I suppose that you first need to identify what's causing your self-esteem issues. I've had a problem with always looking at "the big picture," and consequently,

I suppose that you first need to identify what's causing your self-esteem issues. I've had a problem with always looking at "the big picture," and consequently, seeing how little of a difference I ultimately make. I'd recommend reading The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russel [1]. Some great excerpts: > When I was a boy I knew a man bursting with happiness whose business was digging wells. He was of enormous height and of incredible muscles; he could neither read nor write, and when in the year 1885 he got a vote for Parliament, he learnt for the first time that such an institution existed. His happiness did not depend upon intellectual sources; it was not based upon belief in natural law, or the perfectibility of the species, or the public ownership of public utilities, or the ultimate triumph of the Seventh Day Adventists, or any of the other creeds which intellectuals consider necessary to their enjoyment of life. It was based upon physical vigor, a sufficiency of work, and the overcoming of not insuperable obstacles in the shape of rock. The happiness of my gardener is of the same species; he wages a perennial war against rabbits, of which he speaks exactly as Scotland Yard speaks of Bolsheviks. […] > But, you will say, these simple delights are not open to superior people like ourselves. What joy can we experience in waging war on such puny creatures as rabbits? The argument, to my mind, is a poor one. A rabbit is very much larger than a yellow fever bacillus, and yet a superior person can find happiness in making war upon the latter. Pleasures exactly similar to those of my gardener so far as their emotional content is concerned are open to the most highly educated people. […] > To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: “Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a laborer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.” Now, you probably don't want to go that far. But the point is: your life doesn't have to be grand or world-changing in order for you to be happy. You probably won't end up in the history books, but there's still a lot of cool things you can do before you die. You probably won't be the next Charlotte Brontë, but maybe you can write one book. You probably won't be the next Florence Nightingale, but maybe you can donate to the Against Malaria Foundation and save a dozen lives. [1]: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834