Second Key: Find True Self-esteem

Happiness comes from self-awareness and self-knowledge of your true self.

Most people confuse their self-image with their true self. This can become a source of unhappiness as people commonly base their self-image on external factors (object-referral) such as people, events, situations and physical objects.

The opposite of object-referral, is self-referral, which is turning within yourself to be everything that you need to be at this present moment. The true self is found at a level of existence that is independent of the good and bad opinion of others. When working from the true self, a person discovers inner peace and a sense of self-worth within his own being.

To bring about the positive change the most important precursor is awareness. You have to become aware of your motivations. You have to become aware of when you were acting out of ego and when from your true self.

To increase awareness, one interesting and powerful exercise is to recapitulate (in about 5 minutes) the whole day like a movie and watch it as a neutral, non-judgmental observer. This helps to identify the motivations and behaviour patterns.