our ability to connect with others. The more the self-sabotage occurs, the less able we are to interact effectively.

Don’t lose hope. We can reverse the downward spiral of progressively diminishing self-esteem that causes us to have low self-esteem. By identifying how we have lost confidence in ourselves, we can stop the erosion of our self-image. Doing so will allow us to focus on restoring the magnificence that is our true intrinsic nature. Restoring confidence in ourselves and in our ability to achieve happiness and fulfillment and tap into the world’s abundance will soon follow. Let’s start with a clear look at how we lose self-esteem, and then, more importantly, let’s work to restore it and step into the magnificence that is our birthright.

The path to reversing low self-esteem is to recognize the painful past and leave it behind, to effectively manage negative self-talk and to deliberately design a future that is consistent with the person you have decided to be, a person you can be proud to know and love. We will expose the human mechanisms that kill our spirits as we provide a proven process for reclaiming personal power and passion for life. By providing you with the tools to reinvent who you perceive yourself to be, you will be empowered to impact others.

Suffering is always optional. By claiming responsibility for your life and magnificence, you will no longer be at the mercy of whatever obstacles cross your path. You will grow daily in the confidence that you possess the ability to impact others with newfound direction and purpose.