Self Esteem: The Key to Success in Work and Love

So I was feeling the emotions and decided to go for a walk late at night and this book descends on me! Called “self-respect”! What a symbol to randomly encounter! It's like it fell from the sky into my life! Ridiculous!

I was feeling a ton of emotional turmoil because I have made certain bad decisions for myself, specifically staying in a very unsatisfying friendship. The moment they devalued me I just cut the cord tho which I feel very proud of because I did it way sooner than I would in the past and now I can see all the ways I was too lenient in so many other cases.

This book was published in Lithuania in 1991 which is wild because its contents are basically radical self acceptance which I feel is very big on youtube right now. I wonder how many books like this there are because I am not that knowledgeable about them. I thought this was very nuanced though and I like how the author says to accept all the emotions and to not leave out any of them. Following this advice I feel way better for now, because I was really representing certain feelings and I don't know why but I have to really try to feel things (probably because of all sorts of bad experiences hahahaha), but for the first time in forever since I consciously tried to awaken the feelings in me I can feel stuff like fear more vividly and I very much enjoy that. It feels like I matter because I do!

The relationship I left, the person specifically came after the fact that I wanted to feel more feelings and explore myself even if I fail and this book described such a person so well. I already knew a lot of stuff in here, but it's nice to hear it again (because I needed it) and there were definitely times where I thought “Huh! Yea, maybe I can accept myself even more when doing this sorta thing.”. I love how this appreciates everyone's autonomy and rights to appreciate the things that they like which don't hurt others.

This did not feel like empty platitudes to me or
something like that and this book argues that you can in fact hate your parents if they did you wrong, you can hate someone or something without it being destructive or causing harm.

This book made me self-assured in certain decisions I made because it defined self-hatred in a specific way which I encountered in others through my life. It clicked like oh! Yea, that was self-hatred, I was right. I think I will find it way easier from now on to detect that sort of thing. For example it never clicked that someone would post on social media celebrities because of a vain reason rather than that they actually liked them. I like certain celebrities though I guess they are not very widely liked and quite eccentric, mostly bullied by the public. They bring wisdom in my life and it's weird that someone would not legit believe in people yet still worship them or something. I like to mention people who inspire me, but I guess there are people who mention others so they get a boost! Wacky!

Anyways, I think my life has changed forever, not because of this book, but because of what happened lately. I am excited and I think this is a good book. Actually not sure if this goodreads page about it is accurate, the lithuanian version has 142 pages, but I am pretty sure this is the right title so idk. Have a nice day!