Studies show that more than 85% of the world's people suffer from some degree of lacking self-esteem. Although one might think that such challenges are only characteristic of the poor, uneducated, or lower socio-economic members of society, people from all walks of life can suffer situational or more widespread challenges resulting from low levels of self-esteem.

Many very successful people lack self-esteem in some areas of their lives. Perhaps they feel socially challenged or they have difficulty establishing close or intimate relationships. Perhaps they experience low self-esteem with regard to their physical appearance or their health. Perhaps they are not having any fun in their lives, maybe devoting too much attention to their work.

Many "successful" people are driven to succeed. They compensate for feeling deficient in other areas of their lives by working harder or finding places they can excel. This provides them with a new focus where they can win but it doesn't fulfill their neglected needs in other areas like relationships, recreation, personal and spiritual development, health and appearance and their ability to lead balanced, fun, and fulfilling lives.

It's not that there is something wrong with finding a niche where one can be successful and feel good about oneself. However, many of those lacking self-esteem in other areas find themselves driven to accomplish, driven to prove their worth. When they an area where they can shine, they neglect other areas to focus excessively on this.

However, since their actions are built upon the erroneous belief that they are somehow not good enough, somehow defective or unworthy of being fully loved and accepted, there is little lasting satisfaction even in the arenas where they can excel. It's as though they are climbing a ladder with the top of the ladder in the clouds. They think that if they can just climb high enough, they will be successful. They will have proven their worth. They will find satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.

However, as they climb higher and higher, they never seem to arrive. There are always new goals and objectives challenging them to prove their worth. The more they achieve, the more they have yet to go. Try as they will, they never seem to fully measure up. Or, if they do, it is short-lived and fleeting at best. There is no arriving to the point where they find what they long for so badly - the peace of mind that comes from self-love and self-acceptance.

Because the foundation of their ladder is grounded on quicksand, they often find themselves sinking as rapidly as they climb. In fact, from their perspective, they will never reach the perfection they seek so badly. They will always find evidence to highlight their flaws and reinforce their fears of being unworthy, unlovable, defective in some way.

In addition to the cost of never finding true happiness, long-term fulfillment, or peace, lacking self-esteem impacts people in many other ways. For example, by not getting to the source of their self-esteem issues, they sacrifice their personal power, their ability to best pursue their life purpose and fully manifest their gifts in the world. If our energy is spent by being preoccupied with our weaknesses or being incomplete with our past, we can never be fully present to today and so we sacrifice our true potential to be our very best.

Our relationships suffer as we will misinterpret the words and actions of others in a way that invalidates us and has us feel badly about who we are. We may be so driven to prove we are good enough that we sacrifice our personal effectiveness and charisma by focusing on ourselves and our deficiencies rather than on the wants and needs of others.

We may play small and hide out in social situations or whenever the possibility of looking bad or "being found out" comes up for us. Or, we may overcompensate and turn to workaholic tendencies out of a desire to prove our worth to others or to ourselves. Because of this misdirected focus, we trade our ability to impact others maximally and to best contribute our gifts to the world.

By raising self-esteem, we will realize a wide variety of benefits in our personal and professional lives. Those with high self-esteem are more effective in their communication and more likely to establish richer, more rewarding relationships. People with greater self-confidence possess a more positive expectation for the future. They feel good about their ability to accomplish a result and so they are more proactive, are in more focused action, and have less of a tendency to sabotage themselves along the way as those lacking self-esteem typically do.

Those believing in their abilities are less driven to prove themselves as worthy and so they are less prone to burnout. They relax more and tend to have fun more often and are less stressed since they have less to prove. With a higher self-image, they are also more likely to savor their accomplishments rather than find ways to invalidate them.

In their personal lives, people with elevated esteem tend to be more at peace. Couples possessing high self-esteem typically fight less with each other and tend to do better in sustaining long term relationships. Because they are less likely to be invalidated at the slightest provocation and are less likely to fear being dominated by their peers, they tend to get along better with others. Being less scarcity-based, they tend to make time for both work as well as recreation and passions rather than being driven to prove themselves worthy in those areas where they feel deficient.

The message of The Self-Esteem System is simple. No one needs to settle for a dimmed existence due to a lacking sense of self-worth. Most people either make up or buy into thoughts that there is something wrong with them, that they are somehow inadequate, not good enough and not worthy of being loved and accessing all the good things that life has to offer.

If they are willing to examine their past to get to the source of their resignation and diminished self-esteem, they can reinterpret what happened to them in such a way that they can heal and complete the past and eliminate negative self-talk while making a conscious decision to live their lives from a decision to strive for excellence and contribute to others. By developing a firm belief that they can impact people and the world around them and that they are, in fact, very worthy of receiving life's blessings, they will manifest happiness and fulfillment.

The answer to escaping the vicious cycle of lacking self-esteem, diminished confidence, and the never-ending, frustrating quest for fulfillment lies in the 3 step process as laid out in detail in The Self-Esteem Book. The process starts with healing one's past so that it no longer robs us of energy and consumes our attention. We do this by reinterpreting the upsetting events of our childhood in a way that involves empathy, forgiveness, and gratitude.

We create empathy for those who said or did things that hurt us and caused us to lose esteem by asking the question "What could it have been like in this person's world for them to have acted as they did?" This is not the same as condoning hurtful behavior. It is simply making the observation that they acted in alignment with how they viewed the world. As a child we gave these happenings meanings that resulted in our decision that we did not measure up in some way to the standards of perfection we set for ourselves.

We can then make a conscious decision to both forgive those who hurt us and forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. And lastly, rather than focus on our weaknesses, we can decide to be grateful for our strengths and gifts. We can learn to acknowledge ourselves for the things we do well and for the unique, special gifts we bring to the world.

Once the pull of past ghosts is complete, we can then turn our attention to properly analyzing our present state of affairs. We can identify what's working in our lives and what's missing to support living an upset-free life in choice, a life that honors our most important values and inspires us to live passionately.

We can analyze each of the six predominant areas of our lives: our health and physical appearance and makeup, our occupation or life's work, our wealth and finances, our relationships and family, our spiritual and personal development, and our fun, recreations, and passions. We can highlight our strengths and decide to work to improve upon the things that we see as lacking in each area.

And finally, we can take that magic wand that is our birth-right, wave it over our lives and design our future deliberately. We can choose to do so in a way that excites us, as we cast off that gloomy state of low self-esteem, unhealthy resignation and self-pity that no longer supports us. We can create a vision for who we are and the qualities for which we wish to be known.

We can choose how we will spend a typical day at work or at play. We can envision the things that we will have around us in our lives, including such things as where we will live and with whom. And we can decide how our lives will be spent so that we honor our most important values, who we will contribute to, and what passions and gifts we will focus on manifesting.

We can commit to read such a written vision daily and replace our negative self-talk with powerful affirming statements that support our self-worth. In short, we can live with the intention to honor our God-given magnificence and lead happy, fulfilled lives that fully contribute to others as we embrace our humanity and share the unique and special person we are with the world.