Areas › Anger › What you are actually defending
Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.
Those measures move. They differ between one country and the next, and between your grandfather's time and your own. Anything you score yourself on today could be scored differently in ten years by people who never asked you. That is not an argument for scoring higher, it is an argument for noticing whose ruler you are holding.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not assert your own goodness (Quran 53:32). The instruction is to stop making the claim, which is a different move from raising the score.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّمَمَۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَٰسِعُ ٱلۡمَغۡفِرَةِۚ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِكُمۡ إِذۡ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَإِذۡ أَنتُمۡ أَجِنَّةࣱ فِي بُطُونِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمۡۖ فَلَا تُزَكُّوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡۖ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰٓ
As for those who avoid grave sins and foul acts, though they may commit small sins, your Lord is ample in forgiveness. He has been aware of you from the time He produced you from the earth and from your hiding places in your mothers’ wombs, so do not assert your own goodness:He knows best who is mindful of Him
Qur’an 53:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A randomised controlled trial found that a mobile phone programme raised self-esteem in students with depressive symptoms. It shows the score can be moved, which is worth knowing. It also underlines that self-esteem is the sort of thing that gets scored at all, and the sample was self-selected and online, so it is not a general claim about everyone.
Bruhns A, Lüdtke T, Moritz S, Bücker L. (2021). A Mobile-Based Intervention to Increase Self-esteem in Students With Depressive Symptoms: Randomized Controlled Trial.. JMIR mHealth and uHealth doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Worth that has to be measured depends entirely on who is holding the measure.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Some situations genuinely run on how you are seen. A job interview, a court hearing, a first meeting with in-laws: the image matters there, and it is honest to say so.
Respect comes from the Latin for looking, with the prefix meaning again. It is literally the second look, the head that turns as somebody important walks past.
A lot of angry certainty is frightened certainty. Needing to know exactly what is going on, and exactly who is at fault, is more comfortable than admitting the situation cannot be fully read.