My Definition of Self Esteem by Virginia Satir

I AM ME

In all the world there is no one else exactly like me.

Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it. I own everything about me; my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself - I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes, because I own all of me. I can become intimately acquainted with me.

By so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me and other aspects that I do not know, but as long as I am friendly and loving myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles for the ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting keep the rest and invent something new for that which I have discarded. I can see , hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me - I am me and I am okay.

© Virginia Satir, 1975.
Found in Virginia Satir, Self Esteem, Celestial Arts: California, 1975.