Question:
If a person suffers from a feeling of low self-esteem, what advice can the Rav give on how to overcome his low self-esteem?Answer:
There are many people who suffer from low self-esteem due to their very nature. They assess their own self-worth in relation to the generation that preceded them – their parents – or in relation to the generation after them, their children. The reason for this is because their entire self-image revolves around how they are esteemed by their parents and children, while they themselves are broken. In their minds, it is as if they don’t have a right to exist.
Their remedy is: To know that everyone has potential forces (b’koach), as well as actualized forces (b’poel). Every single Jew, even if he has not actualized his true personality yet, is still valuable, due to the potential forces that are in him, for he is rooted in a cheilek eloka mimaal, a “portion of G-d, from above.” He is one of the 600,000 souls of the Jewish people. That being the case, there is no limit to his worth and to the size of his exaltedness. When one thinks deeply into this point, it has the power to uplift him above his perceived low self-worth.
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