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I'm sort of full of myself too....but also full of doubt...that is, I am a work in progress...which will probably go on my whole life...don't expect to be ever finished...but I care about myself enough to keep working on me and working on me...I think self esteem is value...self value...I value and love the things in me that I think are good, positive, the result of honest effort, etc.

chin chin doll

What I'm saying is we cannot live in isolation and expect our esteem to improve. Regardless of whether we are introverted or extroverted, our esteem and worth are increased when we add value to the world, and only then.

You can sit in an ivory tower, doing nothing but positive visualisation and affirmation, but unless you leave the tower and actually improve the world in general, your esteem doesn't grow. Patting yourself on the back does nothing if deep down you know its an empty gesture...

Esteem is a resonance. We do something worthy, we are rewarded by an increase in the esteem of our peers. Our self-esteem grows via this validation. We do something else worthy, our peers respect us more, we respect ourselves more...etc. ad nauseum...there is no seperation in this process except in our perception.

No man (or woman) is an island. To say that other peoples' opinions don't matter is to deny a very important aspect of the process as a whole. If we take such a solipsistic view of our growth, then we never truly grow, we just continue to delude ourselves...

To GB. We don't disagree. I'm not an island, more like a peninsula. I just feel I define my surroundings rather than my surrounding defining me. While my self-esteem does gain from the respect of my friends, I don't allow someone's unfounded opinion of me to affect my view of myself. My feeling is that my opinion of myself affects how others see me, more than how they see me affects my opinion of me. The people who matter accept me, the ones that don't, don't matter. It's not me against the world, it's just me being the best I can be in the world.

alabama baby, sounds like a proved theory to me

As I said, it is a resonance. Which requires not only a source, but a destination to reflect from back onto the source. My intention is not to change the basic definition you have, but to try and eliminate dualistic thought when considering it. Compartmentalisizing concepts in psychology leads to logical fallacies which create distorted perceptions of self and world.

Addendum: When considering the reactions people have to our efforts, one might want to consider their motivations. Are they honest with themselves, because if they are not, they can never be honest with us.

Additional note: Those who tear down in order to boost self are victims of the lowest self-esteem possible.

As I said, we don't disagree.