In life, there are often moments when a person begins to be tormented by any remorse, a feeling of guilt, or he reproaches himself for this or that act - in a word, he begins to morally spread rot and plant himself. The origins of such a negative attitude towards oneself can begin with certain situational life circumstances, or they can be rooted in deep childhood. Particularly neglected cases often end in depression and psychological stagnation, so it is quite important in this case to understand how to love yourself and where to start the process of knowing self-esteem and self-love.
But how to get out of this state? How to love yourself? The psychology of the present time helps to solve the problem from the standpoint of analyzing the current situation in all aspects of its possible manifestations, that is, it approaches the issue in a comprehensive manner. After all, it is impossible to eliminate a human disease based on the failure of three mechanisms in the body, bringing only one of them into service. Therefore, in order to find out how to love yourself and increase self-esteem, you need to follow a number of recommendations from specialists aimed at analytical work on yourself and your own "I". What do psychologists offer, and what points should be taken as a basis?
Recognizing oneself as a complete person
Love yourself - what does that even mean as a mandatory verdict? After all, this is how you need to perceive the need to bring your thoughts and feelings in order to harmonize your future life without self-reproach and self-hatred. To love yourself, you must at least recognize yourself as an individual formed personality, a full-fledged unit of society, a part of society. People who look for flaws in themselves and consider their own existence useless are obviously going the wrong way. Humiliating themselves, their human qualities, downplaying their abilities, they thereby drive themselves into a dead end, from which it is quite difficult to get out.
How to cope with this pathology and realize your personal integrity?
- Define your own self-sufficiency. It does not matter at all whether a person has a soul mate or not - he is already an integral unit of society. It does not matter at all whether he has an expensive car - people cannot be judged only by material goods. Loving yourself is real for no reason, because love, finances and the like come and go, but belonging to society remains a constant factor.
- Objectively evaluate your performance. You can’t regularly look for a catch in yourself and look for negativity in your actions. For every wrong action, there is a correct and deliberate step to take, life does not consist only of collecting your own mistakes.
- To accept oneself as a gift received from above, in the form of a material with which one can and should work, and not as an unsuccessful useless fake thrown by a villainous fate. People themselves are the arbiters of their destinies, sculptors of their bodies and blacksmiths of their happiness, therefore only hard work can achieve success, and self-criticism and giving up have not yet helped anyone to fulfill themselves in this difficult world.
The ability to work on your shortcomings and failures
How to love yourself and increase self-esteem, if your own problem seems deeply individual and practically unsolvable? After all, different people commit different offenses and evaluate their actions differently from the outside.
For example, how can a woman who considers herself an unfortunate loser because of her external unattractiveness love herself? She is deeply convinced that no one will ever love her, and because of this conviction, she begins to hate herself.
And how can a teenager fall in love with himself, who regularly experiences ridicule from his peers at school because of some stupid youthful stupidity, as is often the case in educational institutions in the relationship between schoolchildren? Provocations from other guysdepress and zombify the consciousness of the poor fellow who has fallen under the distribution and provoke him to harsh introspection, self-criticism, self-flagellation and, as a result, dislike of himself.
You need, first of all, to learn how to work on your imperfections:
- when disappointed with your appearance, try to do your best to fix it, and not sit back and lament over being overweight, for example, instead of going to the gym and giving it your all;
- being dissatisfied with their social status, strive for the best: take up self-education, self-development, increase your level of intelligence by working on your own thoughts with the help of scientific and journalistic literature, and not peeling seeds all night long on a neighbor's bench;
- having claims to his own person in terms of manifestation of weakness, go against his modesty and lack of initiative and work on the will and power of thought, go to a martial arts club, where they teach to educate a he althy spirit in a he althy body, sign up for yoga, where the state soul is brought into balance with physical strength.
Focus on your own result, not someone else's
It's quite difficult to be able to overcome hostility towards one's own person and love oneself, putting someone on a pedestal of respect and honor and leaving oneself, as opposed to one's idol, on the opposite side of the scale. Why can't you praise someone? Why is it impossible to imitate someone and follow his example, focusing onother people's results? How to love yourself?
Psychology interprets comparing oneself with others as a manifestation of human weakness, caused by a constant feeling of lack of self-sufficiency and inferiority. The fact is that the mania of following someone or something is quite common. Men, for example, suffer from this in terms of professionalism and career advancement. A simple example: a work colleague drives the latest brand of a car of the last year of manufacture, becoming a deputy general director thanks to a successfully completed project, which means (in the mind of a man) that you need to line up in front of the general director and bombard him with your projects like your lucky colleague, in order to to achieve the same result and also drive an expensive foreign car, and not scurry daily through subway passages and complain about your meager fate.
Psychologists, with their recommendations, slightly correct the behavioral technique and subconscious motives of a man thinking like this: you don’t need to chase the success of a colleague, you need to work on yourself, on your professional object of work, in order to prove yourself in another area, show your strengths, nor in any case, not focusing on others, but trying with your own mind, with your own ideas to achieve the cherished result. Indeed, in the pursuit of comparison with someone, you will never be able to become better than someone else. You need to try to be better today than you were yesterday.
The same thing in the female world of the desire to be more beautiful, more attractive, sexier than a girlfriend. How to love yourself for a woman who only does what she fights with her friend inthe eternal pursuit of men's attention, trying to buy a dress better than hers, to make her hair more beautiful than her friend's, to choose makeup that is just as expressive and even better … In a word, this is an initially failed behavioral model.
People should not compare themselves with other units of society, they should be focused solely on their own results, work through their own mistakes every day and try to be better than themselves, not someone else.
Work on body and mind
Only by hard work and a strong desire can one achieve some result and understand how to love oneself. The exercises recommended for study by psychologists suggest in this vein to pay attention to the following aspects of activity:
- Find out the root of your problem that prevents you from being accepted as such.
- Analyze your attitude towards this problem in terms of why this problem cannot be overcome.
- Display a list of theses that interfere with understanding how to love yourself for who I am, and try to act from the opposite.
In other words, the science of human thought invites a person to program his brain to eradicate his problems by looking deep into its original origins.
For example, a person sees the root of his problem in his excess weight and cannot accept himself as fat as he is. This means that it is required to analyze this problem from the point of view of what prevents a person from thisfix the problem? In the end, when he comes up with a list of aspects that prevent him from losing weight, it turns out to be banal human laziness, a love for overly consumed high-carbohydrate foods and a complete lack of physical activity.
And this means that in order to love himself, such a person needs to act from the opposite and completely rebuild his thinking, starting from opposites: if you don’t love yourself because you’re fat, go to the gym, if you don’t like your body fat on the sides - stop using all sorts of nasty things and switch to proper nutrition, set a goal - and just come to it.
The same goes for working on thoughts: if the problem is not in appearance, but in the subconscious, you need to determine for yourself the root causes of dislike for yourself in the same way and try to lose those negative aspects of your thinking that prevent you from loving yourself.
Striving for change for the better
To stop moonshine and self-torture, it is necessary to strive for the best. How to do it?
- You need to be able to think positively - having a clear mind and thoughts, a person gets rid of phobias and feelings of self-doubt.
- It is necessary to get rid of the negative - all the emotional burden of negative energy prevents you from moving forward and striving for the best.
- You need to develop your logical and mental abilities - this will certainly lead to a productive outcome of working on yourself and your shortcomings.
- You should work out a methodology for programming yourself for success -betting on the successful completion of your activity (work, study, any other field of activity), you can achieve what you want and prove to yourself your worth, which will certainly help you love yourself.
Lessons conducted on oneself always give generous fruits from the work done, if there is really a great desire for this and a focus on results.
Defining personal principles
Surprisingly, it is often the unscrupulous spineless people who suffer from dislike for their own "I". How to learn your own self-respect if there are no priority beliefs in life?
- You don't tolerate deceit - take it as a principle not to associate with liars.
- If you don't like being told what to do, put the pointers in their place.
- If you don't want to do like everyone else, work out your own tactics of action.
- You can't stand human arrogance - take it as a principle to stop people sitting on the neck in the bud.
Oddly enough, defending one's own beliefs through bewilderment subconsciously causes others respect for a person who has his own point of view and his own opinion regarding a particular issue. And respect for others will inevitably entail respect for yourself.
Encourage your own good deeds and good deals
If a person is used to blaming himself for unjustified hopes, for wrongly performed actions, for unfulfilled dreams, then you need to be able to praise yourself if everything works out. The "whip andgingerbread" - a well-known catalyst for influencing anyone. It is the same in working on yourself: how to love yourself and be a confident person?
The answer is simple: learn to respect yourself for your own small victories. What is the rationale for the need for self-promotion? If, after each successful transaction or donation of good to society, you reward yourself with a cake or some kind of pleasantness, you can consolidate in your mind the understanding of the fact that any action taken in a positive way bears fruit. This is a kind of incentive to excel again and again in favorable successful promotions.
Stopping self-pity and stopping self-flagellation
In order to stop a self-created attack of hatred and self-pity, it is necessary to develop in your subconscious mind a technique for overcoming adversity and achieving success, fueled by affirmations. How to love yourself with the help of these very affirmations? This type of statements, or rather phrases, which are encouraging motives and embody a positive focus on changing mood for the better, are very helpful in regaining self-respect. How to stop self-pity and stop self-flagellation with the help of such phrases? You need to speak out loud or to yourself every minute of the time convenient for this:
- "I'm a perfectly normal person, I don't need to feel sorry for myself."
- "I accept myself for who I am."
- "I shouldn't blame myself for my wrongdoings."
- "I'm doing great at working on my mistakes" and the likeself-persuasive speeches.
It may seem strange, but this technique really works.
Realizing your own positive qualities
To help exterminate your impulses to self-loathing, working with your subconscious and your positive human qualities helps a lot. Having written out your really positive aspects on a piece of paper, you need to constantly put them into practice, replenishing your good deeds with pluses along with what you have to dislike yourself for.
Thus, it will be possible to objectively put your misdeeds and your successful deeds on the scales and balance, thus, the imbalance in feelings towards yourself created by your own suspiciousness.
Commitment and achievement of goals
The most important assistant in solving the problem of pickiness to one's "I", pricks of conscience and feelings of guilt, is switching one's consciousness to setting specific tasks and goals. The desire for the best, constant employment, due to the need to work out specific actions and rise to the set peaks, make a person grow, develop and devote less time to the process of self-flagellation. Having gone a long way from painful thoughts to decisive actions, a person finally begins to feel his importance, to make attempts to become better, to focus on the result. Thanks to this, he achieves his main goal and begins to love himself for who he is.
