With the new year, I have encountered a number of clients who claim to hate themselves – their bodies, their behaviours, their lives in general. I have written often about learning to love yourself but I wanted to tackle the topic of hating oneself too, and offer up some ways to stop that, to enable you to move on to liking and then loving yourself.
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” – Lucille Ball
What is our purpose? We tend to all have varying ideas of what our purpose is
(do read this article about finding your purpose). Life is too short to be
spent living one that you hate. Finding the purpose of your life will take up much
of your life and may still leave you looking for answers about how to enjoy and
even love your life.
A simple approach is simply to take time out to do things that you love. Maybe you will also find your purpose (or more of it) on the way. Aside from fulfilling a sense of purpose, and your working role, manage your time to do more of what you love, whatever that may be – writing (for your blog or a novel, for example), playing your favourite sports or engaging in healthy activity, reading, dancing, painting or anything else. I like to paddle board at the local beach, run and follow my local sports team (all of which I tend to do with my family these days, but can all be done alone too).
So if you hate your life, the question I am aiming to answer here today is this, “How can you stop hating your life and start pursuing your passions and creating a different life, one that you enjoy and can love living?” Here are certain tactics that will help you fall in love with yourself and your life again.
Benefits of Loving Yourself
Here are three powerful reasons why loving yourself is the key to a good life – and why the world needs you to love yourself more now more than ever.
1. It Makes You Happier
Loving yourself requires you to acknowledge your positive qualities and encourages you to be kind to yourself. You spend less time berating yourself for your mistakes and perceived flaws with negative self-talk and more time celebrating your successes and building on your strengths.
So when you focus on your successes and your strengths, the more successful and more capable you’ll become! Even research suggests that self-acceptance could lead to greater satisfaction with your life — but it’s a habit that many people practice the least. Here are a couple of articles to help with self-acceptance:
– Self-Acceptance With Self-Hypnosis.
– How to Depend On Yourself With Self-Acceptance.
2. It Makes You Healthier
Because a big part of loving someone is giving them what they need to thrive – mentally, physically, and spiritually. Therefore, when you love yourself, what we’re also talking about is practicing self-care and giving yourself what you need to show up in the world as your best self.
Research published in 2015 in the Health Psychology journal (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-38834-001) found that building yourself up instead of tearing yourself down can lead to better health decisions. It might provide the motivation you need to get yourself to the gym or to kick that smoking habit.
3. It Makes the World a Better Place
Because when you show up in the world as your best self, you encourage others to do the same – and it creates a positive ripple effect that impacts the lives of many others.
Not only that – when we love ourselves, we become so much better at loving others. We’re kinder to each other because we’ve learned how to be kind to ourselves. And we can all agree that the world today needs a lot more love and kindness in it.
Learn How to Love Yourself
All right, so exactly HOW do you learn how to love yourself?
First up, here are some great articles on that topic:
– How to Love Yourself More.
– Using Self-Hypnosis To Love Yourself More.
– How to Have a Better Relationship With Yourself.
Then, here are some excellent tips:
1. Get More Sleep
“Self-care is never a selfish act — it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.” – Parker Palmer
Most people are chronically sleep-deprived, which is a problem – because when you don’t get enough sleep, you’re more likely to get sick, become obese, suffer from depression, develop cancer, and put yourself at risk of a whole host of other health problems as well.
So one of the nicest things you could ever do for yourself is to get the rest you need. Schedule several nights a week where you are going to go to bed earlier and get the optimum number of hours of sleep for you and examine some ways that you can improve the quality of your sleep.
2. Eat Healthier
“Eat like you love yourself. Move like you love yourself. Speak like you love yourself. Act like you love yourself.” – Tara Stiles.
When you eat healthy food in the amounts your body needs, you have more energy and feel better about yourself. And you’re less likely to become sick. Examine the way you eat and start to eat more of the foods that will improve your health and less of the ones that do not serve you so well.
3. Get More Exercise
“When you wake up and learn to love yourself and want to take care of yourself, things are harder because people don’t like the idea of it. But when you get in trouble, it gives people things to talk about.” – Mary J. Blige
It doesn’t have to be painful or strenuous – it can be as simple as doing yoga, tai chi, some basic calisthenics or going for a daily walk. Physical activity releases endorphins, boosts your energy and mood, increases your emotional resilience and improves your self-esteem.
Join a gym, or take a class, join a club of some kind if you work best alongside others as I do. There are also a number of exercise videos you can buy, pop into your DVD player or your computer and just follow along and work out by yourself. The key is to build it into your calendar at a specific time each day, or develop good routines that include this on a regular basis without too much thought or decision making.
4. Celebrate Your Successes
“It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.” ― Germany Kent
Take time every week to celebrate your successes and remind yourself what you’re capable of achieving. Not only will it boost your confidence and self-esteem, but it will also motivate you to achieve more success in life. One way to do this is to keep a Victory Log where you write down your successes at the end of each day.
5. Be Gentle With Yourself
“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” ― Roy T. Bennett
No one is perfect. You’re going to make mistakes. Instead of berating yourself for them, use your mistakes as an opportunity to learn something that will help you get better results in the future. Communicate with yourself the same way you’d communicate a loved one – in a supportive, loving manner.
Take time for yourself. Make sure to give yourself time every week to do something you love. Take a hot bath, read a book, watch a movie, spend time on your favourite hobby, or do something fun with a friend. Show yourself that you are important to you.
Wherever and whenever possible, fill your soul with happiness. Because you deserve it.
And because in doing so, you will encourage others to do so as well. Again, put this into your schedule when you are planning your week, and then don’t let anything violate that time and space.
6. Believe in Yourself
“Encourage yourself, believe in yourself, and love yourself. Never doubt who you are.” ― Stephanie Lahart
You are capable of achieving anything you can imagine. The universe will not give you a vision that you can’t make a reality. All you have to do is take one small action after another and you can create any results you want in life. Here are some great and useful articles to help you more specifically with this:
– Believe in Yourself!
– How To Believe In You – 9 and a bit Ways To Advance Self-Belief. https://www.adam-eason.com/how-to-believe-in-you-9-and-a-bit-ways-to-advance-self-belief/
– 6 Ways to Overcome Self-doubt.
7. Start Tracking Your Time
“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck
To keep track of your time, you need to know where you are spending your time and how are you spending your hours of the day. Time management is difficult but time tracking is the best way to do it. When you are aware of how you spend your day, you can easily plan your time for stuff that you would love to do in a day. A time tracking software can make your management of daily tasks more effective.
8. Stop Doing Things You Don’t Need To Do
“When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.” – Oprah Winfrey
Stop wasting your time and energy in doing things that you do not like. Sometimes there might not be any choice to stop doing things that you do not like and have to do because we love the final result. But in doing these things you may lose time to do things that you love. So, make a list of things that you enjoy doing from time to time and be fair to these things. It is just that you need to determine which is more of a priority to you at this time in your life. What things enrich and nourish your life experience and what things do you hate doing that make you hate aspects of your life?
9. Avoid Procrastination
“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.” ― Aaron Lauritsen
Write down a goal and give yourself a deadline. Go all out to then achieve that goal within the deadline. Take action. Avoid creating illogical reasons in your head that delay the tasks at hand. Give it no thought whether you do it or not, just how much time you’ll spend doing it. Do not put off anything, because if you continue procrastinating, you will never end up doing things that you love. So, stop thinking and start doing. You just need to take the first step, face your fear and finish it.
Read this article for more on this:
– How to Stop Procrastinating.
10. Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
“Life’s trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.”- Aaron Lauritsen
Strive to be the very best version of yourself, build your inner resources and measure yourself against the person you were yesterday. “Be better than yesterday.” In this life, there will always be someone richer, smarter or more attractive around. So what? Wish them well! Focus on your OWN life.
Read this article for more on this topic:
– Stop Comparing Yourself to Others.
11. Stop Negative Self-talk
“Don’t forget to tell yourself positive things daily! You must love yourself internally to glow externally.” – Hannah Bronfman
Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to connect. Be PRESENT. You don’t have to sit in full lotus position, meditating at the crack of dawn for an hour a day. Just pay attention to your life, thoughts, actions, and feelings without judgment. Don’t guzzle down your food, taste your food, appreciate your food. While taking a walk with your dogs, notice what thoughts come into your head. Connect with your five senses. Notice the details of your life. Be present to the beauty of your life and the people in it, or you run the risk of it passing you by.
12. Create Your OWN Unique Way Of Living
“As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” – Marianne Williamson
Life is not necessarily a romantic movie with a happily-ever-after ending. People seem to be chasing a fantasy of what they think happiness should look like according to what society or media has decided. If you had the freedom to choose; what would give you the most fulfilment in your life? What would make your Soul content? Go all-out towards that. Always ask yourself whether your thoughts, decisions or actions, are taking you closer or further away from your OWN version of happiness.
“Happiness comes from within YOU, stop trying to find it outside of YOURSELF.”
Finally, always remind yourself that you are HUMAN. You are not the only human with problems. Somewhere out there, there are other people experiencing similar challenges you are, or even worse. You are not alone. Stop beating yourself up. Grow from your blunders and keep moving forward. Practice self-compassion. Your life cannot work without YOU in it. So now is the time to move yourself up to the top of your priority to-do list! Stop hating you and your life, and start a plan that will lead you to you loving yourself more and having a life you can enjoy and love too.
====
Have some of these themes here resonated with you? Then have a read of these pages:
1. Do you need help or support in a particular area of your life?
Coaching with Adam Eason Or Hypnotherapy with Adam Eason
2. Would you like a satisfying and meaningful career as a hypnotherapist helping others? Are you a hypnotherapist looking for stimulating and career enhancing continued professional development and advanced studies?
Adam Eason’s Anglo European training college.
3. Are you a hypnotherapist who is looking to fulfil your ambitions or advance your career?
Hypnotherapist Mentoring with Adam Eason.
Likewise, if you’d like to learn more about self-hypnosis, understand the evidence based principles of it from a scientific perspective and learn how to apply it to many areas of your life while having fun and in a safe environment and have the opportunity to test everything you learn, then come and join me for my one day seminar which does all that and more, have a read here: The Science of Self-Hypnosis Seminar. Alternatively, go grab a copy of my Science of self-hypnosis book, it’ll help you live with integrity!
