Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
The way I see it, having a strong self-worth is a matter of remembering the variety of audiences that provide worth to you, rather than allowing your self-assessment to be constantly buffeted by the last person you talk to or the room you are in.
My major objection to the way a lot of TRPers talk about the concept of someone being "Alpha" or "Beta" is that they fail to talk about context, Alpha and Beta are inherently ordinal rather than absolute concept. Within a closed space, like a wolfpack or a high school, the alpha male is the biggest and toughest male present. He isn't in any absolute sense Big or Tough, he is the biggest and the toughest. The beta is defined by being smaller, and less tough, not absolutely Small or absolute Cowardly. If the Alpha dies, a Beta moves up.
Using the classic fictional stereotype of an American high school as our pet model, the Alpha male is the star quarterback on the high school football team, right? He's the best athlete, the leader, the chosen one. But if the QB dies in a DUI accident, or transfers schools, or breaks his leg, somebody else becomes the QB. A guy who didn't used to be the best athlete on the team, who used to be second best, becomes the best. That's the nature of an ordinal system of worth.
The problem with the modern world is that very few of us live in a closed system, and so it become scrambled, hard to understand. We live in systems way beyond our Dunbar Number, we live in anonymized urban societies where we feel judged by strangers, or in fake online worlds where we never even see our interlocutors.
People with weak self worth are constantly buffeted by the opinions of strangers, by the ordinal rankings in each room they find themselves in, by a vague sense that an indistinct group of people are better than them. They walk into a room with people better than them, they become servile; while if they are around people worse than them they become tyrannical. They rate themselves around the last interaction they had, forgetting all the good things they've done or all the bad things they've done.
A person with a firm sense of self worth remembers, regardless of what room they find themselves in, the people who love and respect them. Yes there are people better than you, but there are also people worse than you, the fact that you are now in a room with someone better than you doesn't mean you are the worst person in the world. The fact that the last thing you did was wrong doesn't erase all the things you've done right. They rate themselves not on the opinion of the audience in front of them, but on the broader audience, all the world, all the universe, and how they should respond.
Realistic self worth is about steadiness, humility, and honor. As Tony Montana told us, "All I've got in this world is my word and my balls, I don't break them for nobody."
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