Nathaniel Branden's Self-Esteem Every Day - 2006


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August 22 – Self-Esteem Every Day

As spiritual advice, "Follow your bliss" is well intentioned, perhaps, but clearly inadequate. If one wished to reduce morality to a single sentence (which is a dubious endeavor), one had better say, "Live consciously; take responsibility for your choices and actions; respect the rights of others; and follow your bliss." But, of course, life is just too complex for moral one-liners, except insofar as they serve as reminders of basic principles.
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August 23 – Self-Esteem Every Day

In a society where political figures, religious leaders, business associates, corporate heads, and other public personalities hold themselves to high standards of morality, it is relatively easier for an average person to practice integrity than it is in a society where corruption, cynicism, and amorality are the norm. In the latter kind of society, an individual is likely to feel that the quest for personal integrity is futile and unrealistic—unless he or she is extraordinarily independent and autonomous, inner-directed rather than outer-directed.
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August 24 – Self-Esteem Every Day

The challenge for people today—and it is not an easy one—is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.
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August 25 – Self-Esteem Every Day

The more you live consciously, the more you trust your mind and respect your worth; and if you trust your mind and respect your worth, it feels natural to live consciously. The more you practice integrity, the more you enjoy good self-esteem; and if you enjoy good self-esteem, it feels natural to practice integrity.
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August 26 – Self-Esteem Every Day

When integrity comes to feel like your natural state, you feel dishonesty on your part as disturbing, and you feel a thrust to resolve the dissonance and restore an inner sense of moral cleanliness.
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August 27 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Here is a test for the feeling of integrity: Are you proud of your choices and actions? For most people it's a question more often avoided than confronted. But what an opportunity for growth the question offers!
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August 28 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Some people admire men and women of integrity; others are made nervous—they experience an unspoken sense of reproach, not knowing it lies within themselves.
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August 31 – Self-Esteem Every Day

The virtues that self-esteem asks of us—living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, integrity—are also the virtues life asks of us.
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September 1 – Self-Esteem Every Day

The first love affair you must consummate successfully is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.
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September 2 – Self-Esteem Every Day

When a man and a woman encounter each other in romantic love, seeking union, seeking fusion, seeking the experience of the most intimate contact, they come to each other from a context of aloneness. An understanding of this fact is essential. Paradoxically, If you wish to understand romantic love, you must begin by understanding aloneness, the universal condition of us all.
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September 3 – Self-Esteem Every Day

We are all parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness.
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September 5 – Self-Esteem Every Day

To love a human being is to know and love his or her person. This communion presupposes the ability to see, and with reasonable clarity. Love without sight is not love, but self-deception.
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September 7 – Self-Esteem Every Day

All positive interactions with other human beings involve, to some degree, the experience of visibility—that is, the experience of being seen and understood.
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September 9 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Whoever allows us to feel deeply seen holds a powerful grip on our emotions. This is one of the reasons people can form such strong emotional attachments with their psychotherapists.
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September 10 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Romantic love is a passionate spritual-emotional-sexual attachment between two people that reflects a high regard for each others value. Romantic love entails mutual admiration.
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September 11 – Self-Esteem Every Day

It is easy to confuse romantic love with loneliness, need, neurotic dependency, or sexual attraction in the absence of mutual esteem. And for this reason, when such relationships crash or lead to little but mutual torture, "romantic love" often gets the blame.
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September 13 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Everyone knows this cliche: If you don't love yourself, it is difficult to love another. Less well understood is the other half of the story: If you don't love yourself, it is very difficult to accept the love of another—very difficult to believe in its reality, very difficult to let it fully in—because such love clashes with your self-concept.
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September 14 – Self-Esteem Every Day

If you enjoy a fundamental sense of efficacy and worth, and if, as a consequence, you feel lovable as a human being, you have a basis for appreciating and loving others. You are not trapped in feelings of deficiency. You have a surplus of life within you, an emotional wealth that you can channel into loving.
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September 15 – Self-Esteem Every Day

Without respect for and enjoyment of who you are, you have very little to give emotionally. You tend to see others primarily as sources of approval or disapproval. You do not appreciate them in their own right. But if you can learn to do so—and this is something that can be learned—you grow in self-esteem. And you begin to feel less needy.
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