3 Mindset Shifts to Help You Hate Yourself
/And motivate you to do better.
Illustrated by the author.
Being a success is overrated.
Why worry about making yourself better when the world is slowly spiraling down the toilet bowl?
Let's get real here, people.
Thinking positively does little to help your attitude anyway, and you just end up feeling like a fake. Facing reality and putting yourself down can work wonders. Take it from me, a generally positive person, at least that's what all my friends call me—I'm ready for a change.
These last few years, I survived a pandemic, watching good people die in droves even after being careful not to spend time in crowds but still end up catching covid. Wearing masks and washing hands only to still, that's right, see more people catch covid. Other self-proclaimed good folks believe they don't even need a vaccine, and it's all a hoax. They seem fine with themselves.
Meanwhile, I lose my job and have to learn to survive and find a new one while everyone else is fleeing theirs. Should I try to be happy? Make it all the better by telling myself positive mantras?
If someone can decide what life means to them and choose how to live it the way they want, even if it's ridiculous, I've opted that thinking positively is getting thrown out the window.
Here's a mindset shift that defies what self-help gurus preach, so we can start demotivating ourselves and get honest about our situations. It's time you gain power from negative self-criticism.
1. Recognize your negative cycle and give it a hug
Criticizing yourself and your appearance after waking up in the morning, looking at your sad reflection staring back, is the new motivation for success. Dominate your mind with negative talk about how you need to lose weight and exercise more.
I bet your hair looks awful. Isn't it time for a new hairdo?
Yeah, your job sucks. Who cares. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. I thought so.
Doesn't this feel good?
Destructive self-talk sculpts an image of yourself that's hard to break unless you recognize you're doing it in the first place. Embrace this downer version of you and let the Eeyore-like side shine.
What? Is all this negativity silly to you? After smelling all your garbage, you should want to clean it up.
2. See your negative self-image as a flame, and fan it
The more you fan a flame, the more it burns. It's time to grow yours into a roaring fire with negative self-talk. How bad can you make yourself feel?
Dare yourself to try. How many crappy details about your life and failures can you drum up? Life ain't always great, so stop pretending.
Give it all you got, and feel that fire rage inside. The worse you feel, the better.
You might get so enraged that you get completely sick and tired of being sick and tired. So what?
Why don't you do something about it? Oh, you're too lazy, huh?
If only you cared enough to think of times where you made the right choices and succeeded. Accept that some things in life work out, and others don't.
Feeling bad about yourself can help make you feel good.
3. Be unkind to yourself to motivate change
The other day I cursed at myself for making a wrong turn and having to re-route the directions to an appointment—one I was already late for anyway. I could have been kind and talked to my brain about how everything will be fine and work out well in the end.
But it didn't. Me being late made everything worse and upset people I care about. Maybe next time I have a meaningful engagement, I should leave super early because I suck at finding new places.
Making sure to step outside yourself and see the bad can help you know what to improve. You shouldn't hide behind positivity if you want to make real change.
You have to be unkind to yourself to know where to grow and get so upset you actually do something instead of just talking.
The end is not nigh
You have triggers that make you feel down on yourself or give up, and you might as well discover them so you know when you're spanking yourself. When we feel at our lowest, we are often about to make a breakthrough.
If you can tell when you're at rock bottom, you can be open for the moment of clarity that helps you see where to go next. Giving yourself a chance to notice what pulls you down can help you know how to climb back up. Or, better yet, how not to spiral down in the future.
Times are tough in the world right now, and we need to be tougher. You can't always fix everything by just thinking positively.
You've seen those old black and white photos of families from a hundred years ago. They weren't smiling, and they were surviving.
They didn't finish a day on the farm, working out in the hot sun, smiling, and telling themselves how happy they were. Looking in the mirror, telling themselves life can be easy and fun when life was hard. Our ancestors had very few options.
It's much easier now, but we act like it should be a breeze.
Life is still challenging, no matter how nicer our living conditions have become—facing negativity and letting it run all over you is how to understand what gets you down and leads to change.
Unless you suffer from chronic depression, you might want to see a doctor and get on medication if that's the case.
The rest of us can learn to live with our negativity and practice some grit.
Cheers to the new you.
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