Although many people walk about from day to day clothed in fine clothing and with their hairstyles, perfectly, in place and appearing to be confident, having it all together; most people do not even like themselves.
Abuse, Rejection and Neglect
There are many reasons why a person may not like him or herself. For many, it is due to ill treatment, neglect and rejection when they were children or when they were in a relationship as they grew older, causing them to have very little self-esteem.
As a result, they’ve chosen to believe the lies that have been drilled into their heads about themselves; that they will never amount to anything, that they are stupid and worthless and not worthy of love from themselves or anyone else. Consequently, low self-esteem, humiliation and blaming yourself, often, sets in. This is, often, due to the words spoken over you year after year by your parents, relatives or by someone whom you loved and trusted very much.
When your self-esteem has suffered due to past ill treatment from people you love, making a quality decision to stop hating yourself is essential to learning how to love yourself. According to Sarah Leah Blum, Therapist and author of an article “Learning to Love Yourself,” when you love yourself in a healthy way, you can, therefore give love to others, as well, in a healthy way, in addition to living a more whole and healthier life. Blum states that, “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”
Blum, also, suggests that learning to love yourself will, also, involve loving yourself in every moment even when you make mistakes. It’s not, always, an easy process when you’re working on building your self-esteem, however.
Therefore, you must understand and realize on a daily basis that, no, you are not perfect and, yes, you will make mistakes, but as long as you choose to own up to your mistakes and make the necessary amends for your mistakes; then, making mistakes, undoubtedly, does not make you a bad person. When you come to the realization that it is okay to make mistakes, hating yourself becomes less of a problem making it easier for you to start loving yourself.
When a person has been beat down and criticized, abusively, over and over again, the person tends to feel that he can do nothing right. As a result, he or she goes into denial, even, when constructive criticism is given to him because he feels that he has to be absolutely perfect to be accepted and not rejected.
Therefore, being honest with yourself about your imperfections is vital to learning to love yourself. As you own up to your faults and to the fact that you could never be perfect, in this life; you will learn to accept and love yourself more.
It may, also, help you to realize that if you had people in your life that made you feel that you had to be perfect to be accepted, perhaps, had people in their lives that caused them to feel the same way. Therefore, their abuse toward you really had to do with how they were treated in life. Hurting people, typically, hurt others. Once you understand this, you can be on your journey to loving yourself a whole lot sooner.
Keeping Up With the Jones’s
Some people do not like themselves because they constantly try to keep up with the Jones’s, who just might have it like that and, therefore, can afford to do the things that they do and buy the things that they buy, and are gifted and blessed to look the way that they look; yet you may not be able to do any of the things that the Jones’s are able to do leaving you frustrated and not happy with yourself or your life.
It is, therefore, important to learn to be contented in whatever situation that you find yourself in and learn to improvise until you can do better in the areas that you can make better; otherwise, you will be a very unhappy and aggravated person all of the time. Moreover, instead of comparing yourself to others, it is much better to be thankful for what you have, already, been blessed with and build upon that at a sensible pace that fits your life.
There is always someone in a worse state than the next person. This is why it’s important to be thankful and find ways to be a blessing and helpful to those less fortunate as opposed to concentrating on comparing ourselves to others while focusing on what we don’t have.
Maintaining the Look
Some people hate themselves because they are trying their best to keep up with the media’s image of how a man or woman should look not realizing that, oftentimes, the models and actresses do not, necessarily, look the way that they are appearing on television or in the magazines.
Much of what you see is photo shopped in addition to the use of a great deal of makeup as well as plastic surgery and unhealthy weight loss patterns; and yet, they are still not satisfied. Why? Because they are trying to attain perfection and no person can attain that in this earth.
Consequently, it is better to learn to love yourself just as God has created you. When you make the decision to be thankful for what you’ve got and to do your best working with what you’ve been given, you will, finally, get rid of the frustration of not being able to attain perfection, in life, and become a much happier and contented person
Thanks for reading . Xoxo!
Arden
Reference:
Learning To Love Yourself - Sarah Leah Blum
All Image Credits: Pixabay