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Albert Ellis held that self-esteem based on an internal ranking system was inconsistent and incoherent.

Those preoccupied with improving self-esteem may find themselves stuck trying to merge conflicting traits.

Ellis advocated for unconditional self-acceptance, which aids in self-understanding and emotional stability.

Self-esteem tends to seesaw. Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, equated it with conditional self-acceptance. He maintained that as long as it’s based on ranking, your self-concept is bound to remain unstable. When fixated on comparisons, we may feel beautiful, capable, and intelligent in one setting and less so in another. Essentially, Ellis highlighted the relativity of self-esteem, emphasizing its inability to shed light on anyone’s essential nature (i.e., liking or disliking yourself at some point in time, by itself, says little about who you are or what you have to offer).

Living in a world governed by self-comparison, then, feels impossible. Your moods, decisions, and values all depend on your ranking in that moment, which somehow always leaves you wanting more. Fundamentally, it’s a life simply organized around improving one’s social standing. Ellis argued, “As a fallible human, you can't help failing at work and at love, so your self-esteem is at best temporary. Even when it is high, you are in real danger of failing next time and of plummeting down again. Worse yet, since you know this after awhile, and you know that your worth as a person depends on your success, you make yourself anxious about important achievements—and, very........

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