I’ve had a script running through my subconscious mind that says, "I am unworthy." I’ve written in this space about self-esteem, but now I’d like to dig a little deeper and get more specific about how low self-esteem is formed, and what you can do about it.

I love baseball; when I was a kid, I asked my parents to let me play Little League baseball several times. Finally, when I was nine and a half years old, my father consented. By that age, most of the boys in Little League had been playing for years—especially if they started out with T-ball at age 5. The learning curve for me was steep and was going to take a lot of work, but first, I needed a glove for catching baseballs.

My father took me to the store to buy a glove. I immediately gravitated toward the best gloves—soft, supple, and already broken in. Dad, however, picked out the cheapest glove they had. The leather was hard and stiff, and when I put it on my hand, I couldn’t even squeeze the glove closed, which you have to do to catch a ball.

I pointed this out to my father, and he replied, “You just need to break it in.” I argued that I didn’t know how and that I needed a good glove in order to catch up to the skills of my peers on the team. He replied, “If you get good at baseball, I’ll buy you a better glove.” In other words: I had to earn it.

When we got home, he played catch with me. The problem was that my rock-hard glove kept me from catching balls. It was the only time he played catch with me.

My coaches advised me to apply neatsfoot oil to it, put a baseball in the pocket, and then tie it up with string overnight to coax it into its proper shape. They also told me to beat it with a baseball bat to create a hinge along which the glove would easily open and close. None of those tricks worked. My glove was so cheap that it resisted all efforts to make it........

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