I agree. The more good we put out, the better we feel inside. It’s not just how we perceive ourselves, but what we do that makes up how we feel. It can’t automatically be imbedded into our head from just repeating to ourselves that “I am good”..etc. It’s our nature to want someone else to positively speak of us, and accept us, and see the good we do and recognize it. We can’t do it alone. If we could, then everyone would be happy. Does this make sense? This is just how I feel and my experiences so far in life.

because you have to love yourself,and compromise on the fact that you might not like some things about yourself or your outlook and you can change so you HAVE TO love yourself the way it is cuzz you have something special as everyone does…just try to see what you wish you had in another person who might be the way you’d like to be and see that he doesn’t have something that you do and he’s not perfect…finally if you don’t appreciate yourself noone ever will…just try to figure it out……..you first have to see you worth and then just make the others see it…….there are so many fat ugly people standing out in this world….!!!!!!!!!!

dont worry, youll get over it, trust me everything will be fine, life always works for the better… o nvm thats just standard answer… before you start appreciating and loving the world, you must love yourself… it also works vice versa, you must hate yourself before you hate someone else, that makes a lot of realization in my opinion. and accomplishing goals that make you feel better, only work temporarily if you dont already feel good about yourself, find what you used to like as a child and thatll bring you up

I believe that having self esteem comes from a variety of factors. You are right that merely repeating something does not make it so. When you are starting from nothing though you have to start somewhere. Recognition of your own self worth just as a human is a good place to start. We are not valuable just because of our accomplishments though they do have a significant self-esteem building role.

The problem with answering self-esteem questions is that it’s hard not to give a plain vanilla, “I believe in you!” generalized answer that doesn’t sound like it’s been through happy happy rainbow land a couple times back and forth. It’s really one of those “discovering yourself” situations, where you need to come to terms with yourself, who you are, and what’s going on around you. Like for example, you’ve got to pinpoint what’s going on in your life to make you feel like you have no self-esteem in the first place.
I have no idea if complimenting oneself can actually give someone self-esteem (I’d imagine it just gives someone an hour of feeling good about themselves). Usually self-esteem is lost from years of extensive bullying or other problems. If someone can just as easily tackle their problems by repeating “I’m pretty!” in the mirror five times a day, then the problem is probably pretty shallow and not nearly as big and bad as the person claims it to be.

Because we are born selfish.

The whole point in telling yourself good things is to rewire your brain. Our synapses form consistent relationships throughout our lives. The electrical currents in our brains always try to find the shortest route get results. For instance, if our synapses are used to thinking, “I’m fat” every time we look in the mirror, then that is what will happen most often when we see our reflection. The key is to change that by consciously changing our thoughts to “I’m skinny” or “I’m attractive” whenever we look at ourselves. The synapses will then begin to form new relationships and our thoughts will reflect the change. Thus we can begin to foster positive self-esteem.

That’s a good point. There’s that whole action/emotion dynamic where in order to initially improve our emotional state, we need to act first. Whenever I’m down on myself, I do the laundry, the dishes, make the bed. Might sound stupid, but those initial actions to improve your living space actually does improve your self esteem enough to get going on the other things in life.

even though you have cancer you’re beautiful….beautiful like a cancer rainbow

I dont know. All that garbage about repeating stuff over and over has not worked for me.