All of these are important at times, but self-esteem is the one you truly want. Of course the three are all tied to one another, but work on different levels.
“Choose not to be harmed, and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed, and you haven’t been.”
— Marcus Aurelius
CONFIDENCE
Confidence lives on a finite, temporary event-level. It simply describes the state of being certain that a prediction of yours is correct. However, it doesn’t have much to do with whether you actually are correct. It can vary a lot from occasion to occasion.
For example, you can be very confident that the lasagne you made tastes good, yet have no confidence in your test results showing a passing grade before you get them.
The confidence we talk about as a personal trait is actually self-confidence, which means you trust that your actions will get you the results you hope they will.
People who are always confident, but seldom right will be called arrogant or a person with a “large ego”, and people who are rarely confident, but often right will be considered to have low self-esteem.
EGO
Your ego lives on a personal level. It’s the set of thoughts and beliefs that makes up who you think you are. Your identity, so to speak.
This self-image can be very negative (for example you believe you are “bad at math”) or very positive (you think you’re a great singer), depending on how many good and bad beliefs you hold.
In the Western world, we often refer to the ego in sizes. “That guy has a huge ego!” This is just a different way of describing how firm a positive self-image is. Naturally, someone who holds many positive beliefs about himself
A big ego is often correlated with a high level of assertiveness – you want things to go your way, or not at all.
Books like The Untethered Soul, which talk about mindfulness, say the ego is a part of who you are – but it’s not all you are, and once you let it go, you’ll be happier.
SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem is your personal, overall, emotional evaluation of your own worth (according to Wikipedia).
This is different from your ego in that it’s not tied to skills, character traits or bodily features. We often let these change our self-esteem, but they don’t have to.
You can have an ugly nose, yet still feel like you’re beautiful. You can know you’d have to practice the piano more to get really good, but still be happy about the level you can play at.
You can enter a room, check your ego at the door, say “I know I’m not the boss, but I have an idea,” present your marketing plan with confidence and humility at the same time – and walk out being okay with who you are, knowing you did your best and that it doesn’t matter whether they go with your idea or not.
Because you’re enough.
THAT is true self-esteem and that’s what you want.