Self Esteem

So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ration of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a frac­tion of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numer­ator our success: thus, Self esteem = Success. Pretensions such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the de­nominator as by increasing the numerator.

William James