"Respect gods before demi-gods, heroes
before men, and first among men your parents,
but respect yourself most of all."

That's a quote ascribed to Pythagoras, coming from the 6th century BC.

There is no recipe in there about how to fix any esteem-related issues, but it contains profound wisdom nonetheless.

It's a good one to meditate upon once upon a time.

Because, once you respect yourself most of all, you have gained all the power there is available for a human being in this world.

As the power and high self-esteem doesn't come from having power over other people. Many people who had "power" (by today's standards) had very low selfesteem, and look how they ended - some on the trap-door of history, others left a large but extremely negative trail on this world.

Before you start getting angry at me, please calm for a moment and let me explain my opinion:

By blaming other people, you are giving out your power, your power over yourself and over your emotions.

By blaming other people, you are losing energy.

By blaming others, you concentrate on the negative side of life, on your problems, on bad feelings. The ancient wisdom goes, "you get more of what you concentrate on".

Maybe there were some people or circumstances that caused your problems, BUT THERE IS NO ONE TO BE BLAMED. Because you will be the only one that is loosing something when resorting to blaming others.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not that much for some, the roots of self-esteem challenges of many are caused / connected to their families. The truly people that shall raise you as a healthy child with natural self-esteem, often fail at that very task horribly. They are NOT to be blamed, though! But as a first step to mend what is broken, we usually (not always) need to go back and find the cause. Once the cause is identified, only then the tools available can be used.

To sum it up:
- if you can't find the cause, try to look back into your childhood
- don't blame anyone!