Instead, the key to a healthy self-esteem is cultivating genuine relationships, skills, and competencies so that you can have healthy pride in your accomplishments.

It turns out that there is really no such thing as low self-esteem. When people take self-esteem surveys, very few people report having zero social value. Instead, people who score low on self-esteem scales often score around the midpoint, suggesting they really have an uncertain self-esteem.41

The healthiest societies are built on a realistic understanding of human needs and offer the greatest growth-fostering potential for the individuals who are part of the society. How much are we allowing for opportunities for all people to fulfill their needs, including their security, growth, and transcendence needs?

STRIVING WISELY What is not worth doing is not worth doing well. —Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management (1965)

Developmentally, both narcissism and healthy self-esteem start to develop around the age of seven. At this age, children draw heavily on social comparisons with others and start to evaluate themselves along the lines of “I am a loser,” “I am worthy,” and “I am special.” Children come to view themselves as they perceive they are seen by others.31

existence of an “attachment behavioral system” designed over the eons of human history to motivate the desire to increase proximity between caregivers and vulnerable infants, children, or adults.29 Proximity-seeking behaviors, according to Bowlby, serve the function of reducing feelings of fear and anxiety and are activated when the infant feels

So there you have it. If your primary goal in life is to have power, money, and status, that’s fine, but you can probably stop reading this book right now. My advice would be to take close notes on the strategies of those who have an abundance of characteristics associated with grandiose narcissism. Individuals who have high levels of grandiose

My colleagues and I found that vulnerable narcissism was correlated with statements such as “I’m afraid of my feelings” and “My thoughts and feelings get in the way of how I want to live my life.”55 This suggests that those who score high in vulnerable narcissism tend to avoid the very things that will give them the greatest happiness and growth in

the awareness of his mortality actually heightened his own personal experience of transcendence.