Over time I have come to realize that the three most important subjects in the world to man are sex, property and religion. By the first we create life, by the second we maintain life and by the third we hope to continue life in the world to come. But I have also come to realize that it is not our sex, our interests swarm about our own egos, self-worth or self-esteem.
Someone said "No one can fall in love if he is even partially satisfied with what he has or who he is. The experience of falling in love originates in an extreme depression, an inability to find something that has value in everyday life. The 'symptom' of the predisposition to fall in love is not the conscious desire to do so or the intense desire to enrich our lives, it is the profound sense of being worthless and of having nothing that is valuable and the shame of not having it."
Self-esteem therefore is a powerful human need without which we will be vulnerable to various situations ranging from failure in school to failure in relationships. Young people, since they are profoundly uncertain, unsure of there worth and often ashamed of themselves frequently full in love.
They seek those values they cannot find in themselves. They seek honesty, they seek trust, they seek truth, and they seek courage, charm, charisma, confidence, carriage and character in other people. They build their world around the person in whom they find the values they seek. This one person controls their emotional, social and sometimes spiritual lives. They build their emotional lives around the behaviour of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them. This is the height of vulnerability in people.
The reality is that over time this individual we build our world around discovers our dependability no matter how clever we try to hide it and then they use it to oppress us. They know we do not posses the values they do and so we are not their kind of person. In a question of time when they meet someone with their values they will move on. The truth is like terms attract like terms.
It is quite instructive to say that if we can develop ourselves, our heart, our habits and our character to such a level where we posses the very value we are looking for in others we will be better off. We would love from a vantage position of strength and not weakness, we would become a miracle out of darkness instead of a package of misery in motion, we would love ourselves the more and others who we meet will respect us in return.
To achieve this growth in ourselves we must limit contact with those who always pull us down, those who would only see the bad in us and never acknowledge the good, those who would not help us to be better, those who do not posses the values we seek to develop in ourselves because as a stream always partakes of the property of the soil through which it runs, so the principles and habits of youth invariably becomes tinctured with the character of the company in which they mingle.
You must make out a list of your best qualities with the determination of improving them. These qualities will form the foundation of your strength upon which you will build new values and habits. You must also identify the values you are moving towards and those you are moving away from. Remember the chains of habit are always too weak to be felt until they become too strong to be broken. So work at breaking free of every habit that will take you far away from your ultimate goal.
Finally, in the process of evolving new principles, character and habits do not leave anything to chance. Chances are that if you keep working on your thoughts, actions, habits, character and principles you will wake up one fine morning to discover that you are one of the best in your generation.
The values you admire and seek in others can be developed in you if and only if you choose to work at developing them. Remember what the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve.