You can either hold yourself up to the unrealistic standards of others, or ignore them and concentrate on being happy with yourself as you are. ~ Jeph Jacques

Self-esteem has become a bit of a buzzword in modern society. Battles rage in education over how much time should be given over to less academic aspects of the experience, and how increasingly lack of self-respect apparently leads to most of society’s problems. I exaggerate here but a line in a book I read recently said something like ‘many teenage girls I know practically live off low self-esteem’ so it’s definitely an issue to be considered. But is it automatically right for everyone to have a high self-esteem? What happens when they’re doing something that actually they really shouldn’t be; should they have a great deal of confidence then? Clearly we would have the rest of society telling them that they should be ashamed of themselves and should stop whatever it is they are doing.

I bring this up because I have noticed over the past half a year or so I have become increasingly concerned with other’s opinions of me when for most of my life I’ve barely been affected by them. On the one hand, this is good: obviously I would rather not be ignorant of what others have to say, and I always (in principle) want to hear the opinions of others on pretty much everything including my own behaviour, in order to work out what I should or shouldn’t be doing based on as much evidence as possible. On the other hand, I fear that I am becoming overly concerned with the opinion held of me by certain other individuals. I’m referring to certain teachers, Internet friends (and superiors in the projects I am involved in), and certain friends I particularly respect the opinion of. This usually involves one of this group making a harsh criticism of me, or misrepresenting my position on something. To the former, I am distressed that I become so distressed over such things. Criticism is a good thing, when fair, and when unjustified it should not concern me - but increasingly it does. To the latter, I perhaps worry too much about correcting the situation when I should instead just correct it once and leave it. I chase things up for far too long and become nagging. Psychologically I’m sure it is me looking for approval from those I respect the opinions of. Simple impulses.

As usual I haven’t really expressed what I wanted to in this post. I need to follow my own mantra of debate over argument and hurt. I need to stop worrying if I’ve hurt or annoyed someone else when I know my intentions have been good and I’ve noted to them those intentions should they become unclear. I need to accept that I’m not perfect, I’m inferior and unoriginal but that this is not something to dwell upon. Because lately as described I’ve become emotionally hung up on this kind of thing and this is not a situation I want to be in. I don’t want to stare at a wall for three quarters of an hour because someone gives me a fair opinion as I did earlier this week. This isn’t me.