The free self-esteem test
Where does your self-worth actually stand?
Ten questions from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the instrument used in the research. Answer for how you generally feel, not just today.
Question 1 of 10
On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
Your score
Shaded band: where most adults land (15 to 25)
A 3-minute daily practice for self-worth
You know it’s not true.
You still feel it.
Self-worth doesn’t change by arguing with the feeling. It changes when the evidence stacks up: real things you actually did, in your own words. Three honest minutes a day.
Whatever you decide, a free floor stays, worth using on its own, and every word you have written stays readable.
How the daily practice works
Five small steps. About three minutes.
Check in
“How do you feel about yourself, right now?” One tap, one to seven. Charted gently over time, noticed, never scored against you.
Log one real thing
A short, concrete prompt. “What’s one thing you did today that took effort, even if no one noticed?” You write one true sentence. That’s it.
Name the quality it shows
Kind. Capable. Resilient. The good stuff finally gets written down, gets to count, and goes into an evidence book that grows.
Answer a harsh thought
Catch the thought word for word. Then answer it the way you’d answer a friend who said it about themselves: fairly, in writing, when it shows up.
A fair word to end on
A grounded line of self-compassion. No badge, no points, no streak, just the quiet fact that you showed up.
Three minutes. Most days. Miss a few, and your book is exactly where you left it.
Want to try one day on paper first? Open the one-page evidence log →
Or measure where you are now with the 2-minute test at the top of this page →
If any of this sounds familiar
- You’re kinder to everyone else than you are to yourself.
- You hit the goal, and the bar just moves again.
- You can list your wins and still feel like a fraud.
- You’ve tried “thinking positive,” and it felt like lying.
- You’ve started a journal three times and quit by day four.
None of that means something is wrong with you. It means you’ve been handed the wrong tools. Repeating things you don’t believe, and streaks that punish you for a hard day, don’t work for this.
The difference
Not affirmations.
Evidence.
Nothing here asks you to repeat a sentence you don’t believe. Telling yourself “I am enough” when you don’t feel it rarely lands, and there’s no real evidence it helps. When positive self-statements were actually tested, they did little for the people who reach for them most. So Selfworth does the opposite. You build a case for yourself out of things that actually happened, in your own words. On the days the feeling lies, there’s a record that argues back.
Why it’s different
The things it refuses to do are the point.
No affirmations
Built on real events in your own words, never sentences you don’t believe. That’s exactly why it can move the feeling, not just a to-do list.
A gentle weekly rhythm
Five of seven days is a full week. Rough days route to a compassion break that still counts, and a day you miss is simply a day you missed.
Stays on your phone
No account. No analytics. No ads. Ever. The most honest thing you write all week is read by no one but you.
Honest about the science
We show you the research the method comes from, and where three minutes a day is an adaptation, not the full program. We’ll always tell you.
Free, for real
Your check-in and one line of evidence, every day. Every rough-day support, and every word you have written stays readable. Your reviews, your self-esteem score and your feeling chart. Every program to read and try on for size.
Built by one person
Made by someone who needed it too, answerable to you, not to investors.
The honest version
Grounded in the method research supports most, and honest about the rest.
Selfworth is built on cognitive-behavioral work for self-esteem: a positive log of real evidence, plus answering harsh thoughts, closed with a little self-compassion. It draws on the methods reviews have found among the most promising for self-esteem.
The studies behind it tested multi-week programs, usually with a therapist’s support. This is a short, self-guided adaptation of the same building blocks. We can point you to the research the method rests on. We can’t claim those exact results for a few minutes on a phone, and we won’t. The in-app “Science” screen keeps the full citations and the fine print, side by side.
Grounded in the work of Melanie Fennell and the cognitive-behavioral self-esteem literature.
Private by design
The most honest thing you’ll write all week. It never leaves your phone.
No login. No cloud account. No analytics, no ad trackers, nothing sold, by design, not as a setting you have to find. With backup off, your journal never leaves your phone at all. Optional iCloud backup goes only to your own private Apple iCloud. There’s no Selfworth server and no account, so your journal is never sent to us. To end-to-end encrypt the backup itself, you can turn on Apple’s Advanced Data Protection.
After the headlines about therapy apps quietly sharing what people typed, you shouldn’t have to take privacy on faith. So the whole app is built so there’s simply nothing for us to leak.
What it costs
A free floor that stays. The full app for everything else.
The line runs through the doing, not the reading. Reading a guided program, checking whether it describes you, and reading back anything you have written cost nothing, ever. Paying opens the work itself: the fair answer to a harsh thought each day, the technique inside each guided program, rewriting more than one memory, testing more than one belief at once, and the pages the app composes out of your own record.
About €5 a month. Or €9.99 monthly, or €149 once. The monthly and yearly plans start with a 14-day free trial through your phone’s store: nothing is charged that day, and the app tells you the date before the trial ends. It then renews at the plan’s price unless you cancel in the App Store or in Google Play. Lifetime is one payment.
- Your check-in and a line of evidence stay free, every day.
- Rough-day support is never behind a paywall.
- No account, no analytics. Nothing leaves your phone.
Honest answers
Is this therapy?
Do you do affirmations?
Will it guilt me with streaks?
Is my data safe?
What’s free, and what’s paid?
Who made this?
A note from the maker
I built Selfworth first for myself, because the apps I tried either told me to repeat things I didn’t believe, or turned getting better into one more streak to fail at.
I’m not a clinic or a startup with a growth team. I’m one person who reads the research and sweats the details. That’s why this is private by default, careful about what it claims, and built so nothing you write is ever locked away from you. If that’s the kind of thing you’ve been looking for, I’d love for you to be there at the start.
Yours, Piet