The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem

This is the first book I've read on this topic.
The author talks about what good self esteem is, and the behaviors that support it.

He also counters the idea that self esteem is just inflating one's ego. I'm currently reading “The Art of Not Giving a Fck” and I noticed that author has the exact misconceptions about self esteem that “The Six Pillars” author argues against. He would have done well to read this book as it seems “The Art of Not Giving a Fck” is ultimately drawing a few similar conclusions that this book did on how to approach life.

The main strategy presented to build your self esteem is an exercise called “sentence completions.” These are sentences like “If I bring more awareness to my life today...” that you are supposed to write endings for without thinking too much.

Simply by writing these endings quickly everyday, you'll be more conscious about your behavior and thought patterns throughout the day, which encourages you to question and/or disrupt your typical ways of thinking and behaving that lead to low self esteem. If you feel annoyed or resistant to doing the exercises, then there are strategies for that too.

I'm trying it now, and I do think this is the best takeaway from the book for me.

The sentence completion exercises you should work on are organized by weeks and are located in the back of the book. There are about 4 sentences per week.

That being said, I do feel like this book was kind of wordy, and the writing was not very accessible to me. Sometimes I found myself reading sentences over and over again and I felt like I had to dig for the valuable knowledge.

I skimmed the last 5 or so chapters because they were mostly about how we need to prioritize self esteem in schools, the workplace, psychotherapy, parenting, and such. If you are interested in the history of the concept of self esteem, then you may find it interesting. Personally, I just wanted more actionable strategies out of this book for myself.