People with high self-esteem tend to have high – yet realistic – expectations of themselves, however can become obsessed with striving for perfection.
People with low self-esteem are just as capable, yet tend to be harder on themselves and set more unrealistic expectations that very few people would be able to achieve.
For example, someone with low self-esteem might decide to declutter their room/home. They might set an unnecessarily difficult goal of completing this task in one day. When they’re not able to reach this goal, they berate themselves saying, “I never follow through on anything,” and then the cycle of low-self-esteem and unrealistic expectations continues.
This means that people with really high and really low self-esteem don’t meet their own standards.