system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
As a person with no self-esteem, where is my self-esteem/self-worth supposed to come from if not from my achievements or the opinions of others?

Also looking for reading material on philosophies regarding self worth. Thank you.
gpt
Nietzsche talks a lot about this sort of thing in *The Gay Science*, and it seems like his very general answer is that these things can only come 'from your Will.'  He seems to think that true esteem can't come from anywhere but within - though certainly you can hold yourself in esteem for your achievements and you can see in other people a confirmation (though not a validation) of your esteem.

He recognizes, though, that this is a terrible challenge and mentions at least once that it often only comes by way of a certain kind of self-deception - a kind of "willful blindness" to your own weaknesses, the possibilities that you might fail or be overlooked by your peers, the worry that what you're doing is not very important, etc.

He says elsewhere that it must come also from a methodological approach to self-styling, and a self-love which involves striving toward the total affirmation of the self and its circumstance (the *amor fati*).

None of this is terribly easy, but this is what he says.