Admiration For Something Outside of Yourself Is a Real Trick of the Yetzer Hara
Keep sticking up for yourself, and keep giving reasons why you should be Zoche B'din, instead of walking around with sadness and worry about all your sins and your low self-worth.
Admiration For Something Outside of Yourself Is a Real Trick of the Yetzer Hara
Standing up for yourself means you're a: נִצָב person who stands firm with strength. I had two Novardok experiences where I saw what's important by my Rabbeim. Many, many times, R' Ozer Schwartz Zatzal yelled at me: "Shiflus!” (lowliness) which can mean not recognizing your value and being afraid of people and worrying about their opinion of you. Or feeling inferior, when you should be proud of being a Baal Mussar and a Novardoker. Or not realizing your value and your Kochos, and instead being involved in remembering all your weaknesses.
There is a famous story where R' Gershon Zatzal was once in the shteibel of a very Chashuva movement, and their davening and Avodas Hashem was very impressive. He came back from that place full of Hispa'alus, and his Rebbe said, “Yekke Bembe” which means “Hispaʼalus Chapper" בְּלַעַ"ז )in Polish(!
When you become overly impressed, albeit by someone else's unusual Avodas Hashem (even from an Adam Gadol) you yourself “melt” and you feel like a zero, and you Chas V'shalom become: בָּטַל וּמְבוּטָל utterly Battel (belittled) and you are heading toward inactivity and becoming a zero. Your mind is full of admiration for something outside of yourself; a real trick of the Yetzer Hara, and it causes jealousy and plenty of inferiority feelings and depression and frustration (unless when you learn from others you do something tangible and you grow).
You don't appreciate yourself when you overly focus on others and you “lose yourself in the crowd” of all those hundreds of people that you know and admire, instead of trying to discover your own greatness which others don't have. Novardok was known for not being Nis'pael from anything except the greatness of Hashem, since: אֵין עוֹד מִלְבַדּוֹ there is nothing besides Him.
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