How Does One Build Self Esteem?

Hi, this is David Eliavsky with our question and answer series where in a few moments, few minutes, sometimes an hour or two, I answer short questions that I can for our listeners. And our good friend, my personal friend, friend of the show, Yossi Mel writes, "How does one fix or build self-esteem according to the Torah?" This is so, so important. Yeah, there is a Gemara in a few different places that says the same thing. A person is mechuyav, obligated to say, "Bishvili nivra ha'olam." The entire universe was created for me. I am the most important person in the universe. Now, come on. When I was a kid, I was, you know, already bar mitzvah, and in America, there was Reb Moshe Feinstein, Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky, Reb Ruderman, and Reb Hutner, uh Reb Gifter, Reb Leibowitz, from Chofetz Chaim, you know, all these gedolei Torah, I'm the most important person? Yes. Because of a very deep philosophical work, uh that was uh written by Dr. Seuss called Horton Hears a Who. And there's this little place called Whoville, and only Horton can hear it cuz he has such good hearing. And he tells them you have to make enough noise so everyone hears you or they're going to destroy Whotown cuz it's on a little dandelion, they're going to throw it in the fire. And everyone's making noise and they can't hear them, and there's one last little Who, and his voice, when he finally adds it in, gets loud enough that they can hear it. And so, you may not be the loudest guy, but your voice is the deciding voice. Uh it's it's uh I see people, they say like, you know, "What difference does it make? Why should I bother voting in an election? You know, I live in New York, you know, it's Democrat, they're always going to go Democrat, yeah." And then you read the next morning, you know, he lost by one vote. >> [laughter] >> Uh listen, sometimes it comes down to one vote. The Declaration of Independence was finally ratified because even though Pennsylvania, one of the main people there didn't want to vote for it, there was a split. Benjamin Franklin wanted it, the other fellow did not. And uh this third person, he casted the deciding vote. And he said, "If I if I vote for it, doesn't make a difference, right? Cuz I've joined with everybody. If I vote against it, I'll be the person who stopped the United States of America from coming into existence. One vote." So, "Bishvili nivra ha'olam" means that I am the single most important person in creation, and therefore what I do makes a difference. And the yetzer hara does not want to get you to sin. He's very busy. He's busy as Malach Hamavet. The Gemara says he's the yetzer hara, he's the Satan, he's the Malach Hamavet, he he he's busy. So, what he wants to do is make you believe that you don't make a difference. So, if I don't make a difference, who cares if I make a bracha? Who cares if I daven? You think my tefillah makes somebody healthy? Yeah. Your tefillah heals the sick and gives children to the childless and gives parnassah to poor people? Yeah, it stops those bullets and those bombs and those missiles? Those are your tefillahs. But the the yetzer hara wants to make you feel like you don't matter. And so, the secret is understanding tzelem Elokim. Tell you story. Um I was teaching in Discovery in the summer, so they wanted to round up support, so they sent the speakers into town at night to give like lectures to like interest people. And they'd have us speak about, you know, men-women relationships, things that hopefully would attract that kind of a crowd who was drunk in Kickert Zion at night. So, uh in the middle of the shiur, some guy says, "Who did Cain marry?" Now, this is an interesting concept because if you look just in the text, there was only Adam and Eve and Cain, and so you might think that Cain slept with his mother, right? That's how some people want to present it. "Who did Cain marry?" I said, "It says that he was born with a twin sister. He married his sister." He says, "Isn't that incest?" And I said, "Yes." And I said, "For the record, it's definitely incest to uh sleep with your sister." He goes, "Then why did God choose to populate the world through incest?" I said, "Cuz his other choice was to make 25 men and 25 women, and then every one of them could say, 'If I died, it makes no difference.' He would rather populate the world through incest and create one person so every person can say, 'That's me. I am the Adam HaRishon. Bishvili nivra ha'olam. I'm the most important person in creation, the entire universe was worth being created for me.' That is how you build self-esteem." This is David Eliavsky with our question and answer series.