)...It can also lead people to ignore sensible advice as they stubbornly keep wasting time and money on hopeless causes"

False attempts
For persons with low self-esteem, any positive stimulus will temporarily raise self-esteem. Therefore, possessions, sex, success, or physical appearance will produce the development of self-esteem, but the development is ephemeral at best. Such attempts to raise ones self-esteem by positive stimulus produce a "boom or bust" pattern. "Compliments and positive feedback" produce a boost, but a bust follows a lack of such feedback. For a person whose "self-esteem is contingent", success is "not extra sweet", but "failure is extra bitter". As narcissism
Life satisfaction, happiness, healthy behavioral practices, perceived efficacy, and academic success and adjustment have been associated with having high levels of self-esteem (Harter, 1987; Huebner, 1991; Lipschitz-Elhawi & Itzhaky, 2005; Rumberger 1995; Swenson & Prelow, 2005; Yarcheski & Mahon, 1989). : 270  However, a common mistake is to think that loving oneself is necessarily equivalent to narcissism, as opposed for example to what Erik Erikson speaks of as "a post-narcissistic love of the ego". People with a healthy self-esteem accept and love themselves unconditionally, acknowledging both virtues and faults in the self, and yet, in spite of everything, are able to continue to love themselves. In narcissists, by contrast, an " uncertainty about their own worth gives rise to...a self-protective, but often totally spurious, aura of grandiosity" – producing the class "of narcissists, or people with very high, but insecure, self-esteem... fluctuating with each new episode of social praise or rejection.
": 479 Narcissism can thus be seen as a symptom of fundamentally low self-esteem, that is, lack of love towards oneself, but often accompanied by "an immense increase in self-esteem" based on "the defense mechanism of denial by overcompensation." "Idealized love of self...rejected the part of him" that he denigrates – "this destructive little child" within. Instead, the narcissist emphasizes their virtues in the presence of others, just to try to convince themself that they are a valuable person and to try to stop feeling ashamed for their faults;  such "people with unrealistically inflated self-views, which may be especially unstable and highly vulnerable to negative information,...tend to have poor social skills. ": 126

See also
References
Further reading
Baumeister, Roy F. (2001). "Violent Pride: Do people turn violent because of self-hate or self-love?," in Scientific American, 284, No. 4, pp. 96–101; April 2001. Branden, N. (1969). The Psychology of Self-Esteem. New York: Bantam. Branden, N. (2001). The psychology of self-esteem: a revolutionary approach to self-understanding that launched a new era in modern psychology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. ISBN 0787945269
Burke, C. (2008) "Self-esteem: Why? ; Why not?," New York: 2008
Crocker J.; Park L. E. (2004). "The costly pursuit of self-esteem". Psychological Bulletin. 130 (3): 392–414. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.130.3.392. PMID 15122925. Franklin, Richard L. (1994). "Overcoming The Myth of Self-Worth: Reason and Fallacy in What You Say to Yourself." ISBN 0963938703
Hill, S.E. & Buss, D.M. (2006). "The Evolution of Self-Esteem." In Michael Kernis, (Ed. ), Self Esteem: Issues and Answers: A Sourcebook of Current Perspectives.. Psychology Press:New York. 328–33. Full text
Lerner, Barbara (1985).