Self-esteem grows when you have compassion for yourself.  Compassion allows you to forgive your mistakes and put values and rules in perspective.

Self-esteem grows when you have compassion for yourself.  Compassion allows you to forgive your mistakes and put values and rules in perspective.

"The essence of self-esteem is compassion for  yourself," write  Matthew  McKay, Ph.D, and Patrick  Fanning  in  Self-Esteem.

They continue, "When you have compassion for yourself, you understand and accept yourself. If you make a mistake, you forgive yourself. You have reasonable expectations of yourself. You set attainable goals. You tend to see yourself as basically good."

Compassion allows you to forgive your mistakes and preserve  your self-esteem.  Compassion  also  allows you  to  put  unreasonable values and rules in perspective.

Compassion is composed of understanding, accepting, and forgiving.

Compassion for yourself allows you to forgive yourself and maintain your sense of self worth.

McKay and Fanning write, "When you learn to feel compassion for yourself, you begin exposing your sense of worth. You literally uncover the hidden jewel of your own value. Compassionate self-talk can wash away the sediment of hurt and rejection that may have covered your innate self-acceptance for years."

Please  treat yourself with compassion. Compassion is the core of self-esteem. It is a skill that you can acquire and improve.

But what is compassion?

Compassion is composed of:

1. Understanding. Understanding yourself only means that you have some idea of how you operate and why you operate that way. You typically know what you will do in a given situation.

2. Accepting. Acceptance means you acknowledge the facts while suspending all value judgment.

3. Forgiving. Forgiving yourself means you let go of an incident of the past without dwelling on it or making yourself feel miserable all over again. Forgiving does not mean you approve; it merely means the case is closed.

One way to realize your value as a human being is to realize that you were born into this world and continue to live here despite the struggle to survive.

Thus, nothing you do to survive is "bad;" it is merely more or less "painful "and more or less "effective."

This idea of human worth allows you to suspend judgment of yourself and others, because you (and they) were only doing the best possible thing to survive at the time.

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