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your own evaluation of yourself, at least initially. If you see and think of yourself as an excellent person who is possessed of high character, you will treat other people with courtesy, grace, and respect. In turn, they will likewise treat you as a person of honor and character.
     
     
    Your Self-Esteem: How Much You Like Yourself. The third part of your personality is your self-esteem . This is how you feel about yourself, your emotional core. Your self-esteem is defined as “how much you like yourself,” but it’s more than only this. The more you see yourself as a valuable and important person, the more positive and optimistic you will be. When you truly consider yourself to be important and worthwhile, you will treat other people as if they are important as well.
     
    Your self-esteem is largely determined by how consistent your self-image, which shapes your personal behavior, is with your self-ideal, or your vision of the very best person you can possibly be.
     
    Whenever you act consistently with who you consider an excellent person to be, your self-image improves and your self-esteem increases. You like and respect yourself more. You feel happy about yourself and others. The more you like yourself, the more you like others, and the more they like you in return. By acting with character and in harmony with your highest values, you put your entire life (internally and externally) into an upward spiral. In every area of your life, things will get better and better for you.
     
    Your role models have a tremendous impact on shaping your character. The more you admire a person and his or her qualities, the more you strive—both consciously and unconsciously—to become like that person. This is why clarity is so important.
     

Always Behave Consistently
     
    Whenever you act in a way that is consistent with your values, you feel good about yourself. Whenever you compromise your values, for any reason, you feel bad about yourself. This also means that when you compromise your values, your self-confidence and self-esteem go down. You feel uneasy and inferior, inadequate and uncomfortable. When you compromise your values, deep down inside, you feel that something is fundamentally wrong.
     
    Almost all human problems can be solved by a return to your highest values and your innermost convictions. When you look back, there have probably been situations in your life when you have compromised your values in order to save an investment, keep a job, preserve a relationship, or maintain a friendship. In each case, you have felt worse and worse until you finally broke it off and walked away.
     
    And how did you feel when you finally had the strength of character to walk away? You felt wonderful ! Whenever you use your willpower and strength of character to return to the values that are most dear to you, you are rewarded with a wonderful feeling of happiness and exhilaration. You feel energized and free. You wonder why you didn’t make that decision a long time ago.
     

Do the Right Thing
     
    In the development of character that is based on self-discipline and willpower, long-term thinking is essential. The more you think about the long-term consequences of your behavior, the more likely it is that you will do the right thing in the short term. So when you have to make a choice or decision, always ask the magic question, “What’s important here?”
     
    Practice the Universal Maxim of Immanuel Kant: “Resolve to behave as though your every act were to become a universal law for all people.”
     
    One of the great questions for the development of character is this: “What kind of a world would this world be if everyone in it was just like me ?”
     
    Whenever you slip, whenever you do or say something that is inconsistent with your highest values, immediately “get back on your horse.” Say to yourself, “This is not like me!” and resolve that next time you will do better.
     

What You Dwell Upon Grows
     
    If