A pervasive sense of low self-esteem, a feeling of unworthiness, is perhaps the most debilitating belief system that you can entertain.

If you feel unworthy, you will destroy hope, initiative, and the power to dream bold dreams.

The very concept of unworthiness arises due to the power of suggestion. When you give value to negative information about yourself and own it, you allow the "psycho-virus" of low self-value to lodge in your brain.

If you are raised in a family or a culture or religion that disdains and denigrates the integrity of your individuality, you may adopt a deep sense of inferiority for not matching some arbitrary expectation or ideal.

This pseudo-identity of unworthiness will then run in the back of your mind much the way a computer virus may be running as a background application. Your only clue to this bug is that you feel lost and "not yourself."

In addition to self-alienation, feelings of unworthiness also separate you from others. Not only might you have difficulty relating to others but you might also perceive others as threats to your well-being. They, in turn, may consider you aloof, arrogant, or even hostile.

Life is difficult enough and challenging enough without your working against yourself.

While there are many ways you may justify your belief in your sense of not being good enough from not being attractive enough to not earning enough to not being intelligent enough...all these are, in fact, lies that you tell yourself. You choose, out of habit, to make unfair comparisons, condemning yourself for not measuring up to some capricious standard.

Although your situation, your environment, or even your past may seem to be the reason behind why you develop a false identity, these are not the root cause.

The only thing that keeps a negative, false, and self-betraying identity alive is a firm belief in it.

The best way to create an antivirus program is to "quarantine" the low-self-worth virus. You do this by simply learning to love and accept yourself without any pretensions.

When you accept yourself, you can begin to love yourself, and when you feel this kinship with yourself, you can then give up the noxious habit of disapproving of yourself.

Accepting yourself means giving up pretending to be different from how you are; it means giving up evaluating yourself according to some scale you've chosen; it means being good enough for no reason at all.

Loving yourself means saying and doing kind things for yourself, and holding yourself accountable for your own happiness.

Accepting and loving yourself without any conditions or reservations will set you free to live the life that you really want.

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Saleem Rana got his masters in psychotherapy from California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, Ca., 15 years ago and now resides in Denver, Colorado. His articles on the internet have inspired over ten thousand people from around the world. Discover how to create a remarkable life

Copyright 2005 Saleem Rana. Please feel free to pass this article on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or newsletter. It's a shareware article.