High self-esteem can be expressed in the picture of the cat looking in the mirror seeing herself as a lion. But is she? No. Therefore, any time she is just a cat, doing what cats do, she will feel bad about herself, because she isn’t living up to her own self-image of a roaring lion. She won’t be happy just being a cat, she won’t take correction, she’ll argue with you to death that she is OK, she doesn’t need to change, that she is a perfect lion.
That cat is you, my dear. Result: everything you try to change your life fails, because in order to change you need to allow yourself to not be perfect. In order to be trained, you need to empty your mind of everything that’s there, and declare yourself ignorant.
This is a brilliant article… except one thing: I see this same thing across the board, across all ages. 20 to 70… So this article is probably written about you, accurately, if you are not happy when you are not … 
It took quite a bit for me to learn that trying to outwardly act like a Buddha won’t make me a Buddha. The above line is from one of my students. Really smart guy, isn’t he? And I bet you … 