What To Do If You Hate Yourself

Learning to Love All Takes a Lifetime of Daily Practice

There were many times I used to hate myself because of my fear of not being good enough. But over the years, I’ve learned a few things that have helped me be kinder and more accepting of myself and others.

Now that I’ve become a grandfather and observe our two sons with reverence for life and how precious it is, I can love the things I used to hate, especially myself.

Now that I’ve become a grandfather and observe our two sons with reverence for life and how precious it is, I can love the things I used to hate, especially myself.

You see, there’s a thing called Agape, the Greek word for unconditional love. You’re about to learn more about that, especially if you too often look in the mirror and hate yourself or other people, places, and things.

Self-View, Self-Worth, Self-Image As Kids

Remember what it feels like to hate not being the kid who fits in with the cool kids? Or the feeling of fear and self-loathing when you fail at anything? How about when you get rejected for saying or doing what you believed was right?

All of this ugly self-view happens because of how we see ourselves. How we see ourselves comes from our conditioning when we were kids. In other words, we get programmed by the people, places, and things we grew up around.

That partly explains the drinking and drugging habit I used to have. Drinking buckets of booze and smoking more weed than Snoop Dog can be okay temporary ways to lose the feelings that used to overwhelm me as a younger man. One of the slippery slopes in life is playing the comparison game.

Learning to Love All That Is

Loving all that is takes lots of practice, reading spiritual texts, and the work of people like Bryon Katie, who was once upon a time curled up in her attic in psychic agony before she had a “burning bush-like” experience when the unconditional love the eternal Light showed her the way, truth, and life.

“Once you question your thoughts, you discover that you don’t have to do anything for love. It was all an innocent misunderstanding. When you want to impress someone, it means that you’re not standing in your own integrity.” - Byron Katie

Why It’s Even Harder to Find Self-Love Today

For any of us who grew up before smartphones made us dumber and we successfully reversed life expectancy, the legacy of adolescence haunts us like a mean ghost.

It’s always been this way, and it always will be because the entire purpose of our temporal human existence is to learn how to love. Love is the key to overcoming self-loathing and hate. It’s a long and treacherous journey because living on earth can be heaven or hell, depending on how we see ourselves. Our self-view is the filter through which we see everything.

Change how you see yourself, and you can change the world. Observing yourself and embracing the present is a powerful gift. To find and treasure this gift, you must search inside yourself for the real you. Training your awareness is the kind of training few will do. If you want evidence, look at how selfish we can be and how much harm we do—trained awareness.

The now is all there is unless we trip into the future or regret some aspect of the past.

How to Stop Comparing Yourself

Here’s the bottom line and path to self-love, and all that is: stop comparing yourself to others. It’s that simple, but not easy. It never has been and never will be because getting over our selfish selves is the gateway to salvation.

I grew up in a time when we had three television networks, and to get much other than snow on the screen, we used tinfoil rabbit ears to tune into the Boob Tube, as my mother called it. Today, the tsunami of information, social media, fake news, and the erosion of core values compel us to compare ourselves to a false ideal. That partly explains why I left all social media madhouses except LinkedIn, which I use daily for the business of life.

Time Is Merely One Way We Delude Ourselves

Go back to the beginning of time, look at any religion's roots, and see the same thing. We humans are the only animals roaming the earth. We trash with plastics and bullet casings because we cling to false ideals. Shrinks call these cognitive biases.

When we discover who we truly are, and that time is one of many delusions that lead us to walk through the dark night of every soul, we make progress. Progress is a process. That’s why none of us can learn the power of progress on a webinar.

Here are some examples of how we delude ourselves:

1. Perfectionism. We seek to be perfect. But why? We are not. We are fallible at the temporal level of existence. The purpose of making mistakes is to avoid making them again. When we have an unrealistic expectation inclined toward perfection, we set ourselves up for disappointment because absolute perfection is impossible.
2. Eternal youth. How did we come to believe we’re supposed to be young forever? Look at the buckets of money we spend to look young forever in vain. We can thank the Marketing Machine that began long ago on Madison Avenue. The Mad Men made us mad at ourselves by duping us into another false ideal. The only thing about us that’s eternal is the soul if you believe in that part of yourself.
3. Money can buy us love. If that were true, my angelic being of a wife for the last 39 years would have never married me. Sure, I strived for the Midas touch, but the money seldom stuck because I was motivated more by the fear of being a loser than love for my work. It may seem money can buy us love, but ask most long-term married people if that’s true. It’s not.
4. The delusion of control. I’m a recovering control freak. The cost of that is losing my mind when I lose control of myself, my money, and any person, place, or thing that didn’t see things my way. Your ego is the enemy that loves to hate you. It wants you to think it’s in control but never has been and never will. Today, I pray and journal to know God’s will for me and the power to carry it out as best I can.
5. Unwavering optimism. The idea is that being constantly optimistic is always beneficial. While optimism is generally positive, excessive optimism can lead to ignoring risks and potential problems.
6. Diamonds are forever. Even if there is some truth to the euphemism, it’s yet another brainchild of Madison Avenue. No matter how big or clear the diamond I bought for my wife in 1984 was, the only thing that is forever is love. Love is all. That’s all I can say because unless you get sucked into the melodrama of the Old Testament, the way to get over hating yourself, and all things you judge, is to love all that is.

Learning how to get over self-hate begins with ending the comparison game. You are the only you in the universe. That part of you lives within your God-given body, brain, and life journey. And even if you fail to understand what God is, think of it as ineffable, unachievable unconditional love.

In closing, here’s one of many metaphysical references we can find in the Bible in our shared quest to get over our egoic and self-judging selves.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Unconditional love for the people, places, and things you hate begins with loving your true self. When you fail to do so, love that, too.

We will know world peace when we stop hating and love all. That journey begins every day we look in the mirror. Instead of seeing the temporal part of yourself in your reflection, see your eternal soul and smile, knowing you are here for a short while to learn to love.

And in so doing, if you can focus on only one rule by which to live, let it be the Golden Rule. It goes something like this, and you can practice on yourself when your ego begins to unleash its voice within your head:

“Do to others as you would have them do to you, and leave out the mean, angry, hateful, selfish stuff.”

Thanks for reading my article, originally published on Medium, where member writes get paid for our work. When not coaching and advising emerging entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors, I help people improve their “mental wealth” and quality of life by writing, speaking, coaching, and advocating for mental wealth and well-being. Learn more at www.CliffordJones.com, or subscribe to The Clarity Letter on Substack.