The messages we get from the people around us can make or break what psychologists call our “self-esteem.” The problem is that once those messages get skewed, it can take years to right them…
To be happy and healthy we must all discover for ourselves who we really are. It is we who, in the end, must decide what it is that we ourselves are meant to become. To go through life feeling out of place, as interlopers on an alien planet or as refugees from our soul’s real home, makes all of life a foreign land. We find ourselves where we do not belong…
But self-esteem, the calm confidence that comes with being contented with who or what we are, is a great deal more than simply a state of mind. Self-esteem is the virtue of authenticity that comes with self-knowledge.
This excerpt from the book Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister is reprinted by permission of BlueBridge/United Tribes Media Inc.
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